Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

Re:Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in Marc... by josh2600 on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @05:09PM (#6401984)

I'd argue the difference is how the complex ecosystems handled parasites.

On the one hand, Blizzard enabled balance-breaking monetization, and TF2 enabled costume-breaking monetization. Blizzard could've made just as much (or a lot more really) money just by enabling cosmetic rewards instead of gameplay rewards.

I feel like I quote this once a week [0] but Cory Doctorow makes a ton of great points on this and related subjects in the linked essay.

[0]http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt

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Re:Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in Marc... by minimaxir on Tuesday September 17, 2013 @06:10PM (#6402255)

It's worth nothing that Blizzard did exactly that in World of Warcraft.

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