My account was made by my sister for me using the name of her then-bf in Russia. Both minors at the time, almost 15 years ago, we didn’t think that could possibly be important. Her reasoning, as I later found out, was that “he’s the only legal adult and our parents are kinda lame” or the sort.
Fast forward, I moved to France, war, sanctions. I can’t make purchases nor use the authenticator.
I contacted Customer Support about this on several occasions, with more and more proofs of my uninterrupted use of the account, but was met with refusal (and occasional compassionate words) every single time. I even followed an advice from a reddit thread by a person in a similar situation and contacted Data Protection Officer who sent me back to the Support.
As far as I’m aware, the EULA (and ToS previously) do not permit account sharing or transfering, and there are a few very specific (unapplicable) cases in which the account holder name can be changed. I understand the reasoning for this - defining the person responsible for the account activity as well as preventing account theft and trading. I suspect as well that the Support agents are bound to enforce the company policy with little leeway.
However, this massively limits my account functions and puts me in a precarious position. Besides being unable to buy new games from Blizzard (no big deal), I can’t make raid groups with custom names on Remix or Cata Classic (BH25 is a pain). That requires the authenticator, which requires an attached phone number, prefix to which is locked to the account country, +7 in my case. I don’t even have such a number anymore, only a French +33.
Various stuff I sent attempting to convince CS to reconsider include:
a photo of my BC game manual featuring a game code attached to my account since almost the beginning, with my papers laying on top of it.
a photo of three of my expired cards, with my name on them, used for purchases on this account at least since my majority.
a screenshot of a 2011 email from Blizzard with a Celestial Steed code. This gmail address is still used - including for communicating with the French authorities, with official emails featuring my name. Btw, the account mail was switched from gmail to hotmail of the same @ after I entered my data on a phishing website out of curiosity as a child, around 2012.
In my case, this legalism is completely counterproductive and contrary to the common sense. I don’t really think making an exception for me destabilizes Blizzard’s normative environment or exposes the agent to the booterang of termination.
Any suggestion different from making a new account, changing my legal name to my sister’s bf is welcome.
Reading your post, I can understand your situation. I’m afraid however that based on your explanation, there is nothing else that could be done in this case as we do not allow account sharing or trading, and an account must be registered to the account owner (or under their parent’s name if the player is a minor).
There are some special cases that we may make an exception for, which I won’t go into details here.
No need to, I’ve consulted the support article re name change, as well as some topics mentioning an explicitly fake name for account as the rename cause.
Turning the Karen mode on, is there no manager to speak to, no appeal nor policy review board? If that’s the case, the system could certainly use some improvements…
Anyway, at least add Baradin Hold 25 to the Cataclysm Classic LFG tool. The only option is BH10, not even other Cata raids.
The name used for the account appears to be of someone else, and/or can be deemed real. E.g. with what Blizzard means with a “fake name” is something like Donald Duck, not someone like Barack Obama.
A further appeal will not be given as they will just dismiss this easily given that all facts are the same. The policy is intentionally made like this to prevent past account sharing, trading and other RMT or drama.
If you want, you could discuss this with civil consumer organisations and bring this case to a civil court to see if you can prove, convincingly that the account is yours and transfer the name to you as a last resort but generally I’ve never heard of anyone able to do it this way.
not clause, policy, maybe even jurisprudence or precedent
French consumption code, mentioned by the EULA, general rules for digital content of the article L224-25-14, al III:
The consumer cannot contest the conformity by alleging a deficiency of one or several particular characteristics of the digital content or service, if they were informed beforehand of the difference between the conformity criteria of this article and the terms and expressly consented to it while contracting.
Basically, EULA prevails as it should. Making an account in one’s own name is a prerequisite stated right at the beginning.
Besides, EULA’s also pretty clear that account use has nothing to do with property, and the account itself fully belongs to Blizzard, to be manipulated at their discretion. There is a thing called usucaption, becoming an owner purely by squatting for prolonged periods of time, but again, property is out of the question.
You could imagine some kind of gymnastics with the inability to consent and the validity of the contract altogether, but for that I’d need to look through some cases, with potentially interesting solutions for “squatting” on someone’s twitter account and claiming “ownership”.
But what am I even talking about, de minimis
UPD: what if I managed to get my sister’s now-husband’s ID? They’re in the EU as well. I still wouldn’t be able to use the authenticator as it’s a different country, and that would look like unbelievably blatant account sharing, probably prompting a ban. wat do?
The only thing you can do, within Blizzards rules, is make your own account, and start afresh, because in Blizzards eyes, “your” account belongs to your sisters husband, as it was initially created with his details.
Also, “my” account doesn’t belong to my sister’s husband, it belongs to Blizzard.
“wat do?” is a pertinent question as at this point probably half the customer support knows that this account’s holder and user are two different people. Despite that, the “Sanctions” part of the EULA is not enforced atm:
If you fail to comply with any terms contained in this Agreement and/or the Code of Conduct, Blizzard may provide you with a notice of your non-compliance and at our sole discretion impose a sanction.
Failure is manifest, even if in good faith. Absence of sanction is as well, for which I’m grateful. The question remains, what can I expect submitting his ID?
You think that they are so stupid, as to not realise what you’re doing, when you stated what you’re doing quite clearly on Blizzards own forums? Even if you deleted this thread, it will probably still be archived in the forum logs.
The only failure is yours, for breaking the, quite clearly stated rules, and allowing someone else to create your account, using a third parties identity.
I wasn’t implying their stupidity. I was, however, pointing at the fact that the technical breach of the EULA is not enforced atm - nor they are forced to apply a sanction. I italicized these words for your convenience in my previous post.
So the question remains, would it constitute a further breach of the EULA warranting a sanction?
As in, operating under the uncharitable hypothesis of the account theft, the account holder returns to reclaim it after uuuhhh 15 years, only to continue playing… from a different country, in which the purported thief resides, which would constitute a transfer of account, thus being a new breach of the Agreement.