I don't personally understand this criticism. Basically every other petsite ever made has had an open marketplace, and I can't think of a single one that people suggested removing entirely in favor of auctions as a way to solve any sort of issues with the games economy. If the only reason there are any good deals out there or items worth selling is that not enough people want to wrestle with the auction house, that is an artificial "solution" to a problem whose root cause is the poorly economy.

I also want to say, unrelated to Silverbolt's post, I think people saying to just not take auctions personally as a means of advice are missing the point a bit. Yes I think if a game is upsetting you so much you should self regulate and not use it or the feature that frustrates you so much, but that isn't the actual problem. The problem is the complete and total lack of community on pixpets, because of the mechanics that cause every user to be directly at odds with each other. I know there are small community forum games/events/contests as well as a discord server. But those are supplemental and not core mechanics of the site. Meaning there is a large chunk of the userbase who likely doesn't participate in those, and whose only interaction with others on the site is through the auction house or MAYBE the sales forum. There's no working together or even just purely positive transnational interactions besides playing with each others pixpets. That quickly leads to players being extremely jaded towards each other due to almost every experience being negative and competitive.

What adds to that is that it isn't fair competition either. Most people can't afford giant price hikes. Most people can save for a new house for weeks and just not be online when they get restocked and be stuck in their small house for longer. Most people can't spend a ton on potions and SPC to get all the event items, or rare decor. Most people can't even use a lot of decor in their homes because they're stuck in the smaller ones. There is literally a class disparity on the website, which is almost hilarious but also just not fun. Personally I have a lot of money and a big house and I'm just bored. Its not really fun for me to outbid people wildly knowing they have no hope of spending as much as I can. Its also not fun knowing how many rich players are out there lowballing all their auctions despite being able to pay significantly more than they do. Its also not fun having ADHD and just forgetting to bid for 10 and a half minutes and miss an auction I spent an hour trying to babysit.