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Ask the MMOG Money Traders
Late yesterday, Sparter Inc. announced the Gamer2Gamer virtual currency trading platform. The goal: to provide a secure currency trading environment for players of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Rather than purchasing currency outright, the goal of the project is to cut out the middleman and (implicitly) the gold-farming consortiums that supply larger for-pay sites. We were contacted by a representative from the company before the release went out, looking to speak with the Slashdot community about the service. In his words, the folks at Gamer2Gamer "are devoted gamers themselves and are well aware that not everyone will like the idea -- but we think plenty of folks will like a world where Real Money Transfer is workable and unintrusive." And so, you get the chance today to put the hard questions to them. One question per comment, please, and we'll pass on the best of the lot to be answered as soon as possible. Update: 06/14 17:58 GMT by Z : Howzer points out that there is an extensive FAQ on the service, that you can use as a springboard for questions.
So you say you work out the middle man in this horrible scheme of capitalism. But I'm still concerned that the people who are farming right now at a severely reduced pay rate are doing so because they don't have the money to front for the operation and they have no choice but to remain a pawn. They make very little money and the real profits go to some American guy manipulating them all and paying for their accounts.
Tell me again how your service does not promote this middle man from acting like a player? How am I assured that my gold is not earned by some innocent kid who is doing this as a job to make money? How am I assured this isn't still some cog in a scheme to exploit foreign workers?
Disclaimer for the rest of Slashdot: I'm well aware of the situations where this may be the person's only means of income. I still would rather not support this system.
My work here is dung.
As someone who has sold gold in World of Warcraft before... I can assure you that there is a demand for these things from "regular" players...
Although the website linked to in this post (Sparta, right?) is full of scammers...
Why do you think this will eliminate the middle man? They will now just have a set of prices to beat and offer 30% cheaper then the other company.
...making it easier for kids to waste their youth, one MMOG at a time.
With the recent lawsuit against peons4hire.com, Blizzard appears intent on cracking down against the larger players in the business. How do you intend on avoiding legal issues?
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
Will your site will work out converting currencies in one game to currencies in another game--so that if I play Warcraft and Final Fantasy I can spend my gold for gil? If you are doing this, how are you going to keep these markets in check? Will it all just be normalized against the dollar?
Bottom line question is whether or not you'll control dumping of virtual currency or if you'll institute ranges. If you're not instituting limits or regulating in a Federal Reserve type manner, how are you going to protect against a single person running the market (buying all the gold and sitting on it while letting it drip out slowly at an extreme amount of USD)?
Will you post graphs of each MMO's currency so we can watch currencies like SWG's credit against Warcraft's Gold?
My work here is dung.
There is more to sell in MMOGs than just money. Do you plan on expanding to also sell rare items like a +10 Sword of Awesomeness? If not, why not?
Inevitably, when Governments hear about money being passed around, their first thought is how to tax it. MMOGs can take the position that their currency isn't real, and therefore shouldn't be taxed. However, being able to transfer virtual currency for real cash weakens that argument.
I personally don't want to play a game where I have to pay sales tax on buying items, or income tax for an in-game business, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Given this, do you see any foreseeable ways to keep taxes out of games?
Not a typewriter
How do you plan to deal with the litigation against you that will inevitably spring up from companies like Blizzard & Sony that state this violates TOS and restrict auctions/selling on eBay and everywhere else?
Will your servers be foreign based to avoid this?
My work here is dung.
Particularly what internet protocols are you using, or equivalently how are you accessing these banks electronically? As an example: are we talking Financial Information eXchange or something different?
Do you currently have a plan in place for when these "Real Money Transfers" become taxable income? Will you be supplying tax documentation for your customers, or will that be their sole responsibility?
If this does fly it could produce a method to invent and earn money by paying attention to the up-and-coming games and investing when they're undervalued or overvalued and additionally, their popularity. Unfortunately this will also prompt an age minimum and consumer taxes, but it would be interesting to see if it would even fly on a global level.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
My work here is dung.
