Redditor Zeiin has shared some details on his url prank which redirected playdiablo4 domain to official Path of Exile website. He says that even though Blizzard found the joke funny, their lawyers have asked him to remove the URL redirect.
Diablo Immortal's reveal had a good side to it with tons of hilarious videos, memes, edits and pranks still lightning up social media and the Internet. One of these jokes was made by reddit user Zeiin who bought the playdiablo4.com domain and redirected the URL to Path of Exile's official website. A prank that could get him in a lot of trouble as Blizzard's legal team contacted him with an offer to buy the domain.
The prankster replied that he would sell it for a suitable offer and a couple of hours later he got another mail, this time signed by Blizzard's legal representatives. They explained that even though Blizzard found the joke funny, the request has been made for removal of the URL redirect as he was committing an obvious act of cybersquatting and trademark infringement by having the domain used for that purpose.
Blizzard also wanted the domain for themselves but Zeiin held his ground and refused to transfer the domain. "I paid for it and don’t want it taken over nothing," Zeiin says in his post.
After the conversation, he the URL to a Google search on "phones", which is another cheeky joke but Blizzard will probably be ok with this one as it doesn't lead players to a competitors website.
He finished his post by asking users to stop with Blizzard hate as the legal team didn't do anything wrong and were only giving him formal notice.
"Please stop attacking Blizzard over this. Their legal team isn’t being abusive or bullying me about it, this is standard procedure," before adding that their response to the prank is expected given the competition between the two titles. "They have to minimize the harm. GGG owns the POE website and they're a direct competitor of Blizzard with regards to Diablo," Zeiin concluded.
Blizzard
It will be interesting to see if Blizzard takes him to court over the domain ownership but that is something that would alienate the player base even further as the community is still fuming after the Diablo Immortal reveal.
Gallery of screenshots from Blizzard's Diablo 3 action RPG
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