14 DAY TRIAL // This week, the development team at Blizzard has finally launched the Reaper of Souls expansion for Diablo 3, which the fan base of the action role-playing title has been waiting for some time, but the more important change linked to the title is the fact that the Auction House system has been taken down.
The feature was widely criticized when it was first announced by the studio and many fans felt betrayed by the way the company abandoned its earlier stance, which stated that real-money trading would never be one of its focuses, in order to create a new revenue stream.
After Diablo 3 was actually launched, a large number of players began using the Auction House system, both the regular gold version and the one that focused on real-world currency and Blizzard had to deal with some issues related to payment, spamming and other infractions.
The community quickly managed to adapt its style of play to the existence of the trading system and, in many ways, its involvement became so large that the developers themselves felt that it was distracting players from the actual mechanics of Diablo 3.
In September of last year, the closure of the Auction House was announced and Blizzard explained that a new loot system would bring the game experience closer to that offered by the previous entries in the franchise.
Real-money use is here to stay
The history of the Auction House is a sign that real-money trading in modern video games is here to stay and that it is impossible to return to the days when we only took out our wallets to actually purchase a copy of our favorite titles.
More and more high-profile titles will experiment with real-currency trading, without forcing them on the player directly, offering some limited but appealing content to those who are willing to spend or simply equating money with time.
Diablo 3 is a sign that developers need to carefully evaluate how the concept is introduced in their titles because it can take precedence over mechanics for a large group of players.
It will be interesting to see whether Blizzard discloses how much it has made from revenue associated with real-money trades.
Transactions work best in MMOs and social titles
At the moment, using real-world money for in-game content feels at home in MMOs and in social experiences, some of which are created using a free-to-play business model for the core mechanics.
This means that gamers have the option of paying something if they feel they are on the receiving end of a quality experience or if they feel that they can obtain a clearer tactical advantage.
It also helps to have a franchise that attracts a large number of players and can be sustained using a limited amount of resources in the long term.
But there’s a possible future for real-world money trading in which everything from FIFA to Call of Duty to Titanfall to Assassin’s Creed uses the concept in order to give players a simple way of customizing which aspect of the experience they are interested in.
I don’t like QTEs, so maybe I will be able to pay 2 dollars or Euro to skip them entirely or to simply get levels that do not include them.
I don’t particularly like the idea, but the existence of the Auction House for Diablo 3 is probably a sign that it will happen sooner or later and that the only hope for players is to think that it will be badly implemented and will then be removed.