I'm concerned that this platform is devoted to promoting activity that the largest game (WoW) explicitly forbids. How do you plan to handle the fact that the entire premise of your site is one that could get your "customers" banned from the games they play?
A lot of MMO content is less enjoyable because of gold farmers and others looking at playing the game for monetary gain rather than enjoyment. What measures, if any, will be used to make sure that the sellers are legitimately playing the game? If not, how is this service actually helping the gamers for whom gold selling is an inconvenience?
Will you be trading on games that specifically disallow RMT activities in their Terms of Service?
I think they are trying to fill in, where Ebay like companies have failed, and that's to allow one person to trade with another person (more personable), rather than having to deal with a company.
What they're saying is people should be able to affect game play out-of-band just because they don't have the time to commit to legitimately compete with other players. The end result? Legitimate players get tired of BS headshots, or in this case, artificially inflated prices that force others to spend even more time farming for the items they want. So, everyone loses.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"...we think plenty of folks will like a world where Real Money Transfer is workable and unintrusive"
It's well known that real money for game currency helps contribute to mudflation by providing volumes of game capital to players unable to achieve the same. Such dilution of the value of currency on a game thereby impacts every player of that game as costs go up but gained rewards by playing the game does not.
If you envision a world where Real Money Transfer is "unintrusive", how do you compensate for MUDflation? What steps do you intend to take to truly be unintrusive on other players?
More Twoson than Cupertino
Many MMOs explicitly state in their Terms of Service that buying and selling of in-game goods for real currency is prohibited. While Sparter does not seem to be directly violating the ToS in this regard, Sparter will likely be deriving commercial benefit from use of trademarks owned by the game publishers. Another area of possible legal liability is in enabling and encouraging players to circumvent their contracts with game companies (as with Blizzard and Vivendi's recent countersuit against the creator of WoWglider) -- this would apply to any game where trading in game items or currency using real currency is prohibited.
Can you please comment on how Sparter plans to protect itself from the inevitable lawsuits and C&D notices from game publishers?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
How do you sleep at night? /pillows stuffed with money, sheets of spun gold?
Sparter has an extensive FAQ which answers everything from how they make money (commission) to how they "guarantee" you get the "goods" (they stick your money in escrow until you say "got the gold!" from the seller)
So let's ask some questions not in the FAQ, eh?! Here's mine:
For such an incredibly simple service, you seem to have a hugely top-heavy management team, which means big running costs, which explains your exorbitant 10 percent commission. What's to stop me (or anyone) setting up a simpler, leaner service doing exactly the same thing and charging 5 percent?
Or, if that's too hard, try this one:
You claim you use (quoting from your site) "state-of-the-art technology to root out fraud". Since simple fraud -- I say I didn't get something that someone says they gave me in game -- can't be checked by you unless you have the keys to WoW or EQ2 or SWG (or whatever) what "state-of-the-art technology" would you be talking about?
Why would anyone play a game when you can buy the end credits rolling (why bother developing any content when you can pretend cash = 1337), why would anyone play a game where some can play in relative "god mode" to other players (if they spend enough cash)? It's because of SCUM like you that I will never play another mmorpg again. How many billions of dollars in long-term losses will the multiplayer on-line gaming industry rack up because of activity like rmt when people won't pay for monthly subscriptions to "compete" against plague infested servers of cheaters (not to mention the accelarated pace at which fresh economies become stale)? Do you feel good causing game companies and all their employees lost salaries and profits? Do you feel good ruining games for "devoted gamers like yourselves?" That's more than one question, but here's one answer: FUCK YOU!
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
How do you feel about breaking the EULA of some of these games and having possible law suits for providing a medium in which people are allowed to sell things that they (the player) legally do not own? I think you will find in almost any EULA for an MMORPG, that the company owns all of the data and not the player. Last time I checked, selling something that didn't belong to you was against the law.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
Where will you be getting the gold that you will be selling? Do you purchase your initial stock from players? Will the game companies themselves be giving you a cache of cash to turn into cash? How will you keep your supply going? If you need to replenish your stock by yourself, are you going to farm gold, or hire third parties to do it for you?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
How do you determine that the "seller", isn't a farmer just looking for another avenue to move his goods?
