If Diablo III players had forgotten Blizzard will be pulling the plug on its Diablo III gold and real-money auction houses tomorrow, and from June 24th 2014 they will be closing down forever.
Back in March Blizzard disabled the ability to Bid, Buyout, and list new auctions in the gold and real-money auction houses. However the Diablo III auction house access window has remained available.
The removal of this will be the final stage of the Diablo III auction house closure and items and gold in the backlog will be removed permanently from the game after June 24, 2014 says Blizzard. Back in March Blizzard explained :
“All active auctions will expire as normal following the shutdown of the gold and real-money auction houses on Tuesday, March 18th”-“Once the shutdown is complete, items will either be delivered to the current highest bidder or returned to the seller, appearing in each player’s Completed tab. Unclaimed gold will also appear in the Completed tab. Players will be able to claim gold and items and from this tab until June 24, 2014.”
The reason why Blizzard shut down the Diablo III auction house was explained back last year :
“When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades,”
“But as we’ve mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the Diablo III auction house system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo’s core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot,”
“With that in mind, we want to let everyone know that we’ve decided to remove the gold and real-money auction house system from Diablo III.”
For more information on the Diablo III auction house closure jump over to the Blizzard website for details.
Source: Blizzard