Late last week Iranian fans of World of Warcraft were suddenly locked out of the role playing game. Blizzard, the gaming company that makes WoW, says they had to pull access in Iran to comply with U.S. sanctions against the country. Normally, if you or I had purchased a game then had it yanked back from our computers, we’d expect a refund. In this case, however, Blizzard says it can’t offer refunds, again, due to the sanctions. Needless to say, gamers weren’t happy and they took to the company’s message boards. From the BBC:
Although the block on Wow has been imposed by Blizzard, other reportssuggest a wider government ban might have been imposed.
Players of Wow and other games, including Guild Wars, said when they had tried to log in they had been redirected to a page saying the connection had been blocked because the games promoted “superstition and mythology”.
Blizzard said it had no information about Iranian government action against online games.
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