Rice computing pioneer Ken Kennedy dead at 61. He will be missed.
(I will use WoW as my example- but I don't play it, so I apologize if I get terms or numbers wrong).
I think this could solve the problems of gold selling. You have an in-game auction house where you can sell and buy gold for real money, using the credit card you have on the account. Blizzard would probably take a small cut of the money (say 5-10%). However, it would be set up so that the gold you sell will be taken off next month's bill, with the stipulation that you can reduce your bill to 0, but you can't reduce it past 0. People trying to make a profit would have to use another system (and since people aren't actually making money with this system, Blizzard can avoid alot of IRS madness).
This would pose a huge problem for dedicated gold sellers.
1. Since you can't earn more money than you are paying Blizzard anyway, you can't turn a profit using this system.
2. People trying to turn a profit will need to establish a secondary 'black market'
3. The black market would be less convinient than the legitimate one- you'd have to set up a meeting outside of the game entirely, just like gold sellers do now.
4. The black market is less trustworthy than Blizzard's market- your gold isn't guaranteed the way Blizzard's system would be.
5. Since anyone can sell gold easily, the competition in the legit market would be huge.
6. #3 and #4 means that the black market would have to sell gold at a fraction of the price of the legit market to sell gold at all- and #5 means the base price is low.
7. End result: Gold farming for massive profit is impossible. Gold farming for minor profit is really hard. Gold farming for for free WoW time is possible, and those with plenty of time will be able to.
I know some people object to gold buying because they believe that it's cheating. These people could be placed on server(s) that don't have the cash-gold auction house. Most people's objections to gold farmers, though, is that profit-seeking groups destroy fun by wrecking economies, camping mobs, hogging quest items, etc. Those groups will cease to exist once they can't turn a good profit. Everyone wins- people who object to the trade get their own server where there is no selling, and people who want to trade get servers where gold farming groups don't have a motive to disrupt anyone else. Oh, I guess the gold farmer's don't win, but that's sorta the point.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Are you planning on making option and futures contracts available? It would be interesting to be able to do things like strangles, collars and calendar spreads. And Forex! WoW against Everquest currencies! Schools don't teach finance anymore - maybe something like this could take its place.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Every MMO's ToS and EULA in the simplest form states that everything in game is property of the parent company. Therefore, you are inevitably selling Blizzard/Sony/Etc.'s assets and knowingly purchase stolen goods. Many people here have asked whether or not you're violating the license/agreement, but that answer is obvious; "Yes, you are." Their policy is clear and there has been many cases of these companies retaking their property. Since no one can stop you from making an attempt to legitimize this market - my question is; "when they ask you to stop, what kind of a response from your company can we expect to see?"
That's all I have to say about this.
I don't respond to AC's.
Keylogger.
Given that nearly everyone in this industry asks you to agree to some kind of EULA to get access to their servers, you must break promises to be in this business at all.
So why should we trust you? If you're willing to lie to them, how do we know you aren't lying to us, too?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Are you adding anything to the mix that will aid your customers (buyers and sellers) in mitigating the risks involved? Will games that prohibit this in their EULA be included in your service offering? Will you be using accounts in game to obfuscate the source and destination of the transactions? Will you be taking any pains, of any kind, to conceal the identity of your customers? If you do get served a lawful subpoena requesting your customer database, will you comply? If not, how do you intend to avoid it?
On it's face, this seems nice, but the Admiral Ackbar in me has something else to say on the matter...
Haha, ya, and Slashdotters choose not to get laid all the time too. How about I decide for myself how much risk I'm willing to take, in fact, in my experience I've been ripped off numerous times for DVD and CD transactions, but never, not once on a game transaction.
What makes you think this will change anything? IMHO, the currency traders will just use this system like the ones currently in place, only now they get to keep more of the money, and don't have to maintain their own website.
First off, let me say that I'm *not* against the buying and selling of in-game currency with real world funds. I think that Sony really hit a home run with the Station Exchange (their service where they actually serve as the same middle man that these guys are trying to become - except for the whole legality thing).
