Blizzard Makes $500,000 an Hour with a Few New Bits of Code

See that thing up on the right there? It's called a "Celestial Steed" and that little see-thru horse made Blizzard $2M in four hours yesterday.

I assumed this had to have been some sort of experiment to prove just how much influence the company has over its players and their wallets, an experiment which produced results that probably surprised even them. The Steed costs $25 in REAL LIFE MONEY, which is literally a full $10 more than what the actual original game costs at this point.

So what does it do exactly? For $25, it's got to make you the baddest motherf-er in the kingdom right? It probably shoots lightning out of its eyes and can create black holes with its mind, yeah?

Nope.

The Celestial Steed does nothing other than what you see here. You ride it around, as fast as your riding skill can take you, and it has NO special powers other than looking kind of cool, and letting all other players know you spent $25 worth of real life money for it.

I've always been firmly in the camp that virtual items should never be paid for in actual cash, as I think it taints the game and makes it lose a sense of accomplishment when anyone can just buy their way to success. But when something that probably two no more than two days to design, program and upload is selling at a pace of $500,000 an hour, how can I argue against it to Blizzard from a business standpoint? They'd be idiots NOT to keep making stuff like this.

So all you WoW-ers out there, enjoy your new ghost horse, may you get the full $25 worth of fun out of it.

Read more of Paul Tassi's work at http://trueslant.com/tassi/