So Blizzard announced today that Battle.net will be able to hold players funds, real cash, for both World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 players. The cash can then be used by players to purchase items from the Battle.net store or can be used in the Diablo 3 auction house to buy items. Money earned from the D3 auction house can also be added to the Battle.net Balance.
The catch is that the money cannot be taken out of the system, meaning if you’re a seller in the D3 auction house, you have to cash out after every auction, which by the way has four separate fees. No that wasn’t a typo, it actually has four fees.
So let’s see how many times Blizzard is going to charge D3 sellers.
- Auction listing fee – Each account will receive a limited number of waivers for the listing fees, but serious sellers will go through those in a day or so.
- Auction closing fee
- Cash out fee – Sellers will have to select the cash out option for every auction if they don’t want it going to their Battle.net Balance, meaning sellers will have to pay a Cash Out fee for every auction.
- Paypal fee - Paypal takes a percentage of every transaction through their system, the more money involved the smaller the percentage. Since Blizzard is forcing sellers to cash out after every transaction, the percentage fee is going to be much higher then if you built up a large sum of money, then transferred it at once.
Ok, technically it’s only triple dipping cause the fourth fee is Paypal, but still. Is Blizzard serious? I can’t wait to see the fee list. Who in their right mind is going to use the Blizzard auction house when they can probably double their profits by using a blackmarket site.
I was all for the auction system, but this is ridiculous and just shows how greedy Blizzard has become since the merger with Activision.
If they only allow the use of PayPal, the system is useless right there, since PayPal is so corrupt and broken, you often can never get your money from them.
The entire thing will be a huge failure. Blizzard deserves it for trying to be greedy.
December 9th, 2011 at 5:39 pmQuote
Wow they really effed up on that one.
December 9th, 2011 at 6:14 pmQuote
All this means is that nobody is going to sell dinky stuff for money and that prices will be higher. Sellers on eBay cry a river every time eBay gets “greedy” and charges a bit more, but most sellers stay because eBay is where the customers go.
The same will be true here. The seller will have a whole bunch of incentives to take their business “out of school,” but the customers will likely never find them. What incentive do the customers have? There is a shop integrated into the game that guarantees their purchase. Why would they go to some random site on the internet?
Well, you might argue they will go because of price. I doubt that myself. Somebody ready to buy virtual goods probably wants to be sure they get their stuff more than they want to save a couple of bucks.
Plus, who is to say the price will be that much cheaper? Running your own eCommerce site isn’t a zero overhead proposition. You’re just paying fees to different people… except PayPal. You’ll likely have to use PayPal anyway, since it is so common.
So for the customer, it will be using the trusted interface built into the game, or some site run by some stranger with no guarantees and not much of a price break.
We’ll see what the fees are and how it plays out, but at this point it does not sound like Blizz has made an obvious mistake to me.
December 9th, 2011 at 7:47 pmQuote
The mistake is the ‘cash out’ fee, no reason for that AT ALL. By charging to post an item, it cuts down on spam items, and mass re-posts, etc. They get greedy with the end of auction fee because they think that they will otherwise get stiffed on their ‘deserved’ fee’s when people post their items guaranteed to sell at much lower than value price (since the market value will bring it back up by auction’s end). Paypal is unavoidable, but the OP makes a good point of how stupid it is that you can’t cash out at any time. I guess that’s to sort of screw with the professionals by making it a bit more painful.
The fact that this even exists is retarded, but all these different fees really prove who is ultimately in charge at Acti-Blizzard.
December 9th, 2011 at 8:26 pmQuote
Oh well, not end of world. Share holders want money thats fair. Just don’t use the auction house if its a rip off, I won’t be, I’m sure the rest of the game will more the makr up for the auction house.it was never why I wanted the game in the first place so no los really. Bliz will prob see nobody using it if it is to bad and will become more reasonable
December 9th, 2011 at 10:10 pmQuote
What are the actual fees tho?
December 11th, 2011 at 5:45 pmThe pic is just an assumption, and the post just does not say…
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hmm, isn’t this still closed beta?
a little early to draw conclusions is it not?
December 11th, 2011 at 6:23 pmQuote
Are the fees in the picture a hypothetical or drawn from some source? Certainly the paypal one might be drawn from source.
December 11th, 2011 at 10:58 pmQuote
Blizzard HAS NOT merged with Activision, “Activision Blizzard” was the name used after Vivendi Games and Activision merged.
