Blizzard Entertainment & Bitcoins

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Greetings Bitcoiners,

I am currently attempting to convince Blizzard Entertainment to start accepting bitcoins as a payment method for their online services. I have talked to a couple people @Billing and so far it seems that they think it would be a great idea with the basic facts I've given them. I have yet to talk to someone higher up than their CSR's but I was told that the message would be passed along. My next move is going to be writing them an e-mail stating why they should accept bitcoins and am going to try my best to have all of my information as accurate as possible so that this may become a serious consideration on their part. I will keep the community informed, but in this topic I would just like to have a discussion on the impact this may have on bitcoins.

I realize that this could turn out to be a waste of time as bitcoins in it's current stage is "small fish" while blizzard entertainment is draws the line for gaming, but it is worth my best shot at the very least.

Discuss.

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[peach]

Nothing to discuss, apart from better strategies on persuading the Blizzard higher-ups.

Proselytizing minimum-wage-paid customer service people isn't going to get you anywhere.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

I'm working on it. Blizzard is like a mountain, you can't just teleport to the top.

The billing discussions were more of a "Have you guys heard?" scenario, rather than trying to get them to write the code same-day.

[Jalum]

Why should they accept bitcoins?  Aside from you just wanting them to, that is.  Who is unable to pay them in a currency they accept but who would pay them in pretend internet coins?  Do even five of those people exist?

You're right in your first post, this is a complete waste of your time.  But that's not an uncommon theme with bitcoiners.

[IlbiStarz]

I'm working on it. Blizzard is like a mountain, you can't just teleport to the top.

The billing discussions were more of a "Have you guys heard?" scenario, rather than trying to get them to write the code same-day.

Yeah you can....if you play Blizzard games :O

[joepie91]

Why should they accept bitcoins?  Aside from you just wanting them to, that is.  Who is unable to pay them in a currency they accept but who would pay them in pretend internet coins?  Do even five of those people exist?

You're right in your first post, this is a complete waste of your time.  But that's not an uncommon theme with bitcoiners.

Oh, look it's a troll!

@ OP: Sending them an e-mail would be a good idea. Try to see if you can find someone somewhere, who knows someone who works slightly higher-up in Blizzard, etc etc.

I think that Blizzard accepting Bitcoin may be a very nice boost for Bitcoin.

[MeSarah]

They wont. First, btc is not stable enough price wise. Second, it would take them ages to cashout at $1k per day limits. Third, it would increase their costs to handle btc.

It would be much wiser to get people in the SL community to accept btc. If you have the skills to write code in SL scripting language you should start there.

Why do people not think things through? Youth?

[BitcoinPorn]

I don't believe a market is stable enough for this, however things like this would help stabilize a market in a way, so this is good, nice job.

[bluefirecorp]

I don't understand why everyone is bashing him. By some miracle, if he can get Blizzard to accept BitCoins, it will bring in literally THOUSANDS of more users, daily. Also, other sites may start supporting it too -- mainly rival game companies. After that, other sites (even SHOPS), may start accepting them.

~bluefirecorp

[joepie91]

Why do people not think things through? Youth?

Because not everyone takes 'the easy way out' if something seems unlikely to succeed, and some people actually show some persistance.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Why should they accept bitcoins?  Aside from you just wanting them to, that is.  Who is unable to pay them in a currency they accept but who would pay them in pretend internet coins?  Do even five of those people exist?

You're right in your first post, this is a complete waste of your time.  But that's not an uncommon theme with bitcoiners.

In that case, why would anyone in the world accept bitcoins as a payment method ?

Time-cards are a hassle. If you don't have a credit card, it's pretty much your only option.

Stability means nothing when you're basing the price off of gametime cost/btc. Value of btc goes does -> price (in terms of BTC) goes up.

Did you seriously ask about withdrawal limits, MeSarah? We're talking about Blizzard, not some third-rate nobody. I'm sure if blizzard decided to accept bitcoins, any exchange that was dealing with them would not be stupid enough to tell them they can only cash out $1000 per day because blizzard would be bringing them a massive amount of revenue.

People used to laugh at the thought of human flight, look how that turned out.

EDIT: Even if they do not decide to go through with it, at least bitcoins will be on their radar in the future.

[Jalum]

Please pretend you're the Blizzard CFO and you're about to pitch to the board of directors and shareholders on how the company should accept this new internet currency.  What would the Blizzard explanation be for people who want to use bitcoins?

