Blizzard to collect up to 30 percent on Diablo III auction house sales

[Shawn Knight]

Blizzard has released more information regarding the real money auction house that was first announced last summer. The company plans to take a cut of every transaction in the auction house on top of one or more fees to transfer money to a third party service like PayPal.

Blizzard will take a 15 percent cut of the final sale price of any commodity like gems, materials and gold in the real money auction house. Furthermore, if you want to transfer that money to a third party service like PayPal, that will cost you another 15 percent. This, of course, isn’t accounting for any fee that PayPal may charge for the transaction. So if you sell something for $100, the best case scenario is that you will only net $70 in your bank account.

Users can avoid the 15 percent transfer fee by simply keeping the money in their Battle.net account. This can then be used to buy items in Diablo III or to purchase digital versions of other Blizzard games.

Equipment like weapons, armor and accessories are a completely different story. Each item of this nature sold will incur a $1 charge in the real money auction house as well as the same 15 percent cashing out fee. In the gold auction house, expect to pay a 15 percent Blizzard tax on any item sold.

For those who were planning to just collect and sell items in the real world auction house full time, think again. Geek.com highlights that there is a $250 balance cap per Battle.net account, meaning that you’d need to transfer money to PayPal each time you reach this limit (with a 15 percent fee, of course). Furthermore, users can only have 10 simultaneous auctions live in the real money auction house and 10 in the gold auction house at any given time for a grand total of 20.

Do you plan to use the auction house in Diablo III or will you be avoiding it altogether?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/48434-blizzard-to-collect-up-to-30-percent-on-diablo-iii-auction-house-sales.html

 

[Guest]

Well that's a bad decision why the auction cap and money cap???? come on blizzard get some common sense.

 

[TomSEA]

I can't see myself buying stuff - I mean that's the whole point of playing the game is to go through the effort to reward yourself with good loot. But if I have duplicates of rare items, then sure - I wouldn't mind making a few bucks on the side.

 

[Jesse]

RMT is inevitable, so I think that Blizzard is being smart in capturing this revenue. But, still, I don't like the concept of being able to just buy whatever you need with cash.

 

[Guest]

All of the items detailed on Blizzard's announcement regarding the RMAH is not surprising to me. It was never Blizzards intent to offer a system where people could use it to earn a living. This system is in place because it is more secure than purchasing gold and or items from 3rd party outfits. I think the fee's will help pay for the RMAH infrastructure and also pave the way for enhancements for future games. It is any individuals choice to participate in the RMAH it is not a requirement. If I earned $15 a month from the RMAH I would be completely satisfied. It really is a subjective matter and opinions will differ when it comes to RMAH from person to person.

 

[Guest]

I guess this is the compromise for the game being free to play?
Having the ability to dump the money to a Paypal account is great because literally every place online I purchase from supports it.
Only thing I don't like is binding a PayPal account to your Battle.net Master Account, if you're stupid and get your Bnet account hacked, guess what......?

 

[Kibaruk]

Only thing I don't like is binding a PayPal account to your Battle.net Master Account, if you're stupid and get your Bnet account hacked, guess what......?

Right cause now you will have to log in to your bnet account through PayPal... who is the stupid one???

 

[Mister_K]

30% bit much ey? Should be around 20% more then enough.

 

[tengeta]

sounds like another recent blizzard release that i won't be bothering with...

 

[lipe123]

30% bit much ey? Should be around 20% more then enough.

Its 15%, The system is NOT there so you can quit your dayjob and make a living from D3. Also they are not charging you a monthly fee to play on their infrastructure that closts a fortune to maintain. So no the 15% they charge seems perfectly fair to me.
Not to mention this is all optional and no one is forced to use this.

The auction system is a great idea and I like how it's being implimented, its for diablo users by diablo users. Not for earning rl money by the ton or a instant "I win" button

 

[Guest]

I didnt know that Apple bought Blizzard? Same greedy company charging way too much.

 

[Guest]

if a guy/gal could make enough to pay for w.o.w subscription
hmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[Timonius]

"For those who were planning to just collect and sell items in the real world auction house full time, think again. Geek.com highlights that there is a $250 balance cap per Battle.net account, meaning that you?d need to transfer money to PayPal each time you reach this limit (with a 15 percent fee, of course). Furthermore, users can only have 10 simultaneous auctions live in the real money auction house and 10 in the gold auction house at any given time for a grand total of 20."

