The guy who redirected playdiablo4.com to Path of Exile wants people to stop hitting Blizzard

When Blizzard announced for the first time that Diablo 3 would come to the Nintendo Switch, Editor Zein had a really fun idea. He went on GoDaddy and bought the URL "playdiablo4.com" and then redirected to the website of Path of Exile, the biggest competitor of Diablo 3. After Blizzard outraged fans earlier in November with the announcement of Diablo Immortal, Zein's little joke went viral. But now he's asking people to stop criticizing the developer.

Zein has proven that he had bought the estate for the first time on September 20, well over a month before Blizzard disrupted some of his fans by closing his annual Blizzcon main presentation. announcing that the next Diablo would be exclusive to mobile and created by Chinese. NetEase developer.

"At the time, I played a lot at Path of Exile," Zein told me. "And when I saw all Diablo 3 on Switch, the idea came in. It was a joke, without any malicious intent towards Blizzard or anything."

Blizzard was expecting a bit of repulsion, but the announcement of Diablo Immortal turned into an absolute disaster as fans raged out to neglect an essential part of his life. public. They wanted Diablo 4 on PC and instead, Blizzard offered them a derivative mobile game.

It was then that the players stumbled on playdiablo4.com, found that it was redirected to Pathofexile.com and thought it had to match Diablo Immortal. The joke quickly spread when the media seized it and Zein's little gag became the protest's poster against Blizzard.

Yesterday, however, Zein received an email from "someone who had used Diablo's fan forums" suggesting he buy the domain. "I entertained her email with an answer" I could, "Zein told me. But, apparently, it was just a trick. Shortly after, Zein received an e-mail from Blizzard's lawyers informing him that he was infringing their copyright and was committing an act of cybersquatting, that is to say, He was buying domains from websites containing the trademark of a third party to take advantage of them. It would appear that by offering to sell the estate to this unknown buyer, Zein has demonstrated its intention to take advantage of the Diablo trademark.

"They asked to take the redirection of pathofexile.com and tried to transfer the domain to Blizzard," Zein wrote in a message to the Path of Exile subreddit explaining the situation. "Because they could not see why I kept the domain except for commercial purposes."

Of course, that only fed the flames of outrage. The message quickly exploded and reached the front page of Reddit, where the thread is filled with comments such as "Blizzard is terribly salty" and "tell them to get fucked". For many, it was like Blizzard trying desperately to limit the damage and silence the critics.

But Zein never wanted to be on the brink of a war against Blizzard in the first place – and he certainly did not want to be a martyr. "I created the website long before the announcement of Diablo Immortal," he said. "Why do random people on the Internet write articles saying I did it in" protest "with Diablo Immortal or that I'm an" angry fan? " "I do not even play Diablo."

After receiving this notification from the Blizzard legal team, Zein is consistent in removing the redirect. Instead, playdiablo4.com has indicated a Google image search for "phone". (Of course, keeping the joke alive, albeit in a more subtle way.) After several reducers claiming to be lawyers told Zein that the situation could be serious, he became anxious and called Blizzard's lawyers.

"I was getting really worried and worried about Blizzard suing me because of all the answers that I had made for," he said. "He was however very kind to me and told me that I had no worries.I am grateful for that.That's why I do not really like the number of people who are trying to call Blizzard's lawyers in the answers to my thread The guy has handled the situation very nicely and calmly with me, so I have no animosity towards him and Blizzard. "

But for people who simply want more reasons to hate Blizzard, it does not matter, even after Zein has repeatedly updated his message to implore readers to stop attacking Blizzard and his lawyers. "Guys, please, stop attacking Blizzard about it," he wrote in an update. "That's the standard procedure. [Grinding Gear Games] owns the [Path of Exile] website and they are a direct competitor of Blizzard with regards to Diablo. The lawyer pointed out that Blizzard had found the joke funny too, but that they also needed that done to minimize the wrongs. It is not their fault. "

That did not do much to quell the hordes of angry fans who see it as another misstep by Blizzard. For the moment, everything seems to be going well for Zein. He's still not sure of the ultimate fate of playdiablo4.com, but Blizzard will probably end up owning it in the end.

"I do not agree with Blizzard's direction with Overwatch and Diablo," Zein said. "But I do not have any evil feelings towards them, and I do not want people to think of them as a bad guy who wants this meme removed." For me, at least, it makes perfect sense to want the remove. "