Game Developers On Gold Selling

Eurogamer has an article which takes a look at how various game companies deal with gold spammers in their games. Some, like Mythic, take a hard stance, literally telling farmers and sellers to "go to hell." Others engage in an arms race to block such behavior, sometimes to the detriment of normal users. "In fact, a former Jagex source tells me that when Jagex banned all IPs connected to gold selling, 'they lost 10 per cent of their membership, and still haven't recovered in terms of numbers since they did it two years ago. Even though they have almost stopped gold selling in RuneScape, it has cost them two million active accounts; i.e. there were four million players, there are now two million players, of which less than one million actually subscribe.'" Still more companies are experimenting with real money trading (RMT) to at least establish some control and security over the situation.

Comments

Gold selling is a good idea

[cliffski]

Because when I see that people are actually PAYING someone else to play the boring parts of a game for them, it's easy for me to deduce that what we have is not a fun game, but a tedious grindfest designed to keep bored teenagers playing forever and ever.

The solution to goldfarming should be to find out why earning gold in the game is so bloody tedious and focus your design efforts on making the game fun to play. Games are supposed to be fun, not a second job.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Alarindris]

Because when I see that people are actually PAYING someone else to play the boring parts of a game for them, it's easy for me to deduce that what we have is not a fun game, but a tedious grindfest designed to keep bored teenagers playing forever and ever. The solution to goldfarming should be to find out why earning gold in the game is so bloody tedious and focus your design efforts on making the game fun to play. Games are supposed to be fun, not a second job.

I couldn't disagree more. The fact that people are paying money in addition to their subscription means that the game is fun or has value to the player.

Personally, I never 'grind' gold. I play the auction house and can then do whatever I want.

"Oh, but see you are avoiding playing the game!"

No, I AM playing the game. I'm sorry you couldn't figure out a way to do it too.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[AuMatar]

I play games to have fun. If most of a game is fun but a portion of it (grinding gold) is not, I have no problem paying to skip it, if the part I do enjoy is fun enough. Just like in real life- I enjoy throwing a party, but hire a maid to clean up before it. I enjoy driving my car, but pay someone else to change the oil.

I could use alternate ways to make money, but I don't find playing the auction house fun. In fact, I find it highly unethical. You're taking advantage of people who don't know what things really should cost. That's flat out wrong. And anti-gold farmers complain about my ethics?

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Majik Sheff]

Sounds like you fit the mindset of EvE players. The game can be a relentless grindfest or a fantastic exercise in playing the market. It's all in how you choose to play the game.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Alarindris]

I could use alternate ways to make money, but I don't find playing the auction house fun. In fact, I find it highly unethical. You're taking advantage of people who don't know what things really should cost. That's flat out wrong. And anti-gold farmers complain about my ethics?

I agree with the first part of your post, but ummm what? I'm unethical for buying peoples under-priced stuff and selling it for what it's worth, but it's OK to violate the TOS and buy from farmers?

You may want to rethink that.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Alarindris]

Why is partaking in the game's economy so necessary? Why can't I just go about my own game without having to go repeatedly kill things to earn money?

Because if you could do that, anyone could have anything they wanted whenever they want it, and that's what makes a game shitty. Reward needs to be proportional to the effort put in. Remove effort and the reward becomes pointless/worthless.

PS - Get auctioneer and put in 10 minutes when you log on, you'll have plenty of money in no time. It's not like it takes any real effort.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[guyminuslife]

I actually think one of the reasons why WoW is popular is precisely because it's mostly boring.

Imagine if the game were all about instances and non-stop PvP. You sign in and it's like, oh, Unreal Tournament. That's the fun stuff, right?

There's enough of that to "reward" you for playing. But of course, that's all spaced out over a lot of tedium. Most people playing WoW are bored most of the time they're on it.

The tedium is essential because it means you start getting attached to menial stuff. You go into guild chat and have SUPER-DRAMA over who gets which raid spot and why did that hunter roll on that shaman gear. The tedium is necessary, of course, as a step in the direction of uber-ness, to get your quest or your experience or your crafting materials or whatever. And so at first you tolerate it. And then you get used to it. And eventually you depend on it.

