One of the biggest complaints from gamers and journalists since the release of Blizzard's latest hit, Diablo III, was that despite it being a predominantly single player game, with attached multiplayer features, you had to login to a central server every time you wanted to play.
As well as being unnecessary if single player game play is all you're interested in, it can cause problems when your internet goes down, or if the Blizzard servers crash - and they did - or if indeed, your account gets hacked.
This is the latest issue to mire the launch of what is said to be one of the better games to be released in recent years, at least in terms of Gameplay.
Reports have been appearing over the past 24 hours, that accounts have lost gold, items and have even been sold outright. Blizzard's response so far has been to offer limited rollbacks to individuals, losing gameplay but potentially restoring lost virtual property. It is however keen to point out that if it happens again to the same account, Blizzard will permanently ban it from the real money auction house. Despite it being no fault of the player.
Its currently thought that playing public sessions with unknown individuals is the problem. A nefarious few have figured out how to spoof a session id, thereby allowing them to login as another player's character without username or password.
A simple avoidance measure at the moment would be to play only with those you know, or indeed by yourself. Though of course you'll still need to login.
The Always-On DRM was supposed to prevent hacks and piracy, but it failed to stop this post-launch loophole.
One more round of ammunition for the anti-DRM crowd.
