Former Xbox boss Don Mattrick once pushed for a real-money auction house in Halo 4

Dan Callan, a mission designer on Halo 4 who was recently laid off from Bungie, shared a story on Bluesky about demoing the game for then-Xbox boss Don Mattrick — and the exec's baffling suggestion that followed.

Callan was showing off the Mantis mech when Mattrick asked the room if anyone had played Diablo 3, then proposed adding a real-money auction house to Halo 4 for campaign mech skins, modeled on Blizzard's infamously disastrous experiment. The game was already 90 percent done at the time. According to Callan, every person in the room played along as if it were a brilliant idea while privately recognizing it as a disaster — Diablo 3's real-money auction house had already torched the game's reputation and was widely despised by players. Halo 4 launched in 2012 without any such feature, and Mattrick left Microsoft and Xbox in 2013. Callan closed his post bluntly: "So yeah game execs remain stupid detached money grubbing idiots" — and then noted that the auction house pitch wasn't even the dumbest thing said that day.

Mattrick was the public face of Xbox during the Xbox One reveal in 2013, a moment notorious for its tone-deaf "TV TV TV" messaging and always-online requirements that sparked a massive backlash. His departure that same year brought Phil Spencer in to rebuild the brand's reputation. The Diablo 3 auction house, which Mattrick apparently admired enough to want replicated, was shut down by Blizzard in 2014 after being widely blamed for gutting the game's loot-driven economy.

Callan's anecdote is surfacing now amid the fallout from Microsoft's latest Xbox restructuring, which saw 3,200 workers laid off and five studios — including Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Undead Labs, and Ninja Theory — either spun off or transferred to new ownership. Kotaku frames the story as part of a broader pattern of gaming executives being dangerously disconnected from their own products and audiences. Halo Studios, meanwhile, is preparing to launch Halo: Campaign Evolved later this month.