When it was announced that the auction house wouldn't be in console versions of "Diablo 3," lead designer Joshua Mosqueira cited a difference in ecosystems between PC and consoles as the reason behind the removal, saying, "There were some technical reasons we had to go with offline, but again once you have an offline experience, even if we wanted to bring in the auction house, it just becomes problematic."
However, it looks like it may have gone deeper than just that.
During a GDC talk on Thursday, the reason behind the service's lack of inclusion became a bit clearer. "Diablo 3" director Jay Wilson revealed that the game's Auction House "really hurt the games," reports Joystiq.
"I think we would turn it off if we could," says Wilson. However, while players opposed the idea of using real money to buy fictional equipment and were quite vocal about it, players on the opposite side of the debate were unheard, which begs the question if it was actually appreciated at all. Wilson likes to think so, but the problem is that Blizzard has no way of knowing how many people like or hate the system.
Overall, it sounds like there was a bit of a give and take between Blizzard and Diablo's design team. Blizzard certainly enjoyed "Diablo 3's" auction house, as they received a cut off of any sale made in either of the game's auction houses, 15% in gold, or $1.00 in real world money.
After seeing all the furor surrounding pay-to-win, and microtransactions, it looks like Blizzard finally realized that while the model is great for their bank accounts, it's doing harm to their reputation.
With the console ports, Wilson and the rest of the team had a chance to do away with the auction house, so they grabbed it.
As for PC players stuck with the houses, Wilson said the team is working on a "viable" solution.
