Topic: Idea: Diablo III Bitcoin Auction House - page 2. (Read 4079 times)

The BTC auction house would act as a middle man/arbiter and meeting place for sellers/buyers. Someone lists an item, funds are sent by the buyer and held by the house, once the item is confirmed as delivered in game by the buyer, funds are released to the seller. Maybe have sellers video cap the in game transaction? A rep system based on number of items and value sold/bought will help keep things honest, but isn't 100% guaranteed.



I wouldn't suggest undertaking something like this as a means of income or guaranteed profit. If you aren't into this out of curiosity alone, then this is far too risky in terms of time wasted.



It does sound grim when you put it that way.



If you think about it, the goods you are selling are nothing but digital items spawned according to their rules in their game.

It's genius how they turn their customers into cash farmers.

To add to this ... I think the idea is fantastic if people are already using Bitcoin and the RMAH didn't exist.  Unfortunately, neither of these are true, and thus the idea is DOA.

Users don't want to go out and purchase some weird currency prone to theft,  and install potential malware on their system, just so they can pay a stranger over the internet for items that may never be sent.

Relative to that, 15% fee seems completely fair for the 100% scam-proof, easy-to-understand method of just using the RMAH.  I think 15% is ludicrous actually... Blizzard is being ridiculously greedy.  But they'll get away with it because they know how desperately users want to be able to buy and sell items to other users, and they know users will pay it.

If only I had a reliable solution of input/output i.e. how you deliver in game assets to the customers and how they deliver in game assets to you!

Give me the above solution (or idea) and I am on board for this project, otherwise seems like a waste of time.

Here is a good article on the auction house

It looks like it is going to be their bread and butter after the initial sale of the boxed game and is there to provide a steady stream of revenue and pay for server maintenance.

The WHOLE reason they're putting up with the "Always online single player" backlash is so even the single players can access the auction house, as this would be prone to hacking if single player data was kept client side.

Also, given how fierce Activision's legal team is, you can bet they'll fight tooth and nail to take something like a Bitcoin Auction House down, should it ever begin to eat into their bottom line.

The parties involved are only participants. It's the market controls or lack thereof that determine whether or not the market is free. And throughout history people have struggled with the issue of appropriately placing trust.

I think free markets are only free when the parties involved in them understand that it's free. Right now a good majority are still clinging to their old habits of centralization, insurance, backing, reversals, trusting strangers, etc.

I disagree. Bitcoin so far represents a free market. There is nothing artificial about that.

I thought about mentioning MtGox, but there are several reasons I didn't that I don't want to start  flame war about here. Suffice to say, all companies grow larger through Bitcoin but some grow artificially and remain unhealthy.

Mt.Gox is not a company that has grown larger through Bitcoin?

And besides Mt.Gox, name a Bitcoin company that is more than 2 years old. It took longer than two years for three of the Internet's juggernauts to really grow and be profitable: Google, Yahoo, and Amazon I know just off the top of my head.

Right now Bitcoin is serving a small niche market of hobbyists, but it is gaining traction every day. The network grows larger, and more people are getting involved.
It grows very similarly to most other internet projects, like a kindling in a camp fire. Some fizzle out, while others begin to catch, and at a certain point become too large to stop.

Bitcoin needs to reach that catching point, and tying it to something like D3, an internationally acclaimed online game, could be the very easily be the push it needs.

If we assume that most D3 players are computer savvy, and are interested in trading their stuff for real money, I think this BTC Auction House fits the niche market perfectly while letting them take part in something revolutionary, "This is not your grandparents' currency".

And once the kids start using them, then all hell is going to break loose.

The same does not yet go for Bitcoin, as the difference so far is that large companies become larger, and small companies became large through the internet. That has not happened much in Bitcoin yet.

Bitcoin in itself is an experiment, which only started 3.5 years ago, so the fact that most of the sites and businesses around it aren't full fledged corporate projects is understandable.

The internet started as hobby project too, it was just a matter of finding good uses for it. The same goes for bitcoin.

Here are some of my Ideas of how it could be done:

If there is an option to display items stats via the api this could be used to verify a transaction. So it could be possible to sell a specific item without the hassle of typing in it's stats by hand and it is certain that the item is in fact in the possession of the seller and later the buyer.
The site could act as a trusted party receiving both the payment and the fee plus some collateral. There could be some reward system which reduces the fees after each successful transaction.

If that is not possible we could pay highly reputable members to act as trusted party receiving both the item and the payment. That should also be fully EULA proof
If all fails we could still use a standard feedback system which isn't entirely fraud proof but hey, it works for everybody else!

I would also suggest not implementing the ebay style timed auctions but a conventional strike system where the seller can decide when to close the auction or let the system do it automatically according to criteria. This could be time, number of bids, amount, the slope of bid increments or even some combination.


We are mostly involved in niche markets which are inherently tied to hobbyist projects. That isn't necessarily bad.


Well the only languages I am somewhat fluid in is C, Pascal and Basic, from school and some toying around with applied math.
I would be willing to learn myself a more suited language if that counts, I find go very interesting but haven't gotten around to get a working dev environment with it.

You speak the truth. Sadly, this is true for most businesses/projects in Bitcoin 

Well, I can't prove that I would, but I believe in the idea that its a perfect fit for bitcoin, and I'm really interested in the Real-Money-Auction-House. If anything it would be an exercise and a hobby project.

I would definitely we willing contribute my time and skills to collaborate on it if someone in web programming were to willing, and if we could somehow work around the eula  

No you wouldn't. You'd sit there with your mounds of programming and web developing skills and think about the effort and energy needed to work on it versus the absolute lack of guarantee of any reward along with the fallacy of "saving 15%" that would be swallowed up by wire and exchange fees getting money in and out of Bitcoin and you'd say "Fuck that, I'm gonna make a Pirate pass-through site or Bitcoinica2".

At the end of the day, this is just an idea that goes nowhere until someone with the proper skills puts in the time and effort to make it a reality.

If I were a web developer and programmer, I'd do it myself 

A couple thoughts:

1) We are discounting the fact that the EULA probably doesn't allow it, so that brings the risk of losing your account.

2) We are discounting the fact that using Diablo 3's RMAH reduces risk of getting scammed.  Is that worth 15%?  Maybe?

3) So I think any system of this nature will naturally shine by having a feedback system (just like ebay) which will track the number of transactions as well as the total value of transactions.

But yet, someone can make some decent money implementing this:

Or you can go use OGRR (see link in signature).

They just need to get the feedback system going.  Their theory is that if you only sell items, then you'll grow a large balance on their website; however, I think you'll need to add # of transactions and total value of transactions buying & selling, b/c you can be on both end of the transaction to build credibility.

Granted it may take a while to gain traction and take off, but given proper support, ease of use, and fluidity, I believe people will be drawn to it, especially if you have advanced item search features and a strong community. You can also just spend your BTC on items you DO need, or spend them elsewhere on other real life goods.

Converting to fiat will also be much cheaper than the fees bliz tacks on.

EDIT: I bet you 21 million BitCoins the D3 eula has a clause against using 3rd party auction houses 

Alright, I did just that now.

I don't think the fees in the RMAH are as high as in the gold auction house. But you are right, with all fees added together it will come close.
Mind you though that people often do not realize that they are paying so much to third partys it's all conveniently split amongst sellers+buyers.
If transparency were a major issue for most people the whole world would probably use bitcoin.

I have a few ideas how to do this even if the api turns out to be not much help. But it is more or less confirmed to display statistics on characters and equipment as a json file.

more later