Diablo III Auction House Uses Real Money

Blizzard has revealed that Diablo III will have a centralized auction house system so players can easily sell and buy loot earned in the game. This loot can be bought with gold or - hold onto your butts - real-world currency.

When posting an item on the auction house, players will be able to chose whether it's sold for gold or real money. Any real-world currency earned through these auctions can be deposted in a running balance on your Battle.net account and can be used to then buy items on the auction house or other Blizzard game services like World of Warcraft game time. You can get the proceeds from these sales in cash by attaching an approved third-party payment service (PayPal?) to your Battle.net account.

The auction house is a way for Blizzard to make a little money, too. There is a fixed charge to list items on the auction house. An additional fee will be added if the item is sold. Specifics for these fees, and money transfers in general, will vary by region. Blizzard is promising additional details at a later date.

"Our goal with all of our games is to ensure players have a highly enjoyable, rewarding, and secure experience," says Blizzard. "Acquiring items has always been an important part of the Diablo series, but the previous games have not had a robust, centralized system for facilitating trades, and as a result players have turned to inconvenient and potentially unsafe alternatives, such as third-party real-money-trading organizations. Many of the transactions between players and these organizations led to a poor player experience and countless customer-service issues involving scams and item/account theft, to name a few."

"To that end, we wanted to create a convenient, powerful, and fully integrated tool to meet the demand of players who wished to purchase or sell items for real-world currency, and who would likely have turned to a less-secure third-party service for this convenience."

Blizzard adds that the auction house will be players-only. The company itself won't be selling items. Gamers tend to be very hostile toward anything resembling "pay-to-win," though, so this distinction will probably be lost in a flood of forum-raging.