Since the early days of UO, people have complained that the kiddies that don't have to work get to play all day and all night, and those with jobs, families, etc, couldn't keep up. Now, the other side of the coin shows up, and those with jobs are able to afford to spend a little money to "keep up". If I can spend $25 bucks to buy a few gold or platinum, and negate the need to farm for money in game for several weeks, sign me up.
I do understand that some people are strongly against this, and in response I'd suggest that more game companies just build servers where this wasn't allowed. If they'd do like Sony did in Everquest 2, and set aside exchange servers and non-exchange servers, I feel like they'd not only resolve a long standing battle with those who are going to do this anyway, they'd also have a nice tidy new revenue stream. As I said, when EQ2 introduced the exchange service, I jumped at the chance to move to the "legalized" server. When iTunes released, I bought alot of MP3s; it only makes sense to legalize (and I realize that talking about the TOS/EULA of a game in legal terms is shaky ground, but I don't know how better to state it) something that a large contingent of your user base wants.
I don't have a specific question for the guys looking for free publicity, really. I'd personally much rather pay a premium for it directly from Blizzard, Turbine, etc.
Are you going to be clear to your customers that trading virtual money might get them banned from the MMO they are playing?
World of Warcraft's Terms of Service is pretty nasty. It basically reserves the right to ban any account they feel like without providing any reason. Your FAQ says that you realize that some game companies don't want players trading virtual goods while you think it is a gamer's right to be able to trade virtual itmes. I'm pretty sure that statement isn't going to save your customers from getting banned from WoW.
Also, how does your company feel about possibly ruining game experiences for others gamers? Many MMO companies design their game economy around the fact that players can only obtain money through the game mechanics, without any outside effects. If your company destroys the fun factor of a game by ruining the economy, how will you deal with the possible legal action coming from the companies that have a decimated user base?
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Genuine Sealand Hosting Services.
Ice Cream has no bones.
2) Does it disturb you that I'm wishing cancer on you right now? I'm wishing every employee of your company from the lowliest janitor to the CEO gets cancer and dies. Of cancer. In the ass. Does that disturb you at all? Because that's what I'm wishing for. Right now.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In the real world, inflation is caused by an increased supply of money, it's simple supply and demand, the government prints it, the banks loan out something like 20x their deposits and all the existing money in the economy is devalued an equivalent amount causing prices to increase.
If you are pumping money into the game economy, I'd expect commodities like items to start increasing in price.
Deleted
We were contacted by a representative from the company before the release went out, looking to speak with the Slashdot community about the service^w^wSlashvertise.
First question...
How is a user of your service able to determine if the gold they are buying has or has not been acquired through illegal means such as hacked accounts or corporate insider theft, and thus protect themselves from legal liability issues?
Second question...
In the event that government decides to tax such transactions, how could the service assure me that my personal information would not be used to further such taxation?
What in the HELL are you people talking about????
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
Is this a joke? Yes, it's obvious that Ebay isn't capable of serving a market that they are prohibited form serving. If Gamer2Gamer steps in and successfully serves the marketplace, where Ebay failed too, then what's your point, or are you just playing semantic games?
You make some very good points.
Learn how taxes actually work. The government isn't looking to tax online game transactions in virtual currency. They are looking to tax the transactions where somebody converts virtual game property into real money, and only the real money side.
This is not very different from the taxation on investments. As a general rule, when you buy an investment and it appreciates, the government doesn't tax you for the appreciation. They tax you when either the investment pays you dividends or interest (in cash), and when you sell it (again, for cash). They don't make you give them 28% of your shares each year.
Are you adequate?
Here's my question: I already have to deal with RMT spam on a constant basis inside the MMOGs that I play. Why are you making me look at the same thing on Slashdot?
Your premise is entirely wrong, therefor it's not really possible to answer your question in a way that will satisfy you.
