Blizzard Has Banked $26 Million From WoW Authenticators

[theultimateend]

It's chicken feed compared to the subscription fee.

From the 800k subscribers they'll rake in about $140 million.

800k? What are you talking about? They have 10 million subscribers.

Those are basically the same number.*

*I went to a poor public school.

And who lets it all happen? Blizzard. How many gold farmers have they actually caught? According to their timeline, three.

From June 2006 [http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/06/7033.ars]:
"In keeping with Blizzard's aggressive stance against cheating in World of Warcraft, we banned over 30,000 accounts in the month of May, and with that removed well over 30 million gold from the economy across all realms. The banned accounts were taking part in activities that violate the game's Terms of Use, including using third-party programs to farm gold and items, which severely impacts the economy of a realm and the overall game enjoyment for all players."

So you were off by about 29997. And that was...five and a half years ago.

Christ man, I googled "Blizzard ban gold farmers" and the VERY FIRST HIT has the title "Blizzard bans 30000 World of Warcraft accounts"

*Same Joke*

@OP I have an authenticator, then I got an Iphone and put it on that instead. It's very handy and they've streamlined it to not be a nuisance.

 

[faefrost]

Wow! While normally I would sit stunned at the scale of the buy in for authenticators, I do have to also sit stunned at what seems to be passing for game related journalism these days. I really do expect better of the Escapist.

Blizzard does not "make" $26 million off of the authenticators. They have long maintained that they sell the authenticators pretty much at cost (digikey license, digikey+device+US shipping and handling = ~$6). Simply because making the devices widely available saves them far more in support costs.

So Digikey has made $26 million for it's services to Blizzard and World of Warcraft. (And is probably well on their way to making a similar amount off of SWTOR).

The Authenticators and Authenticator systems are a business "Pass Through" cost. Not a revenue or profit stream. I hate to seem nasty about this. This is a very common mistake or misunderstanding among the player/customer base or the general retail population. Somewhere there is a disconnect that "not every dollar you give to a company is profit" is lost. But I do expect better of a headlined reporter at a large professional gaming site. If you are writing about business elements of a game, such as revenue, subscriptions, profits, development costs etc, then you must be capable of understanding what is going on, what it all is, and take the time to communicate it to your readers to try and bridge that disconnect, rather than perpetuate it and make it worse.