Like playing the slot machines; most of the time you lose, but you win often enough that you just have to keep putting in quarters.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Alarindris]

Fair enough.

But you seem to be suggesting that I contact players to let them know their auctions are too low. They put the price on it, that's what they want to sell it for. I'm buying something from them, not stealing it. It's not unethical at all. Claiming it's unethical is just silly.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Chris_Jefferson]

How many people do you think would pay extra money to get an extra queen in chess? How many people would pay to get some more "e"s in Scrabble, even when just playing with friends, if they wouldn't get caught? People like to be the best, and lots of people want to do it without skill or work.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Tridus]

In other words, you want to play a game that has no economy whatsoever.

That's fine. It means WoW isn't actually aimed at you. Instead of cheating, go play a game that plays the way you actually want it to.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Alarindris]

But gold doesn't get you everything you want, even now. MMO's almost never let you just buy the best items from gear. The only 2 avenues to getting the best gear in WoW are raiding and PvP - there are really no good items you can just buy.

Thank god for that.

If you dumped 500,000 gold on my WoW character now, the only thing that would change is I would stop having to farm gold. My character wouldn't be better, no-one else would be affected - I'd just have more fun.

Problem is, you are able to then spend less time than everyone else to get X piece of gear from X boss. You could say that the only real MMO currency is time spent playing. A certain amount of effort needs to be put in to achieve any goal.

Why don't they get rid of health and death? I don't think that's fun at all! I want to have 100% fun all of the time! Get rid of quests, why can't I just start at 80? I don't think leveling is fun either!

"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty... I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led diffcult lives and led them well."

-Theodore Roosevelt

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[sherriw]

I'm suddenly glad I never tried WoW. Your description sounds like some kind of virtual hell.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[mabhatter654]

the problem is that paying for things in an MMORPG is a legal mess right now. Right now the rules are strict.. your character and items are just "score points" as far as Blizzard and the lawyers are concerned, they have no "value" beyond your fun. Once they start taking real money for Gold it becomes "property" and the things you buy become "property" as well. Second Life has problems with these suits and the courts are pretty fickle right now as the case law is constantly shifting.

After the property rights issues then they would have to deal with gambling, and taxes, not to mention reporting stolen accounts to law enforcement... see how this gets nasty.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[Rich0]

You could say that the only real MMO currency is time spent playing. A certain amount of effort needs to be put in to achieve any goal.

You've hit the nail on the head exactly, but I disagree with your conclusions.

In my experience people who hate trading of real-world cash for in-game gold tend to be people who have lots of time to play, and not lots of real-world cash to spend. People who like to buy in-game gold tend ot have little time to play, and lots of real-world cash to spend.

Obviously self-interest dictates that people who have lots of time to kill should want the game to reward time spent above all else. People who have lots of money to spend want the game to value real-world money above all else.

There really is no "right" and "wrong" way to design a game. Thus, there is no end to arguing between these parties and a huge arms race as people willing to take real-world money will do whatever they can to create in-game advantages for their customers to stay in business.

I think there needs to be a balance. Games should not be designed so that new players can't expect to enjoy the majority of the game until they've spent 300,000 hours playing it. New content needs to be available at all levels of play. On the other hand, it isn't good for gameplay when some newbie can walk around killing people left and right with an uber-sword-of-destruction that they bought for $19.95 on ebay.

I think that if you make the game fun and have rewards both for people who have leveled for 18 hours a day and also for those who play an hour a week and don't level at all, then you'll get rid of much of the incentive for farmers.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[thesandtiger]

It also assumes that "buying something that was listed below market price and reselling it for a more appropriate price based on prevailing market conditions" is the same as "taking advantage of someone's weakness," which is rather a big stretch - I don't actually see the two as being connected in any way.

