Diablo 3 - Yeah, sure, Blizzard aren't running an item shop!

Article here.

I'm really surprised how people seem to think diablo 3 wont have an item shop?

What, does all it take is that 'oh, it's players selling to players!'? That's enough to baffle peoples senses?

Let's make it clear - players can only sell to other players because blizzard makes their sale possible.

Blizzard makes a cut on each sale, that it made possible to do.

How is this not an item shop?

Blizzard is being smart with the revenue coming in from this system: players will be charged a flat fee to list an item, and if it sells there will be another flat fee paid to Blizzard. The company won't make more profit on a more expensive item, and the "nominal" fee will dissuade players from simply dumping everything they find on the auction block. Since drops are random and only players can sell to other players, the economy is still self-contained.

What's this self contained bit? It's self contained when it's a blackmarket at well? What's new?

Further, if you can sell stacks of items the "The company won't make more profit on a more expensive item" is completely untrue. A stack of 50 healing potions having the 'same' posting fee as awesome sword X isn't the same. The fee is divided by 50 in one case. Which means awesome sword grants a bigger profit.

I think there are a few stars in peoples eyes, out there. Or perhaps they are snow blind?

Money and seriousness

Geez there were alot of comments on gamejolt along the lines of 'Oh, I love to make games, I don't care about the money' or 'They are FREEware games!'

And yet these people are accepting money - how can you say your doing something just for the love of it, yet accept money? Note that if they had an option of not accepting ad revenue from their game and took it, I'd say they are consistant with their own words.

I mean, what does it take to be inconsistant there - is it a certain amount? If you say you do it for love and accept $5.00 it's consistant? But if you say you do it for love and accept $5.01 your hypocritical? Is there some magic sum where it switches over to that?

No, there isn't. Accepting any amount and yet saying you just do it for the love of it is bullshit!

And same goes for freeware - is there a magic sum where if you accept I dunno, $5.00, it's still freeware, but $5.01....

They're bullshit responces. Yet they were more than enough justification to get snarky for these people, apparently.

There was this guy I knew who was a postie, and he had a million in superannuation and was at retirement age. He just worked for something to do, and called the money chicken feed.

But it wasn't chicken feed/nothing to everyone in that delivery centre - to most of them it was vital.

I think alot of the guys responding to me perhaps even live at home still, or come from a pretty well off background. They wouldn't pick up a five cent coin in the street.

But I'll tell you what, it's pretty common to be serious about even one cent.

Try going to a shop and paying for an item short by one cent. See how many shops don't take that seriously.

I doubt you'll find many.

Either do it entirely for free or get serious about money - but nah, they don't treat it seriously.