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→The Fees are Too Damn High!
There are other factors, of course. Since there's no subscription fee for Diablo III, Blizzard is using the RMAH to generate income off of Diablo III long term, or at least clear enough to cover the hosting costs. Also, if auctions were all free, players would post everything without any judgment, entirely spamming up the process. Some cost keeps the system from being clogged by junk, and provides a basic check on the lowest level of the economy. The listing fee was eventually removed, while the maximum open auctions per account was lowered to 10.
===Will Blizzard Manipulate the Economy?===
Conspiracy theorist fans have been speculating about Blizzard's ability to game their own Auction House since the system was first revealed. Blizzard has, of course, denied that they would ever do such a thing.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/blue-on-potential-auction-house-shenanigans]
<blue>No, we don’t generate any items or gold on the auction house. It’s a player driven feature and the items you’re buying are from what other players have found and placed on the AH for sale. There can certainly be a situation where you may want to buy 1 million gold and only 850,000 is available in total from all current auctions. You’d be informed of this when presented with a final purchase price.</blue>
The fact that auctions are entirely anonymous, and that the quantities of items being sold will be so high, makes these sorts of accusations easy to make, since there's no way fans would ever catch on to minor market manipulations. Aside from Blizzard's vows that they will never do such a thing, the risk/reward seems crazy, and keeps most fans from seriously considering this possibility.
Blizzard's economic model is to make a small profit per sale on millions of sales. If Blizzard were found selling fake items or cheating the system, the backlash, bad publicity, and lawsuits would cost them far more in lost goodwill and business than they could ever hope by cheating the system.
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