One of the fun sideshows going on during the whole BlizzCon Diablo Immortal center-ring fiasco was the dude who bought the playdiablo4.com domain and immediately began cheekily forwarding it on to Path of Exile’s website.
Apparently, however, this week Blizzard’s laywers reached out the prankster – Zeiin on Reddit – and requested he take it down and transfer it to Blizzard, saying he was “committing an obvious act of cybersquatting and trademark infringement.” Zeiin says he refused to hand over the domain he was paying for, though he did agree to stop using it to promote Path of Exile. As of right now, it’s redirecting…
… to a google search on “phones.” Still snickering over here.
Lest you be tempted to nail Blizzard to the wall over this, the poster himself points out that he has “no malice” towards the company over it. “Please stop attacking Blizzard over this! This is standard procedure,” he says. “GGG owns the POE website and they’re a direct competitor of Blizzard with regards to Diablo. The lawyer clarified that Blizzard did find the joke funny too, but they also needed this done to minimize harm. It’s not their fault.” Of course, we’ll see if he keeps that cheerful attitude if the lawyers try to force a court to give up his URL. Then again, maybe Blizzard could just deal with a little cheek and not risk alienating its customerbase further.
