NBA 2K25's Auction House is back, but at what cost?

We rejoiced at the news that NBA 2K25 would bring back the Auction House for MyTEAM. But now that the game is in our hands, we're learning you can't always go home again. I used the Charlotte Hornets in Play Now Online and found a play I loved so much I've made it my playbook in MyTEAM.

In the old days of the auction block, I would have simply found it on sale and placed my bid. This time I placed my bid, won the card, and was ready to equip it. Then I learned that the Auction House "reviews' all transactions. There was a hold on the card until 2K properly reviewed the transaction. The simple act of buying and equipping a playbook took me 30 minutes. Imagine if I had a busy day and only had 30 minutes to play?

Madden 25 also places restrictions on the prices you can sell your cards for. The irony here is that these companies created the economy that people are trying to game. I didn't want to be involved in gacha mechanics or a mild form of money laundering, but here we are.

The NBA 2K community is abuzz today talking about this post on Twitter:

Let me clarify that I don't have access to everybody's transactions as 2K does. I don't know all the ins and outs of this man's account, but I know it is a major talking point. On the surface, I see why 2K would flag the transaction. Paying 150,000 MT for an emerald card looks suspicious.

But part of how people game the market is figuring out which cards are about to rise and fall in value. 2K has gone on record saying they don't believe playing the game like a stock market is bad, and that they don't plan to punish it. I suspect this process is automated, and AI teaches us every day that it's not quite as smart as we've been led to believe.

One of the fundamental rules of any market is that a commodity's worth is what somebody is willing to pay for it. The Emerald Mike Brown card in question isn't worth 200 MT to me. I set and forget my coach until I pull one I like better from the thousands of packs I'll open this year.

Thanks to the multimillion dollar economy of NBA 2K, anyone engaging with MyTEAM is trapped in this loop. You can enjoy the game for a price. Unfortunately part of that price is 2K's right to have a bot that doesn't understand economics send you to the game's shadow realm for trying to complete a collection.