You cannot trade with other players in Diablo 4 right now while Blizzard fixes a dupe exploit. The problem of too much gold has already led to a completely destroyed economy in previous versions.
How long is trading disabled?
- Blizzard disabled trading between players on the night of August 14. So you cannot exchange items or gold right now.
- No specific duration has been mentioned. In the official blue post, it says: “For the time being.”
- The developers are currently working on fixing an exploit. The fix may already be included in the patch 1.1.2, which is likely to be released around 7 PM on August 15.
What’s the problem? It’s about duplicating gold. Some players have discovered an exploit that allows them to multiply their gold without much effort. This has led to items being traded for several billion.
“Normal” players generally cannot afford such sums or only with a lot of grinding. The best items on the market are therefore not realistically accessible to them. Trading is more limited than in Diablo 2, but it is still a part of the game.
Problems with gold dupes have existed before. In Diablo 2, the exploits were so severe that players eventually established rare items as new currency. Blizzard reacted too late back then, which now seems to be avoided.
The studio reminds that any account that uses such exploits will be punished.
Gold is also quite important to buy strong items from merchants:
“Can you fix the exploit from the occultist now?”
While there is at least some approval on Reddit, many users there respond rather cynically. They recall the absurd prices of the occultist and ask: please fix the exploit where I pay huge amounts and get nothing in return.
Other players wonder where trading in Diablo 4 is even relevant. They joke that certain combinations of the over 200 affixes on items must surely be strong enough to justify a few billion gold.
In Discord, trading is actually thriving. There, the gold exploit has apparently spread quickly, which is why Blizzard is now reacting a few days later. Even that is still too slow for some users.
Blizzard is currently having a tough time with the fans in Diablo 4 anyway. Even though the developers are making genuine efforts to rectify problems and improve the game, there are always setbacks that no one really understands:
Developers themselves play Diablo 4, face problems on the lowest difficulty: ‘That explains a lot’
