Comment Re:This is ridiculous (Score 1) 217
Thanks for the car analogy. I had this long-winded post written up about the "entitlement" of receiving the authenticator with the game, but I think your post responds in a much better manner.
Thanks for the car analogy. I had this long-winded post written up about the "entitlement" of receiving the authenticator with the game, but I think your post responds in a much better manner.
If you really want to be correct, income can be either net or gross. Gross income is revenue. Net income is profit. Because he didn't state what kind of income, he's technically still correct. </pedantic>
You don't need a phone to run the mobile app. The fact that you can run android apps on a SDK on the computer has been known for a while now. See: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/713865-How-to-get-Battle-net-Mobile-Authenticator-COMPLETELY-free
Hacked accounts are a loss for Blizzard. Not only do they have to staff GMs to handles these requests, they have to restore items and more often than not they can't remove the stolen items. I firmly believe the $6.50 pays for the keyfob and the postage, and that's it. If they can break even, its a net gain for them since they can reduce the GM ticket queue and free up these expenses and time for other things. Remember how they laid off 600 employees in April? (http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/04/27/the-lawbringer-autonomous-systems-deal-with-customer-service-pr/) That was a reduction in operating costs for supporting these types of requests.
Right, because the keyfobs and shipping are free to Blizzard.
How does this guy know that Blizz made $26 mil from them? Does he have access to the sales reports? Remember, "the complaint accuses Blizzard of making $26 million in Authenticator sales." Accusing someone of making money and them -actually- making that much money is two completely different things.
They introduced a "restore" feature a while back that allows you to migrate devices without removing two-factor authentication. Basically, you enter the restoration code into the new phone/device and both devices will continue to generate the same seeded code. This can also be used to extend the authenticator to multiple devices like having a smartphone and a tablet both generate the same code. This is just an ease-of-use feature, especially when sometimes you can't find one of the devices you installed your authenticator on.
Not only does the $6.50 help cover postage and pay for the dongle, its completely optional and Blizzard makes the app available to as many platforms as they can. You can even install the authenticator on a Android simulator on a computer.
I'm in shock as to how entitled this person is. I honestly just can't fathom how he can claim that Blizzard "makes money" off these authenticators.
I would love it if, after connecting the cable, it detects the stolen MSIN, takes the phone, and notifies the police.
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan