Feels cold outside, dontit? That's a blizzard.
Nothing much to add to what you already said, Kayden. I wished I had said it myself. My mood is the same.
Blizzard real money auction house was created with the intent to end the Asian trade business. It's so predatory this move from Blizzard that they even announced the Asia servers will be the only ones that won't have a real money auction house. It's insane how pretentious this company has become, to the point it makes features available on a regional basis just because they can. To that note however, Korea actually demanded the removal of the Auction house since it goes against their anti-gambling laws. I wished more countries (including the USA and Great Britain) had such laws that don't allow the mixing of entertainment gaming and gambling.
The biggest concern here is that for the first time a major game studio has explicitly allowed the trading of game items with real-money between players. To the point that they actually coded a game feature to handle it. This is so morally and fundamentally wrong, I have trouble formulating my opinion. But not happy with that, we learn they actually established a revenue source from it, turning Blizzard into a casino business and Diablo III into a gambling experience. One that is actually illegal in some European countries.
Blizzard is today one of the most damaging companies in the industry. Forget EA, forget Ubisoft. All they do is talk, poor ports and annoying DRMs. That's nothing, guys. Really. That's nothing. Activision Blizzard is acting on a whole different level. It's changing the landscape of video gaming and bringing it into a whole new level where the discussion of ethics in the video gaming market becomes a meaningful debate. When before all you had where moms arguing about violence, and being mostly ignored, now you risk gaming associated with gambling and players associated with gamblers and debatable practices for a 15 year old. It's the perfect environment for government legislation (and understandably so, I must add!) of a market that until now was pretty much free of it.
Hell, does anyone in here think I would ever allow my daughters to play Diablo II nowI? Like me there are many concerned parents. But unlike me they don't have a clue what's going on.