Further, it presupposes that making a profit on a transaction is inherently taking advantage of someone - it isn't. For any transaction to take place, both parties have to agree that engaging in the transaction is worth more to them than not engaging in the transaction. The player listing an item at less than market price essentially said, "I want to sell this item for X price, X being the minimum amount I'd be willing to accept." They may not be fully informed as to the actual market rate for that item, but that is their choice - they're choosing to not gather market information because to them, making whatever they make from selling the item and not spending the time getting an idea of the proper valuation is worth more to them than gathering the proper pricing information and then selling the item for more.

The only time I could see this being unethical would be if someone posted an item for, say, 50 silver when they meant to post it for 50 gold - that's taking advantage of an error. My policy when I see something that simply must be an error (like a recipe that usually goes for 2500g being sold for 25g) is to buy it, then mail it COD (for the amount I paid) back to the person who posted it with an explanation that I assumed the price was an error.

Funny enough, the last time I did this, the guy who I mailed it to called me an asshole for sending him something COD, returned it to me, and demanded that I re-send it but not COD or he would report me to the GMs. This was on an item that usually goes for 6,000-8,000 gold mimimum, and he had listed it for 6 gold. Needless to say, I did not send it back, am a little under 7,000 gold richer, and had a good laugh with the GM when I was contacted to explain the situation. I absolutely don't think I was unethical in my handling of the situation.

Re:Gold selling is a good idea

[vux984]

It also assumes that "buying something that was listed below market price and reselling it for a more appropriate price based on prevailing market conditions" is the same as "taking advantage of someone's weakness," which is rather a big stretch - I don't actually see the two as being connected in any way.

It really depends. If the vorpal sword of god slaying is "mispriced" where the owner was selling it for 1k instead of 1000k, its unethical to take advantage of it. (Although if you don't someone else surely will... so really the nicest thing you can do is buy it, and then offer to sell it back to him for the 1k error price -- and I've done this for people.)

However, if the vorpal sword of god slaying is listed at 900k when you know you can sell it for 1000k, its perfectly ethical to buy it and flip it. The original owner was happy with 900k, and perhaps he just wanted to get it out of his inventory quickly, while you may take a couple weeks to make the sale at 1000k.

Other times, you have players who accumulate random tradeskill stuff that they just dump on the market. And they'll end up selling a rare herb far below market value or something. Again, its not really unethical to take advantage of that. These players really have no interest in doing any of the work to sort out which herbs are valuable and which are trash, and they just throw them into the auction to unload them quickly. On some level you are taking advantage of their ignorance but they are willing partners. They know some herbs are more valuable than others, but they just blow them out because they can't be bothered to sort them, they've accepted that they are selling these below value.

Time = Money = Power = Cocaine

[Maxo-Texas]

Which is fair..

A lawyer working 60 hours a week, buys a 600 hour character and a million gold for 5 hours of income.
or
A student, retired, or independently wealthy person who plays 60 hours a week? Always gets the best non-instanced content first (sometimes blocking it for over a year to other users).

---

The game company sells levels, gear, experience for money.
or
The game company sets up quests so you if you can be logged on continuously for 14 to 24 hours you have a 100% chance of success.
If you can log on 24 hours in 2 hour chunks, there is a good chance you will *never* finish the quest (25 to 30%)

---

Who is more skillful
The person who can log on at 1pm, get the best camps, play for 12 hours straight, and reach the new level cap in a week?
The person who uses a cheating macro program that lets them see what loot the monsters are carrying and where the monsters are even when their characters are "blind"?

---

None of these are fair. I applaud the efforts by the game companies to make a game fair.

But morality is such that mmorg gamers would feel it was fair to be able to buy extra cards in poker or to get the best hands because they could show up earlier than the other players, or win merely by virtue of being able to stay at the table for 18 hours straight.

---

Games have rules. The rules for chess, checkers, acquire, dominion, hell even D&D, are not based on "the person with the most money or time wins".
When people try to play MTG and other CCG's like a money game, they quickly lose the ability to play with ordinary players and get stuck in their own brackets even at tournaments.

It's pretty disgusting.

Re:Why oppose it?

