Remember when Blizzard let Diablo III players sell items and gold for real money? I found my old PayPal transaction receipts from 2012.

Back in 2012, Blizzard introduced one of the more controversial features in gaming history: Diablo III’s Real Money Auction House (RMAH). Unlike traditional in-game marketplaces, this system allowed players to sell weapons, armor, and even in-game gold to other players for actual US dollars. You could then transfer your earnings to PayPal or keep them in your Battle.net balance. Diablo III launched on May 15, 2012, the real-money auction house went live in North America on June 12, 2012, and the entire system was eventually shut down on March 18, 2014. It lasted just over 21 months.

The economics were pretty interesting. Blizzard charged a $1 transaction fee on equipment sales, a 15% fee on commodities like gold, and another 15% if you wanted to cash out through PayPal. Individual equipment listings could sell for up to $250. This effectively created a marketplace where finding a valuable piece of loot could mean earning actual money, rather than simply improving your character. Players could also sell items through a separate auction house using in-game gold.

I recently dug through my old emails and found some of my original Blizzard transaction confirmations from July 2012. Among them were a weapon called “Baleful Shot” that sold for $15.67 and a sale of 10 million in-game gold for $25 in actual money. Across just five receipts I found, I sold $51.55 worth of virtual items and currency, with $37.23 left after transaction and transfer fees. Blizzard and the payment-transfer process took $14.32, or nearly 28% of those sales. I’ve attached screenshots of the original confirmation emails.

What’s particularly interesting is how widely used the system became. At GDC in March 2013, former Diablo III director Jay Wilson revealed that more than 50% of players regularly used one of the game’s two auction houses. Diablo III had approximately 1 million daily players and 3 million monthly players at the time. Wilson acknowledged that the auction houses had negatively affected the game by making buying equipment more rewarding than actually finding it. Blizzard eventually removed both marketplaces alongside its broader effort to overhaul loot progression with Loot 2.0 and Reaper of Souls.

I haven’t been able to find a reliable public figure for the total dollar value of all auction house transactions or how much Blizzard earned from the system. Given the size of the player base, I’d love to know those numbers.

Does anyone else remember selling Diablo III items for real money? Did anybody actually make serious money doing this, or have any particularly crazy sales?

Diablo III RMT AH transactions