Square and Blizzard Drop The Banhammer

Gamespot has the news that Square has banned some 2000 accounts from FFXI, and Eurogamer reports that Blizzard has banned 59,000 accounts from World of Warcraft. The bans come as game publishers continue to attempt to crack down on Real Money Traders in their titles. From the FFXI article: "The news follows Square Enix's crackdown of 250 accounts in June over money-farming and real-money trading, which is the practice of selling in-game currency for cash in the real world. Concerns over real-money trading prompted the Japanese government--particularly worried about large-scale money-mining operations in video games--to launch its own investigation last week."

Comments

Wrong Headline

[Drogo007]

Should be something like: Game companies expect revenue increase as banned gold farmers buy new accounts...

Same Crap, Different Day

Re:Wrong Headline

[KDR_11k]

Or have the foot of God come down from the heavens and squash the farmers to a fart sound, show the farmers "and now, for something completely different..." and put them on a farm where all they can do is farm vegetables with no connection to the outside world.

Good Job!

[BigNumber]

I would like to congratulate the Japanese government for solving all of its countries other problems. I mean, they must have solved everthing else if this is somehow now a priority to them, right?

The Banhammer

[Brothernone]

good thing a heavy chunck of banination hardware like that stays in hammer space untill they whip it out.

Gear Gap

[SuperKendall]

Between the growing gear gap, and increasing price of gold...

I think a lot of politications would do pretty well in November running on a platform to eliminate the "Gear Gap".

Re:Lesson to be learned

[backwardMechanic]

thousands of bald programmers in darkened rooms pulling out their hair

If they're bald, what hair are they pulling on? Ewww.