In-game marketplaces have been a mainstay of video games since the early days of online gaming. While convenient, they can sometimes be easy to exploit by saavy players who find a way to hack into the system. This is exactly what happened to Blizzard's wildly popular dungeon-crawler Diablo 3, as players have found a way to "dupe" an exponential amount of gold in the game's Auction House.
Diablo 3 launched on May 15, 2012, making it almost a full year since the popular PC first hit shelves. While fans had some issues with the game's aforementioned Auction House and always-online requirement, it was generally received well by critics and fans for its high production values and addictive gameplay.
So what exactly went wrong? According to Forbes, the game's recent version 1.08 patch created a bug that allows players to dupe mass amounts of gold. Players created auctions for 6,000,000,000 gold, when the game's system was not designed to handle amounts that large. Leaving the complex math out of it, players basically ended up with duplicate gold as a result of the broken auctions. This bug filled the game with gold that shouldn't be there, prompting Blizzard to shut down the Auction House completely.
Since the digital breakdown, Blizzard has refunded players who used the Auction House fairly and banned those who were duplicating the gold. According to Gamespot, the Auction House has been a controversial game feature since its inception, as it encourages gamers to pay real money for in-game items instead of working towards them during their adventures.
While the Auction House is gone, Diablo 3 players can still enjoy the core game. Blizzard has yet to release a statement regarding the return of this in-game shop.
How do you feel about this in-game duping scandal? Does the Auction House help or hurt the game?
