Diablo III Developer Jay Wilson,”I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to make money.”

There can be little doubt that Activision Blizzard has made a great deal of money over the last day or so in the wake of Diablo III’s launch after a twelve year break in the series. While it might not have been an entirely happy reunion for many fans with Diablo III – which requires a constant online connection to Blizzards Battle,net – plagued by server errors that prevented potentially thousands of players from enjoying it, the sheer numbers involved speak volumes to how successful the game has been. Admittedly a great number of fans aren’t entirely happy and are expressing that loudly on the internet, but that fan rage should die down in a week or so. Even if many gamers still aren’t happy they will have already contributed to the 3.5 million sales that analysts earlier in  May predicted Diablo III would make in it’s first month. It’ll certainly be interesting to see the first day figures that Blizzard are bound to release shortly.

But for all the money Blizzard will had made on launch, it’s sure to be dwarfed by the potential money that it’ll make in Diablo III’s in-game auction houses, where players will be able to buy and sell in game weapons and loot for real currency – with Blizzard taking a cut of those transactions. With the thousands of fans that will no doubt soon be using Diablo III’s auction houses it seems like a licence to make money. But speaking to gamasutra Diablo III designer Jay Wilson has explained that the creation of the real money auction houses in Diablo III was actually motivated by design, saying,” It came from the design department.” He went onto defend the feature from critics saying,  “So here’s one of the things that I will say — that no one in forums will believe me — but we never make business decisions outside of the game development team. We always make them based on what we think is right for the game.”

While he admits that Blizzard clearly want to get a return on the service, he claimed there would be benefits for Blizzard fans in the future as those resources would be used to make the gaming experience a better one.  “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to make money,” said Wilson. “ I think it’s a bad thing to want to make money off things that are not a good service or product for your customer, and that’s our inherent belief, is that it’s okay to make money on a service we provide for our customers that we think is a good service worth paying for.” Just how much that money will really translate into a better Battle.net experience remains to be seen, but it’s a good thing Jay Wilson doesn’t think it’s a bad thing to make money. Blizzard will have made a ton in the last 24 hrs, and it looks set to make a great deal more in the future.

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