Diablo® III

It's good to see someone do the math and realize that the sky is not actually falling. Great job!

Good post! +1

The issue is that the service blizzard is providing, the transfer of digital money from one location to another, is already set at a fair market value by competition (PayPal) at 2.9% + $0.30. Instead they are charging 5 times that much, for identical services.

Its only possible because of the monopoly they have on an integrated sales service. Its their game and intellectual property so they ofc can do so, I just find it extremely counter productive towards building any good will with the player base.

The fee should be flat. It should not be hard with a company of such size to do the research required to calculate the cost for each money transfer, then add another $1 on top of that for profit. Or just round up and say 3% +$1.00 to cash out or something that even remotely close to what we've all accepted as fair market value for the last ten years of online buying and selling.

The issue is that the service blizzard is providing, the transfer of digital money from one location to another, is already set at a fair market value by competition (PayPal) at 2.9% + $0.30. Instead they are charging 5 times that much, for identical services.

Its only possible because of the monopoly they have on an integrated sales service. Its their game and intellectual property so they ofc can do so, I just find it extremely counter productive towards building any good will with the player base.

The fee should be flat. It should not be hard with a company of such size to do the research required to calculate the cost for each money transfer, then add another $1 on top of that for profit. Or just round up and say 3% +$1.00 to cash out or something that even remotely close to what we've all accepted as fair market value for the last ten years of online buying and selling.

Debating the fees wasn't exactly the purpose of this thread. People seem to be quite confused on how to calculate how much they will be making after the fees.

I believe instead of getting angry over fees, which we honestly have no way of knowing how much of the 15% transfer fee ends up with Blizzard or Paypal, people should focus more on the fact that they now have the ability to make a real money profit off of a Blizzard game without violating the terms of use. It may not be the ideal model, but it is far better than the previous incarnations of Blizzard game economies.

Basically put nothing below $7 is worth selling. I mean sure you can nickel and dime your way and all that adds up but how they require you to constantly SMS confirm with each transaction will just be painful to deal with.

05/01/2012 12:37 PMPosted by IDSGDFXI

So 7 bucks and up is where your gonna want to be selling.

I added a more exact sale value to the table to show the tipping point.
$6.67 is the point where the profit margin for items begins to exceed commodities.

05/01/2012 12:42 PMPosted by Obamarauder

OP you probably know better than I do but I was under the impression that the 15% cut was taken before the $1 fee is incurred, not after.

The $1 is taken first, then the 15% transfer fee is applied if you are cashing out. Obviously, this only applies to items.

05/01/2012 12:43 PMPosted by SquelchMePlz

$6.67 is the point where the profit margin for items begins to exceed commodities.

Hmm... a ~6.66 break point in a game called Diablo - how appropriate :)

Very convenient chart! I still wish the fees weren't so high as to make sellers want to look to third party sites.

05/01/2012 11:58 AMPosted by Khaldun

It's good to see someone do the math and realize that the sky is not actually falling. Great job!

yea, xept that blizz and paypal together take 70 bucks off of a 250 sale

that is obnoxiously steep

05/01/2012 01:03 PMPosted by TheAugust

Very convenient chart! I still wish the fees weren't so high as to make sellers want to look to third party sites.

this

its pretty silly

"we wanna have RMAH so people dont goto third party sites to buy items"

*puts the cuts so high that third party sites are favorable

makes sense

On a different note, how did you include a table in your post? There are other places where I wanted to do that but didn't know how.

05/01/2012 01:13 PMPosted by Tiberius

On a different note, how did you include a table in your post? There are other places where I wanted to do that but didn't know how.

You can quote my original post to see it displayed in the reply box.

Basically, you just use the [code] tags and the tab character... and a few minutes of fooling around with alignments.

It's good to see someone do the math and realize that the sky is not actually falling. Great job!

yea, xept that blizz and paypal together take 70 bucks off of a 250 sale

that is obnoxiously steep

That figure of a ~$70 fee only applies to selling a commodity for $250, not items. The fee scale for selling items becomes less steep as you progress past a $6.67 sale price.

Great Post.