Monday, Blizzard released new information about the highly anticipated release of Diablo III—the third installment of their extremely popular isometric, demon-slaying RPG series. Among the announcements advocating the upcoming beta and the fact that the game will be entirely online, they included a real kicker for the massively multiplayer online game community: there will be an in-game auction house where items can be bought and sold for cash.
“With Diablo III, we’re introducing a powerful auction house system that will provide a safe, fun, and easy-to-use way for players to buy and sell the loot they find in the game, such as weapons, armor, and runes,” Blizzard posted in the FAQ about the new auction house system. “Two different versions of the auction house will be available in DiabloIII: one based on in-game gold, which players acquire through their adventures, and one based on real-world currency.”
Auction houses based on in-game currency have been par for the course for any game with virtual items and an Internet connection; the real news here happens to surround the advent and capabilities of an auction house that players get to buy into with real world money. Already, the free-to-play game industry and social game industry have leveraged the microtransactions concept to get players to buy tokens for real money which could then be spent on virtual items; but none have ever produced a system where players themselves can make money directly from in-game sales.
Gold, gold everywhere and virtual doesn’t need to mean worthless
In-game gold for pay-to-play games such as Blizzard’s World of Warcraft has become almost the gold-standard of game currency with evenChina making prisoners farm in-game gold as part of their punishment, which can be turned into real-world money through shady black-market sites. Trading in-game currency for real-world money has long been against Blizzard’s policies and carries stiff penalties when caught; however, this hasn’t deterred a huge and booming dark market for in-game gold exchange.
The result: there’s a huge economy in Blizzard’s in-game gold and they’re not getting a cut of it.
Enter the Diablo III real money auction house and market.
“Yes, as an advanced feature, players will have the option of attaching an account with an approved third-party payment service to their Battle.net account,” Blizzard writes on the subject of players making money from in-game sales. “Once this has been completed, proceeds from the sale of items in the currency-based auction house can be deposited into their third-party payment service account. ‘Cashing out’ would then be handled through the third-party payment service.”
Of course, Blizzard will take a cut of the proceeds—a modest fee, they announce, and they don’t expect to make a lot of money from it. Although, we’ve seen from their past exploits that people are willing to spend show-stopping amounts of money in droves over in game items (as per the World of Warcraft “sparklepony” which netted them almost two million dollars in just four hours post launch.) So, chances are, they will make real bank on this no matter how small their transaction profits.
Making Blizzard money is nice; but curbing black markets might be better
However, that’s probably not the real attitude change that a Diablo III cash-based auction house will cause: it will also break the back of any black market of swords for dollars economy that wants to take advantage of the new game. While world balance may be affected somewhat by richer players being capable of outfitting their characters with better gear than those in their same peer group (although Blizzard has mentioned implementing level caps so that new players won’t end up with high-level gear) it also means that the game will probably suffer less from organized farmers mining the game for gold and items.
They’ll come initially. No doubt they’ll come in droves. However, with the cash-based auction house, farmers will suddenly find themselves—and their financial information—under direct scrutiny by Blizzard. If they start breaking the rules or try to zerg rush in to farm for virtual items, they stand to lose more than just an account or two to the big blue banhammer.
This move will force a cultural shift in the way that gold farmers operate in the paradigm of Diablo III and mean they’ll have to compete with everyday casual players and even marketeering players who want a cut of the pie. Finally, I’m sure that people reading about the third-party payment services will be wondering if PayPal will be front and center.
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