dollar dollar bill y'all —

Real-money auctions launch in Diablo III

Top equipment already selling for over $200.

Sellers seem to have very different ideas about the relative value of very similar items.
Sellers seem to have very different ideas about the relative value of very similar items.
Blizzard

After multiple delays and some butt-covering enhancements to security procedures, Blizzard has finally launched Diablo III's real-money auction house in the Americas.

While players can't yet spend real money on commodities like gold and gems—a feature Blizzard says it is preparing to launch "as soon as possible"—top equipment for Level 60 characters is already drawing bids of $200 or more, less than 24 hours after the auction house first went up. The nascent market still seems to be struggling to determine the precise value for certain items, though. Buyout prices for the Demon Hunter's "Grim Hellion Crossbow of Death," for instance, range from $69 all the way up to $250, with asking prices having only a vague relationship to the crucial damage-per-second stat.

The centralized auction house is meant to replace gray-market websites that proliferated outside of Blizzard's control for previous Diablo games, a move the company says will help with "numerous customer-service and game-experience issues." As previously discussed, Blizzard takes a flat fee of $1 from the seller for each piece of equipment sold, and there is a 15 percent fee for transferring money from a Battle.net balance to a PayPal account.

European players will be able to spend real money on Diablo III items on Friday, June 15, Eurogamer reports, while players using currencies other than the US dollar in the Americas region will be able to use the service "in the near future," Blizzard says.

Channel Ars Technica