Gold sellers do introduce new gold into the economy when the hacked gold goes to the buyer the hacked player gets their gold/items restored. The only way it wouldn't is if they are able to track down the gold and take it away from the person who bought it.

Uh, Noyou, in some cases Blizzard DOES remove the gold from the person who bought it.

You buy an obscenely large amount of gold (say 20,000g) and get caught, and watch Blizzard take it away.

I don't believe this is in any way going to turn into a situation that equates to Blizzard selling in-game currency. Lets define two parties:

Buyer - a player that might potentially purchase the pet from another player in-game, either directly or through the auction house.

Seller - a player trying to sell the pet once they obtain one, either by purchasing or getting one as a gift.

Supply will be infinite, and the barrier to entry is very low. Demand will be low because it will be stupid easy to obtain the pet, so everybody who wants one will probably get one quickly either by buying it themselves or getting them as gifts. The value on the auction house will end up being very low because the time it takes to make a significant amount of in-game gold is more valuable than the $10 the pet costs.

Essentially, if I'm a seller, I need to make a pretty large amount of gold to justify spending my $10 of real money. Probably well over 1000 gold. As a buyer, my time is valuable to me, so I would rather just spend 10 bucks and not waste the time it's going to take farming the gold. That simple fact will create a situation in which the seller will want a big chunk of gold for giving up real currency, but the buyer won't pay it because the time it takes to make that gold outweighs the value of just dropping 10 bucks real quick.

Additionally, if anybody is worried about people using the cubs as a legitimate exchange medium for buying gold from gold farmers, I don't think having to spend an additional $10 on the pet will be attractive, and the gold sellers aren't going to give you a price break just to help you save risk.

To summarize, the rules of supply and demand, and the real money component required to obtain the cub will ultimately remove any possibility of using it for meaningful in-game profit.

The thing about this is that it's actually quite clever because it allows for gold buying but not gold selling. Gold sellers hack accounts and steal things because they can turn gold into cash. This doesn't do that, you can't convert the pet back into cash. It also doesn't introduce inflation the way that directly buying gold would do and is inherently limited by the market for the pet. Essentially it allows people to buy gold with pretty much zero consequences and within the scope of the game. Not too bad really.

@Drakkenfyre

Obscene amount of gold huh ? like the 40,000+ gold for the "Vial of the Sands" in your nearest AH, if u ask me that's where the gold selling enterprise should be heading to.