[Morlark]

Developers being cocks? Sorry, I actually facepalmed when I read that. I take it you've never played an MMO? Gold selling thrives in MMOs because, at the end of the day, there is one fundamental truth that applies both in and out of game: (some) people are stupid. Gold selling has a noticeable and significant negative effect on the game. Sometimes this means they've got their bots out keeping a given zone completely barren of mobs, so that any actual players who want to do anything in the zone are unable to do so. Sometimes it means that the gold sellers flood the auction house with the items they have farmed up, meaning that any legitimate player who wants to sell some items for a bit of gold can't do so because the going rate for those items is so low that they can't turn a profit. On the flip side, the people who have bought gold now have so much money that the market price for other (non-farmable) items goes through the roof, meaning that honest players can't afford the things they want. Gold selling absolutely ruins the in-game economy, which makes the game a lot less fun for everybody, and that means the developers lose subscribers. That is why.

In fact, in recent years, things have got even worse. As the developers get better at spotting the behaviour of the gold sellers' farming bots, the gold sellers change tactics. Instead of targeting the game, they target the players - through various trojans and keyloggers and whatnot, they compromise a players account, strip it bare of gold and items, and then sell the proceeds on to other players. Of course when the player discovers this, they immediately go crying to the devs demanding that their items and gold be restored. The dev company then has to spend god knows how much on employing extra customer support staff to deal the player's own lax account security. That is a direct cost to the dev company caused by gold sellers. The claim that the developers are being cocks by protecting the interests of both themselves and the players is laughably ignorant.

Allow me to finish up with a little personal anecdote. An acquaintance of mine in WoW once had his account compromised by gold-sellers. I don't know how, since he's usually a fairly tech-savvy person, but everyone slips up once in a while. The gold sellers stripped his character completely clean, took everything he had, and passed it on. When he finally got his account back, and was waiting for his items to be restored, you know what his first response was? He went straight to the gold sellers and bought some gold, to cover what he had lost. Yup, he went to the very people who had stolen his (imaginary) gold, and paid them real money to get it back. And he never once made the logical connection that the people who had taken his stuff were the same people he was dealing with. The average person really is that stupid.

It's only a minority that actually does buy gold, so you can't even claim that "players want it". But when the developers have to fight an uphill battle against both the gold sellers and that stupid minority, so that they can improve the game for those very same players, you do have to have a bit of respect for what they do.

Re:Playing the action house don't work

[fractoid]

The net result is that you need to "farm" for hours some stuff to get the money, or jsut give up on it. Don't get me started on some of the superfluous stuff like mount (with 45 gold 100 to 200% the real money of a newbie at level 30 unless you never had to buy anything at all) or bags.

No, the net result is that you can sell a level 15 green-quality sword for 2-3 gold instead of for 20 silver. People with high level characters think nothing of paying a few gold to kit out their latest alt, which means that it's very easy to make gold fast as a lowbie. Hell, stacks of copper ore sell for 20-30g on some servers. My wife recently started her first Alliance-side character, it's now level 23 and has well over 50 gold.

Can't fix it...

[cyberjock1980]

There is always a demand for currency, both in the real world and the games.

I have a respectable 60kg total over 3 servers in WoW. I can buy almost any item I want, but I can't buy the levels or the raid experience.

Think of it like this. If tomorrow Blizzard said that all mobs in the game will now suddenly drop 100x the amount of gold they have before guess what the prices of merchandise on the AH will do? I'd say about 100x increase. Anyone could suddenly go kill a mob and get 50g to buy a stack of potions or whatever at the old AH price.

People take the path of least resistance. In the world of MMORPGs, they buy Gold. In the real world, there's 2 choices.

1. For those that need instant gratification, they work at WalMart making $9/hour forever at a job.
2. For those that plan ahead they go to college, get a degree, and then make $30+/hour in a career.

MMORPGs are built almost entirely on instant gratification. You don't start a quest on level 2 and are still working on it at lvl 80. Instant gratification falls into the 'buy gold online' persona.

Why are people surprised/disgusted that MMORPGs attract the 'instant gratification' personalities, and then deliberately scold them for having those traits?