The only part of your question that's relevent is this: Is everyone freely engaging in these transactions? If so, they must believe that they benefit from it. Can the worker quit and find another way to eek out a living? Can the employer fire him and hire someone else? Are you free to not play the MMOG in question? Are you free to not buy gold from this seller? Is the seller free to not sell gold from you? The alternatives may be less pleasent, but they are still alternatives.
By arbitrarily saying I'm well aware of the situations where this may be the person's only means of income. I still would rather not support this. You're setting up field such that no answer will satisfy you, and any transaction that involves Americans paying foriegners for unskilled labor is evil exploitation.
No one who thinks like you do can possibly be pleased. Why bother?
This is what happens when you take too many classes about 'social justice': Your head gets filled with confused thinking about victims, oppressors, capitilist pigs, poor exploited foreigners and the like.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Will you focus solely on trading currencies? It seems like this opens up other opportunities, such as virtual banking, virtual credit, and so forth. Will there be any trafficking in anything other than gold, such as characters, items, [virtual] labor, etc?
"Disclaimer for the rest of Slashdot: I'm well aware of the situations where this may be the person's only means of income. I still would rather not support this system." You set up a situation where the person MUST gold farm to have enough money to eat and you say you will NOT support the system, I would guess you would want no one else to support the system either. My god, is assuaging your guilt of success and a comfortable life really more important then someone having enough to eat? People like you disgust me. You cry out for the "rights of the workers" and yet you openly admit that you would take away the workers best option just so you would feel better.
How do you sleep at night?
How will Sparter handle customers who get banned? http://www.qj.net/WoW-gold-farmer-laments-on-Bliz
I suspect Sparter will have numerous buyers and sellers committed, will have funds in transfer and the next wave of bans will come through and leave them holding monies without WoW account connections. Convenient.
That or some of these game companies have an underground connection with Sparter to ferret out gold farmers/bots, profit from the farm/ban/re-buy account cycle or to share in the commissions. Regardless the whole business stinks and undermines the gaming experience as a whole.
I could not agree with you more. Consider that each old WOW server (with an established population of end-game players) suffers from hyperinflation (a result of infinite money from these characters) and is a closed system. Gold farming is a byproduct of a new/casual player attempting to break into an established server. New players want to buy high-levels item at an auction house to keep up with the established players.
Here lies Blizzard's great secret: if not for new servers being opened, WOW would be unpopular. Imagine if WOW ran one server: most new players would be forced to use vendor/crafted equipment and never afford the high auction house prices for goods. New and causal players would leave in droves.
I am on the road crew. This is my stop sign.
So how many fourms, newgroups and private e-mail accounts will you be spamming on a daily basis to promote this stuff?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Quit with the exploitation crap. EVERY company in business ANYWHERE in the world charges its customers more for its products and services than it pays down to its employees. The money created by the gap in-between goes into operating the business, doing marketing, and yes, into the pockets of the operators who earn that benefit from having successfully created the business in the first place.
If you are going to argue exploitation in the case of gold farming companies, you had better start arguing exploitation in the case of every single company in existence. The net result, of course, would firmly label you as a communist. Is that the point you want to be making? If so, just come out and say it. If not, quit with the exploitation crap.
How bout my virtual cash goes into a 401k plan :)
My feeling is that too many people would feel the same and just like auction house prices, you'd settle into a price that is, on average, profitable for the person selling and a good deal for the person buying.
What you just described is called a market. Amazingly, this is exactly what we want. By forcing the gold sellers to compete against the general market, we reduce their profits (and therefore the motivation they have to screw up the game).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
If Blizzard lets you play their game for money, they've just established time online as having monentary value, making them potentially liable for server crashes and so on.
Letting you purchase gold from them is no different than charging you to play in the first place.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Atleast in FFXI there are problems with this to start off, now as a player of the game I already know how useless SquareEnix is at enforcing this rule, but those who "openly" promote within the game they are $elling get banned rather quickly.
So my question is how are you going to get around these provisions that exist within the MMO EULAs and explicitly require there players to not engage in these actions?
