Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

It’s pretty widely known that eBay has banned “virtual items” from its site recently. I have been known to sell used games on eBay from time to time. Today, I decided to sell my old Diablo game with its Hellfire expansion pack. Naturally, I was pretty surprised when I got an error message when I tried to submit the listing.

Attention Seller! It appears you are offering virtual game items (gaming accounts, currency, leveling, etc). These items are not permitted in the eBay Marketplace as a stand-alone product or as a bonus item. Please revise your listing by removing the non-permitted items. {e12441-217796x}

I wasn’t really sure what was happening here, so I looked over the listing and took out anything that I thought might trip an over-sensitive bot, but to no avail. So, I contacted Live Help. They lied to me, then hung up on me. What a delight they were to work with.

The rep pointed out that eBay is aware of the issue and are working on it, and other members are getting the error as well. She suggested I create a new listing and copy the information over to get around the bug. I did so and got the same message. She had a look at what I was doing and told me that this item is not allowed on eBay. When I asked why, she said it was because of the context of the game. The context? I asked. Fantasy role-playing? Nope. She said it’s because this is a violent game.

Pause for effect.

Diablo is a violent game? No sense pursuing that, yes, it is rated M. I asked her if eBay had banned M-rated games, and she said yes, they’re not allowed on eBay. I did a quick search and pointed out to her that there are 118 copies of GTA: San Andreas on eBay, and that’s M-rated. I continued giving examples of other M-rated game that have hundreds or thousands of copies listed right now on eBay like Resident Evil. Right before I could point out how many copies of this actual game are currently listed, she disconnected me. I guess I hurt her feelings.

So, for the time being, eBay’s got a serious bug going on. I’ve seen reports on eBay’s forums of coin collectors trying to sell coins on eBay and not being able to use the word “coin” in their listing because it trips the bot. Same goes for the word “token.” And in the end, even that makes more sense than my Diablo listing not working, but what really jabs me in the eyesocket with a rusty pipe wrench is the complete ignorance of eBay’s support person. What a fantastic day.