1.  Make an account at Dwolla.
2.  Transfer money into that account using a bank account.
3.  Wait 5-7 days.
4.  Once money is in Dwolla, create account at magic the gathering online exchange.
5.  Deposit money into mtgox.  Oh, is it a weekend?  Wait until Monday.
6.  Run bitcoin client, get 48 character long wallet address.  Whatever you do, do not lose this text file.
7.  Bid on $15 worth of bitcoins on mtgox, the price of which fluctuates every moment.  So you might need half a bitcoin or 3 bitcoins.
8.  Once your bid is accepted, you now own (0.5-3.0) bitcoin.  Transfer those to your wallet (we recommend using CTRL+C then CTRL+V unless you're very good at typing long strings of characters).
9.  Ok, now time to send us the bitcoin(s).  If it's the weekend, please wait until Monday.
10.  Launch the bitcoin client and make sure your text file wallet contains the bitcoin(s) you purchased from mtgox.
11.  Check the mtgox exchange and determine exactly how many bitcoins are required to cover your $15 monthly.  Remember that bitcoins are divisible to eight points beyond the decimal, so the correct amount to equal $15 might be 0.98776531 bitcoins.  
12.  Send it to this address xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.  Again be very very careful to type this in correctly.  
13.  Once you have confirmed that you sent it, log into your Battle.net account and navigate to the bitcoin payment option.  
14.  Enter in all your information, along with the blockchain reference link from Bitcoin Explorer that shows you sent the correct amount from your bitcoin wallet to ours.
15.  Click redeem and your account will be queued for verification.
16.  Bitcoin transaction verification can take minutes to days, depending on the processing power currently allocated to the bitcoin P2P network.
17.  Once verified, you will receive an email confirming that the transaction has been verified.
18.  You can now log in.  Have fun in Azeroth!

I then imagine the board of directors all rise from their seats and a slow clap spread around the room, but it then quickly gains in intensity and speed.  Men and women in business suits lift their arms and scream at the ceiling in exultation.

You are a titan of industry.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

You are a titan of industry.

That's the one thing you got right. I'll say again, this is blizzard. You should probably give them some credit for the things they are able to do.

[qwk]

Why should they accept bitcoins?  Aside from you just wanting them to, that is.  Who is unable to pay them in a currency they accept but who would pay them in pretend internet coins?  Do even five of those people exist?

Transaction fees.

They accept prepaid cards, where the merchants have a share of (i don't actually know, so i'm just making a number up) maybe 10%.
They accept credit cards, where the CC company gets a share of 2-4%.
They accept bank transfers, where the bank receives a fixed fee of probably around 10 EUR-cents (for a 10 EUR payment that would be a 1% fee).

If they accepted bitcoins, the fee would be like, uhm, what's the default transaction fee in the client at the moment?

For a company that receives millions of very small payments, transaction fees easily sum up to millions, they have a strong motivation to lower those fees.

[MeSarah]

Maybe they will accept Lindens too or even facebook credits. If they did............. And If...  If they....

[twobits]

Best bet would probably be to attend blizconn with lots of propaganda and get some buzz going about bitcoin while there.  It would also give you a chance to mingle with some people that probably could get things done.  In the meanwhile,   best route seem to be to convert bc to amazon gc then buy a timecard, if your short term goal is to be able to pay for wow time with bc.

[k]

@Jalum

why would they have to explain to people how to get and use bitcoins? do they do they same for credit cards or other payment methods?

they can just offer it as another payment method? people who already have bitcoins could pay in bitcoins. people who see bitcoin as a payment option and are interested could find out for themselves how to get them.

some big companies already accept payment in bitcoin. e.g. Wuala (part of LaCie)
http://www.wuala.com/en/bitcoin

from the merchant side, there are solutions already that automatically price the product/service in bitcoins at the going rate of USD and convert the bitcoins to USD so the seller has no fx risk of holding bitcoins if they don't want to. Essentially from the sellers point of view they price in USD and receive USD but the customer can pay in bitcoin. Why wouldn't a company want to allow their customers to pay in bitcoin if they want to?

[twobits]

Why should they accept bitcoins?  Aside from you just wanting them to, that is.  Who is unable to pay them in a currency they accept but who would pay them in pretend internet coins?  Do even five of those people exist?

You're right in your first post, this is a complete waste of your time.  But that's not an uncommon theme with bitcoiners.

Actually given how kids are shut out of a lot of net commerce due to not being able to get a credit card and such,  but may just have a decent graphics card for games and time and knowledge to figure things out, I bet the number that would do this is far more then you would suspect.   It also is smart marketing to get kids used to bitcoins and the idea they have value.

[CurbsideProphet]

Blizzard is a publicly traded company, you're better off soliciting a smaller, private company.  The volatility in BTC is just too great right now.  Blizzard =/= World of Warcraft.  And even if it did, such a minor fraction of that playerbase would know about Bitcoin at this point making it completely pointless.  I won't even go into the shareholders....

OP, I'm not trying to discourage you, just being real.  Try and start with a little smaller fish.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Blizzard is a publicly traded company, you're better off soliciting a smaller, private company.  The volatility in BTC is just too great right now.  Blizzard =/= World of Warcraft.  And even if it did, such a minor fraction of that playerbase would know about Bitcoin at this point making it completely pointless.  I won't even go into the shareholders....

OP, I'm not trying to discourage you, just being real.  Try and start with a little smaller fish.

I agree with this post. I don't have any thought in my mind that says they will accept bitcoins anytime soon. More or less just make sure they know that it's here.

Most likely doesn't mean anything, but I was emailing one of the customer service reps back and forth. Last message I received after a bit less than an hour was CSR overseer/manager letting me know that "Rest assured, these emails will be read."

Hopefully that's not an automated message. I'm assuming since he's already read them, he means read by someone else/higher?