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/rule/index.html
Article 3: Prohibited Activities and Indemnification
3.1 Prohibited Activities.
# Any activities consisting of selling, offering to sell, purchasing, agreeing to purchase, exchanging, or agreeing to exchange "gil" (or any other currency that may be used in the Game from time to time), characters, or Game items for value (including, but not limited to, any payment in kind and any payment in any currency recognized as legal tender in any country, state, territory or other jurisdiction anywhere in the world) through any means or venue, including, without limitation, Internet auctions or other online exchanges;
and yes... i know how much Slashdot hates EULA's too!
Some servers will have the money-for-gold option, others won't. What would be interesting is seeing if the servers without the money-for-gold Auction House have bigger problems...
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Everyone is paying $15 a month already, so everyone has incentive to sell up to $15 worth of gold a month. This means no one person has incentive to sell huge amounts, but everyone has incentive to sell a little.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
But is it more cost effective to get free play time or sell the currency to others? If it takes 10,000 Altarian dollars/month, but I can make $20 selling those to another player, it's always worth taking the $20 and paying my subscription with that. The auction system has the advantage of being self-correcting (but the disadvantage that it doesn't take money out of the system).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
What if a database error deletes your character? Does your character not have known economic value? I think it's pretty silly of you to imply that losing character data is okay now but not okay if there happens to be a few more bits set because someone bought gold from Blizzard. Or that some of the extras you can buy now from Blizzard (primarily pets) which Blizzard sells have no economic value, but that gold would if Blizzard sold it.
Basically, if Blizzard is only selling you a service now, then I'm sure that Blizzard would only charge you for the 'service' of delivering you gold. Since they are really buying from another player anyway (the premise of my whole auction house system) there's probably a way of doing that even you would accept.
If you're still confused, just think of how the bits that say 'Player seebs has a valid account he paid money for' are almost as likely to be screwed up as 'Player seebs has 1,000 gold he paid money for'. You might also want to consider that such transactions will be logged (and backups made), and therefore fixable if something does go wrong.
If you really think that all you are paying for now is the ability to log in sometimes, but Blizzard can do whatever they want with the data, why should that change just because you paid Blizzard a few bucks to alter some of their bits once? I'm sure whatever you agree to when you buy gold will cover the exceedingly improbable and bizarre events that you describe.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I am just wondering how you chose the value of 10% for the sellers commission. Not only does this leave lots of room for new entrants to undercut you on price, but it is significantly higher than standard trading commissions found in both online & offline markets.
Boy, you're really stretching it there.
:)
The fact is, there's a difference between selling someone a thing and a service, and the law has not historically been very supportive of attempts to say things like "I didn't sell him gold, I sold him the service of giving him gold". It's bull and everyone knows it.
BTW, the custom pets that you get for special things, like attending blizzcon, or having a collector's edition? You can regain them if they get lost or destroyed. That's because they have value.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
- How to I opt out of all your members spam?
- What kind of jerk ruins other people's hobbies? Do you go to golf courses, violate the rules of the greens, screw up the course to make a buck, and then say you're adding a service?
I don't want you there, my guild doesn't want you there, Blizzard doesn't want you around. PS. I just want to let you know here, formally I want to opt out of ever seeing any spam from your members, if you fail to honor this request I will contact the BBB in your state. (You laugh but I've actually done this with peons4hire, I sent them a nice opt-out e-mail, and then reported each spam after that day to the florida BBB)Yeah, what he said. Flamebait? Someone with mod points surely has sand in their vagina.
To be more serious to the point. I have been considering to buy virtual gold but did not because I could risk into an account ban. The reason? very simple. I feel f*cked by Blizzard. I have had 3 bugs until now loosing over 900 gold in the beginning of my playtime. I have been unable to get on their servers for over 2 weeks and a half. This on different computers and connections; I was unable to contact them since a change of e-mail address requires you to have your old one handy, not easy when your domain is squatted.
I have been annoyed because of the bad intervention of GameMasters, because they can NEVER do something. Had plenty of friends leaving the world of warcraft because of this; still, I think it's also more of a social thing in the game. I do got "online" friends less in the form of MSN but more in the form of playtime whenever I need to vent for a few hours after some good programming time...
