Diablo III sale of items

[rotrott]

I read today that diablo III will allow the sale of in-game items for real money.  It looks like they will do the paypal thing, but were investigating other options.

It would be interesting if a bitcoin based transaction system was implemented.  Does anyone know anyone at blizzard to lobby? 

[OgNasty]

When is Diablo III supposed to be out?

[datguywhowanders]

Not soon enough

[rotrott]

Rumor is they will announce tonight, but nobody knows.

In most games monetary transactions for in-game items are outlawed (at least they try to stop it from happening).  If a game is going to allow items to be traded for money, I think it would be great to use bitcoins for those transactions.  It's a perfect fit actually.  Of course blizzard probably wouldn't do this because it would be harder for them to take a chunk...

[BusmasterDMA]

It seems to me that there could be issues if Blizzard does indeed facilitate (or even sanction) selling of items for USD.  That means that in-game profits are then directly connected to real-world profits.  It opens the door for the IRS to tax game play, concerns of money laundering, etc.  Blizzard would have to start issuing 1099 forms to players.  I always assumed this was the reason they explicitly forbid selling of WoW gold.

[Zem]

Ya I read about this last night. I might just end up buying this game for the sole purpose of playing around with their item auction economy.

[joulesbeef]

When is Diablo III supposed to be out?

they are doing the Dukem Nukem forever thing but rumor has it that the beta which was rumored to be out this month, WILL be out next month, but that is just a rumor.

[JohnDoe]

Of course blizzard probably wouldn't do this because it would be harder for them to take a chunk...

Why would it be harder? They still control the platform so they can charge whatever fees they want.

[DrKennethNoisewater]

Ya I read about this last night. I might just end up buying this game for the sole purpose of playing around with their item auction economy.

I will do the same thing. I've been looking for a new game to play any way, so I don't constantly refresh my deepbit page.  LOL

DKN

[Zem]

I hate refreshing deepbit and finding out I found another block but yet my balance is no where near 50 coins

[benkebab]

Very interesting system indeed: http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/118/1185020p1.html

Kinda ebay like, with either in-game money or real money.

I see plenty of reasons why it would be a very good thing for Blizzard to allow Bitcoins in this system:

- players will be able to buy and sell in the various market places (US, EU, Asia, etc.) with no currency change fees.

- players will be able to retrieve their gains in bitcoins with no additonal "third-party" related fee (e.g. Paypal).

What do you think? 

[Exonumia]

Bitcoins are too much work for them, especially when your used to making $25 per sparkling pony.

[rotrott]

Of course blizzard probably wouldn't do this because it would be harder for them to take a chunk...

Why would it be harder? They still control the platform so they can charge whatever fees they want.

I guess because they would have to manage a bitcoin account an exchange account and try to cash out their value so they could be reported as "game" income for their stockholders.  That versus simply skimming some dollars of the top and throwing it into an account.  I'm not saying it's impossible, just more work.

It might still be worth it for them to avoid the credit card processing fees.  This would probably open up the market for people to purchase items that you might not want to purchase due to the fees.  Say a more common sword for .25$ or something similar.

[BusmasterDMA]

Watch the mining difficulty drop dramatically following the release of Diablo III...

[realnowhereman]

Is anyone else confused about why they are taking a percentage?

They own the servers, if they want a "percentage", they can just sell in-game gold, which they simply construct from thin air.

[VPoro]

Is anyone else confused about why they are taking a percentage?

They own the servers, if they want a "percentage", they can just sell in-game gold, which they simply construct from thin air.

You have N players playing your game. If you sell imaginary gold, i.e. which has been conjured out of thin air, a certain percentage of the customers that buy it will get bored to your game very quick (compare to people cheating in games and getting bored), stop playing it and stop paying for it (assuming you have a monthly fee to play, like WoW). However, if you allow real-world money transactions between players, you have this group of players that farm for the items, which are loyal customers since they are making money out of the game, and thus, even though they lose some people because of the getting bored -factor, the loyalty of the farming customers outweighs that.

tl;dr: making people farm and sell the items generates more loyal customers = more long time-frame income for the company.

[realnowhereman]

True.

Accepted.

[Maged]

Does anyone know anyone at blizzard to lobby? 

Yes, both directly and indirectly (I'm a personal friend of Sixen over on Diablofans). Now that there are sites like bit-pay and btcinch, it might be time to bring this to Blizzard's attention.

I'll have to read more about this before I send anything, though. (I'm on vacation and don't have much time right now)