December 12th, 2011 at 3:00 pmQuote
This has got to be a rumor. No way is blizzard dumb enough to destroy the purpose of the actionhouse. Wasn’t it suppose to ruin the 3rd party trader spam?
December 12th, 2011 at 7:41 pmQuote
@Callan the prices in the hearder image are just made up and only meant to overexaggerate my point sellers will lose a big chunk of their profits.
December 13th, 2011 at 10:31 amQuote
Fake numbers.
December 13th, 2011 at 4:27 pmPeople should stop overreacting to stuff like this.
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Only thing stupid here on Blizzard’s part is the cash out fee. That’s retarded. The other fees by Blizzard serve their purpose.
December 13th, 2011 at 4:37 pmQuote
Three fees just from blizz is ridiculous. Defeats the whole purpose as people will still risk using 3rd party sites rather than this crap.
Is it possible to receive “Bnet funds” or whatever from an auction then convert those to real funds once you’ve accumulated a decent amount from several different auctions? As in to only pay the cash out fee once instead of after every auction?
December 13th, 2011 at 10:12 pmQuote
you put YOUR owe us on the picture
December 15th, 2011 at 8:11 pmQuote
This whole article is meaningless and just drama.
December 18th, 2011 at 7:15 pmThe fee amounts have not been announced, there is also a lot more ( Like free posting) that the OP has not even mentioned.
Bias is Bias.
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>outrage at four separate fees
December 18th, 2011 at 11:42 pm>mfw no one outside Blizzard know what the fees are
>mfw no one knows how much items are likely to sell for
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@Mike
Then isn’t your entire point invalidated? How will sellers lose a big chunk of their profit when neither you, nor we, know just how much Blizz will take?
*sigh* the things sites post just to draw hits…
December 19th, 2011 at 2:54 amQuote
Blizzard hasn’t even said what their fees are yet. And you guys clearly don’t understand what a percentage is. So this article is pretty useless.
December 19th, 2011 at 8:22 pmQuote
math fail.
haven’t you played the beta? all the stuff i sold there has has a 15 cent posting fee and a 65 cent auction fee if it sells. blue posters have stated that is likely to be the fees at launch.
blizzard has also stated that you will be able to post a few items every week with no transaction fees, so you can save your 80 cents.
and why would you choose to cash out a $4 auction? once you have a pile of blizzard bucks, buy a big item that you can cash out on. playing the auction house is part of the game, for most of us.
standard cash out from paypal is 30 cents plus 3%. so, even if you were stupid enough to post a $4 item to cash out, you would pay nothing or maybe 80 cents. then blizzard takes an unknown cash out fee. is it a dime? is it a dollar? nobody knows. at this point you are getting somewhere between $2.10 and $3.90, before paypal takes a cut. they would take .36 to .42 and you would get actual cash of $1.74 to $3.48 for PIXELS ON YOUR DISPLAY THAT YOU GOT FOR PLAYING A GAME.
wow. i feel really ripped off. not by blizzard, but by whoever taught math to mike the blogger.
December 20th, 2011 at 10:21 amQuote
The writer needs to go back to grade 3 and be taught about percentages, and how they work.
The fees also haven’t been announced, not to mention those weren’t even the fees that were seen in Beta. Just pull them out your ass to make a point?
Yeah, I’ll remember never to visit this garbage site again.
December 20th, 2011 at 11:12 amQuote
Blue post regarding this incorrect article.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3764578439?page=1
December 20th, 2011 at 12:17 pmQuote
I just have to laugh at some of these posters that don’t understand the numbers used in the header are supposed to be heavily exaggerated, not actually fee figures. Was just making a point that Blizzard is charging a lot of fees to sell, not that the fees were actually going to be more than the items sold.
December 20th, 2011 at 4:49 pmQuote
I never could understand why auction sites make it so difficult —- make it easy, free to post an item & take a percentage of the sale when it does go.
Keeping it simple would allow people who are not so hot on their maths to keep track. Free listing will encourage more people to sell items and get involved, & the single end fee would mean we would not have to sit scratching our heads trying to figure out if they have been ripped off or not.
December 21st, 2011 at 8:20 pmQuote
So…
1) The numbers are confirmed fakes.
2) Sell 10x “$4″ equivalent items in the normal AH for $40 worth of D3 gold, auction $40 worth of D3 gold in the RMAH…
There is no drama here to see.
December 22nd, 2011 at 10:11 amQuote
Your owe us all you moneys
December 26th, 2011 at 2:53 amQuote
All your dollar are belong to us.
May 15th, 2012 at 11:47 amQuote