Does it cut it, the gametime towards the gold that gets earned? I think not so, sure not if the customers get screwed royally with bugs they do not find themself accountable for. I got screenshots, my forum message got scrapped in all confidence
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Seriously though, how does it feel to make money solely by scamming stupid people?
What is next ? Ask viagra trader about most promising penny stocks ?
How would you deal with MMORG companies sending trusted associates to your site as sting operations? Set up a deal and then ban somebody's character after it takes place.
If the banning is not obviously connected to the deal immediately, how would anybody know? Even if you did, all you need to create an account is an email address and a phone number (as far as I can tell from the FAQ), and it's easy to replicate those.
The G2G part of this makes it more dangerous for the user. If I buy gold from a company, they do have an interest in keeping me coming back for more, so they will try to protect my identity. If I buy it from an individual, I don't have that assurance.
So why, assuming I wanted to cheat, would I feel anywhere near safe in using your service?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're establishing trading system for what is essentially a black market. The goods you're selling aren't legal property, and the users have almost no recourse against fraud. Any attempt to bring issues into real courts would identify the the people involved to the game companies, and both perpetrator and victim would have their virtual wealth disappear.
Since you're so dependent on secrecy, how do you expect to protect yourselves against vigilantes who would engage in real-life griefing of those who damage in-game economies?
And, as you are trying to legitimize what is against the terms of service of nearly every game out there, how do you possibly hope to avoid the lawsuits if you become successful? Being a third party didn't help the file sharing companies, and you're actively helping users violate their service agreement.
Here's to hoping the lawsuit(s) flow in for this service and any other game gold farming organization. Taking something and calling it something else, doesn't change what it is at the core. People that say that "can't compete" because they don't have ennough time to play, need to take their heads out of their own @#$ and see it for what it really is. Supporting something that causes inflation in the game for everybody isn't very smart...
And you couldn't regain gold if a database error killed it? Somehow the gold bits would have less protection than the fuzzy-wuzzy little pets? Like Blizzard isn't tracking what people do with their gold? Somehow you are under the impression that the gold bits could just 'magically disapear' and that there would be no records, backups, or traces.
I still go with my original assumption that you don't know what you're talking about. You somehow think that the bits that mean 'gold' are more likely to be destroyed than the bits that say 'pet' or the bits that say 'account', and harder to recover. You even admit that the pets have value, but somehow the pets are okay while selling gold wouldn't be. Silly seebs- even you accept that Blizzard can sell bits, and now you're saying that they can sell some bits but not others? Like there is some sort of difference between selling someone a virtual pet and selling them virtual money? The only difference you propose is that you can 'regain' them, but it's trivial to do that with virtual money as well, you just don't seem to realize this.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
How long do you predict that MMO gold selling will remain possible? Do you foresee any gaming companies putting a definitive end to these practices?
Waiting for Warhammer Online.
Clearly we have a problem with gold sellers now, and the gold sellers have lots of cash (and gold). Let me draw you an illustration, with arbitrary numbers:
Currently the gold re-sellers sell 100 gold for $1. The pay individuals $1 for 200 gold (the need to make a profit). However, anyone with brains would auction off his first 2000 gold they are selling for $15 at the Auction house- that way he both makes more than he would selling it to the gold sellers, and undercuts them at the same time.
If there is truely a lack of supply, then the price of gold in the Auction House will increase until the demand = supply (see: Econ 101). However, it's both better for sellers (they get more money) and better for buyers (they can't get ripped off) to use the official auction house as opposed to the 'black market' of the gold re-sellers. Therefore, the gold resellers will need to sell their gold for less than the AH price (otherwise no one would pay for it) AND buy their gold for less than that (otherwise they can't turn a profit). If it's always better to sell at the AH than to the re-sellers, the gold re-sellers market will crumble.
