Diablo III in-game economy hits trouble after user exploits

Diablo III's in-game auction house has been pulled offline and its in-game economy frozen by Blizzard in order to deal the fallout of a user exploit that allowed players to duplicate money.

A glitch in the game's online auction house was allowing players to cancel a transaction before it finished processing - and the end result was doubled money. The problem is made more pressing thanks to Diablo featuring a real-money auction house - any in-game issues have an effect on this as well, lessening the value of gold versus real money.

The bug came as part of Patch 1.0.8, launched in the wee hours of this morning, and the glitch was needless to say very quickly discovered and exploited and squashed by Blizzard almost as quickly again. Despite the issue being a short-lived one, Blizzard has made the decision not to roll back the servers - meaning those who duplicated money get to keep their ill-gotten gains.

"At this time (and after careful consideration), we've decided to not move forward with rolling back the servers," Blizzard Community Manager 'Lylirra' explained. Instead of simply rolling back the server states by a few hours, Blizzard will instead target individual users who they know benefited from the glitch.

"We've been able to successfully identify players who duplicated gold by using this specific bug, and are focusing on these accounts to make corrections."

Some players aren't happy, and claim this leaves the game's economy heavily compromised. You can find more updates, including a huge number of pitchfork-wielding fans on the official forums.