Using Money As Incentive For Competition On Consoles?

MTV's Multiplayer blog reports on a company about to start offering a service that will allow players to compete in matches and tournaments over their PS2, PS3, or Xbox 360 with real money as a prize. Doing so will, of course, require entry fees, but the contests are set up and opted into by the players themselves. Quoting: "To prevent cheating, the company has access to the game data and promises a knowledgeable in-house customer support team. There's also a reputation and feedback system, which Levy compared to eBay, that will allow gamers to make informed decisions about who they're playing against. ... [Company co-founder Billy Levy] ultimately thinks World Gaming will open up the field for gamers who want to make money from games but can't make it to live competitions due to the expense or having to take time off from work or school.

Comments

What's going to kill this first?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's going to kill this idea first? Laws on gambling? Tax revenue at the state or federal level?

Not a good idea. Stick to prizes.

Re:What's going to kill this first?

[Fluffeh]

I dare say none of those three.

It's not gambling - unless they try to add gambling on outcomes by non participants, which I think would be very unlikely, and the article gave no mention of this.

Tax revenue could possibly do it, but given the steady flow of money into the events through players, they should be able to keep local taxes paid if needed.

Federal Revenue, possibly but also unlikely, see above.

If you ask me, what's going to kill this is getting people to play for real money.

Thnk about the following:
Would I pay to play the same games that I can play for free?
Would the average games who plays too much really have the cash/incentive to whip out a credit card and play the same stuff in a competition?

Personally, I wish em luck, but just can't see this sustaining itself for too long at all.

I can't see them stopping cheating.

[GrpA]

People have been trying to stop cheats for years. It's damn annoying on a MP game when you keep getting headshot through a mountain, by a pistol every few minutes.

And those cheats aren't even inspired by money - just their own motivation to be assholes.

So put real money into it and watch what happens... The cheating will go hightech no matter what they do.

Think "Dogfight" in William Gibson's "Burning Chrome" Anthology.

Someone will always find a way to cheat, and who want to put up cash to let the h4x0r2 screw up your game and take it?

GrpA.

Re:I can't see them stopping cheating.

[Catil]

Agreed. Feeling cheated in various online FPS games, I wrote some cheats myself for research purposes to see how hard it really was and if it was even worth my time playing those games competitive in an online gaming league.
Although that was several years ago and the game and anti-cheat programs have been updated many many times, the majority of my old cheats will still work while some of them would need a simple adjustment of two lines of code to make them work again. That's because I didn't even bother breaking any anti-cheat. I simply caught hashes of the textures used on other players on OpenGL and D3D level, determined where on the screen they were, and was able to make aimbots that even compensated my ping and worked with non-direct hit weapons like rocket launchers by anticipating the movement of other players. I submitted them to two anti-cheat teams but unlike catching the particular cheats I submitted by looking up it's memory signature, which could even be circumvented by a simple byte-hack, there was nothing they could do.
One of my cheats, for Unreal Tournament 1, somehow got leaked by the AC team to a private cheater forum and is probably in use until today. When I still played the game some years ago, I set up a server with a custom map made by me, where I used the player textures that the cheat identifies on some pillars in the map. During the two weeks the server was running, I saw at least four people that seemed to have a great aim but somehow often shooted at the pillars too.

Those cheats can even be done on a driver level, making it almost impossible to catch by anti-cheat methods, unless all API developers, graphics card manufactors, driver coders and Microsoft would work together on it without screwing it up at any of the many possible points that could create a hole. Won't happen anytime soon, I guess.
You might want to say that TFA is about consoles, but modern consoles are just computers, too. There is barely a difference.
They should keep money out of gaming for every game that doesn't completely run server-side and requires to trust the client at some point, which includes pretty much any realtime 3D game. Any major pro gaming league and other competitions always perform the finals, where serious money is involved, at a LAN and get very suspicious if people suddenly don't play as good as they did online before for that reason.
Hell, with enough money involved, even I might get interested in the dark side again. Playing games while earning money and without any serious risk? Better than trusting a bank to invest it these days.

Re:Gambling is illegal

[NoName6272]

Well, carnival games are gambling as well; you pay money, to play a game, to win a prize, with uncertain outcome. That is basically the definition of gambling.
I mean look at WoW, they had a tournament (a few people I know couldn't shut up about it...) awhile ago, and there was an entry fee. Since that was world wide as well, am guessing this will sneak through one of those loop holes or technicalities that we all so love.
Either way, if they can't control cheating, then it will die. If they can (and I mean real control) then its possible it will survive for some time, possibly start something else off.

~
NoName

Three words:

[David Gerard]

Trusted client problem.

Imagine the creativity that will be applied to hacking consoles with actual money - any actual money whatsoever - as an incentive. You thought bot runners were bad on PC games? Look at online poker.

Re:This story makes no sense.

[TheRaven64]

Now you mention it, getting rid of the Olympics does have a certain appeal...