A market never 'fails' due to lack of supply. I think it's pretty clear that a legal market for gold trades would severly hurt (possibly even destroy) the illegal one. Most people complain about gold sellers because their profit drive is destroying parts of the game. By hurting the illegal market (and capping the profit possible from the legal one) there would be much less motivation for gold sellers to act that way.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
The real question then is: How does this impact the $Altairian-for-cash trade? Does this system lower the value of the Altairian Dollar (Or whatever Eve's Currency is)? If so, by how much?
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
As long as there's a black market for goods- in this case, gold in video games- you'll have people using, profiting & exploiting from it. This is nothing new, has been around forever & will continue until the end of time. We have the right to not use said services or purchase ill-gotten goods. Regardless, there'll always be people willing to pay for a $10 hooker, pirated movie dvd's, illegal drugs, that knockoff Prada bag or "blood diamonds" just to show someone how much you love them (while someone might've died in a mine somewhere during it's discovery).
It's basic capitalism: as long as people see value in their purchase, they'll be a part of it &, in this case, people figure out how much their time is worth & if it's greater than what they're paying for their gold purchases, they're vindicated in their eyes (& who's to tell them they're wrong)!!!
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Mahatma Ghandi
I'd like to make a complaint: why are all the recent Slashdot Interviews about online gaming exclusively? I believe there are many Slashdot readers who are not partciularly interested in such things. The Slashdot FAQ specifically says:
Now how much of a variety was the latest series of interviews related to online games? I'm pretty sure there are many open source developers, bloggers of various kinds and other prominent figures, who would love to be interviewed, but Slashdot only gives games. I'm not much of a gamer, and due to the fact I'm running Linux and have an old Nvidia (a.k.a "Hang-vidia") card, I cannot really play too many high-end games. And yet, I am reading Slashdot.
We have two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. http://www.shlomifish.org/
You no hungry for gold! You hungry for HOOOOOOOT POCKETS!
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
The original poster's system has Blizzard charging a commission on trades, so yes, they would be providing a service. However, the OP should note that by debiting/crediting the accounts of the parties involved, Blizzard would be acknowledging the value of the thing it brokered the transaction for.
I would imagine it would be fairly trivial to add a personal balance sheet to the code for each character with a retained earnings figure to balance the character's assets (including purchased skills, etc). A server crash would still negate the un-realized earnings and expenditures during the period since the last back-up, they could just write that risk of loss into the service contract. It would be like a personal injury waiver you sign to drive a go-kart.
However, it would be set up so that the gold you sell will be taken off next month's bill, with the stipulation that you can reduce your bill to 0, but you can't reduce it past 0.
I strongly doubt Blizzard will sanction any system that deprives them of their regular monthly income from player subscriptions. Not to mention one that will make it completely impossible to forecast their future income and cash flow.
Speculation
Likely End result
What most casual players will do in that situation, is quit. I think this is a bad idea.
Most lawsuits would be a waste of time, as these scum are just fronts for the farmers, who would be difficult to implicate in a lawsuit. The farmers wouldn't stop, they'd just move to the next fence. They do have complete jurisdiction on their servers though, and it seems that's the best place to exact justice via mass bannings. Still, all the banning in the world won't stop the black market, it seems an EvE style solution of creating a legitimate market is a better way to reduce the black market economy, if not eliminate it entirely.
If you are going to argue exploitation in the case of gold farming companies, you had better start arguing exploitation in the case of every single company in existence.
If the controllers of company sell the goods created by their employees for significantly higher than it cost to produce and distribute them, that's exploitive. That's like the definition of exploitive. A middleman sees the fact that there are poor people who will do shit jobs for almost no money, and exploits this situation to buy very cheap goods or services from them. He then sells those goods/services for a reasonably high price, and even though the profit generated is far more than his expenses and a fair compensation for his labor as a middleman, he pockets it all rather than passing some of the profit on to those who produced the good.
People or institutions who exploit the fact that others are in a weaker position than them, in order to rip those people off are, as you said, very common, so common that they even rip off people like you and me.
The net result, of course, would firmly label you as a communist.
Call me whatever you like. If you depend on loaded labels to avoid real debate, however, I'm not sure you have much more to contribute to the discussion.