Darn, I really wanted to quit my day job

 

[hitech0101]

Taking advantage of gamer apathy few want to make money after playing hours and hours and few with money want some items out of their reach to just to gain an advantage.This thing happens in many games but blizzard made it legal keeping in mind their own interests and profits.

 

[insect]

Woah... lots of mis-information in these comments.

The game is not free to play: you pay $60+ for the game, like most games.

Aside from the balance cap, the most you can sell an item for is also $250 bucks.

Apple did not buy Blizzard, Activision and Blizzard Merged a couple years ago into Activision Blizzard.

The Auction House is completely voluntary (to both sell and buy).

If the item doesn't sell, there is not fee - only items sold incur a fee, so no risk for trying to sell something you don't want or need.

This is to get around the 3rd party sellers as many have mentioned, a problem that plagues most other games these days. Why play to be good when you can just buy to be good? At least with a regulated system things are *more* fair for those who can't or won't buy artificial goods.

The idea, as many have stated, is not so you can get OMGEPICNESSOFGOD Sword and sell it for $10,000 each week and retire. It's to give those who aren't as patient and willing to pay for it (literally and figuratively) a way to stretch their e-peen while giving someone else a few bucks to buy in-game pets and other stuff that Blizz puts out for their games (mainly WoW right now). Also, it allows Blizz to keep patching a game and running servers without a monthly bill (i.e., most MMOs).

This is super-good. It means ANYONE, poor or rich, can lay down $60 bucks and play forever without another fee if they like and those who are rich can pay a little extra each month so that the poorer can keep playing (which is, IMHO the way the real-world should work - instead of just hoarding cash for no one).

Please check out Blizzard's own press-release before discussing the system. Bad on the author for referencing a third-party site (geek.com) instead of the source.

 

[Rick]

Please check out Blizzard's own press-release before discussing the system. Bad on the author for referencing a third-party site (geek.com) instead of the source.

In Shawn's defense, he *did* link to Blizzard's AH FAQ. He also linked to arstechnica as well as geek.com.

Even when there *is* an official source, this sometimes happens because writers at TS check third-party sources for additional information and alternative analyses.

 

[insect]

Please check out Blizzard's own press-release before discussing the system. Bad on the author for referencing a third-party site (geek.com) instead of the source.

In Shawn's defense, he *did* link to Blizzard's AH FAQ. He also linked to arstechnica as well as geek.com.

Even when there *is* an official source, this sometimes happens because writers at TS check third-party sources for additional information and alternative analyses.

Ah yes. My apologies. The geek.com stood out more to me for whatever reason. Even so, Not a huge fan of the link-as-text feature. Call me old-fashioned but I prefer the good ol' parenthesis around a source following the information presented therein.

 

[Rick]

Not a huge fan of the link-as-text feature. Call me old-fashioned but I prefer the good ol' parenthesis around a source following the information presented therein.

I can see the value of such a system.

I think (news.source.com) would be beneficial to many people, especially those who glance at the articles.

It's not something I see on many tech sites though -- I can only imagine it might present some challenges in terms of formatting, like links (news.source.com) one (news.source.com) right (news.source.com) after (news.source.com) another.

One more consideration might be words with relevant links are supposed to carry more weight in search engines than links with unrelated words. I don't know if that's even a valid reason or how much difference it would make, but it probably all factors in to some broadly accepted standard of referencing links.

I'm trying to play devil's advocate, but I think that's best I can do.

 

[Guest]

WOW real money Auction in a game ? well, I can imagine the kind of people who 'll do that. Poor Darwin !!

 

[Guest]

Users can avoid the 15 percent transfer fee by simply...

...using any one of the 3rd party item purchase sites that are going to spring up anyway.

True story.

 

[Mister_K]

Its 15%, The system is NOT there so you can quit your dayjob and make a living from D3. Also they are not charging you a monthly fee to play on their infrastructure that closts a fortune to maintain. So no the 15% they charge seems perfectly fair to me.
Not to mention this is all optional and no one is forced to use this.

The auction system is a great idea and I like how it's being implimented, its for diablo users by diablo users. Not for earning rl money by the ton or a instant "I win" button

Didn't they charge 30% of the sale, 15% is fine and already seen around gagillion of "don't quite day job" arguments.

 

[Guest]

The cut seems very high, but I don't care all that much. Seems 5-10% percent would have been plently.

Also, it's great that they limit the sales to 10 items at a time per account in the RMAH. This makes it harder for botters to earn a living from this game -> meaning when I get bored and want to sell my stuff - it will be worth a lot more.