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Legitimizing Real Money Trading In Games
MMOGamer interviewed Andy Schneider, co-founder of Live Gamer, a company working with several major game publishers (including Acclaim, Funcom, and SOE) to legitimize the real money trading (RMT) industry in online games. Schneider expects this method of customer service to grow much more popular in the West over the next few years, especially after the success it's had in Asia.
"It started in the very earliest MMOs, if not back in the MUD days in a very grassroots sort of way, but then obviously got into a more opportunistic and nefarious industry. When I talk about legitimate RMT, it's about a publisher supporting the notion that people want to buy and sell virtual items for real money, and they have decided to proactively support that notion and give their player-base a way to do that. ... It takes the manual process out of the equation that most players are engaged in with the black market, and reduces the fraud considerably, which is good for players. ... The reason there are gold farmers out there, the reason why there is nearly a two billion dollar secondary market for virtual items, is because of consumer demand."
The Taxman cometh.
You already have to pay tax on any cash you earn, that fact that you're selling something virtual doesn't matter. If you accumulate a lot of in-game currency but don't sell it for real currency you wouldn't be taxed on it.
See, this would be good, except that say I start a virtual business that somehow generates millions in real income, having to pay taxes on this would be insane (since it would deal across state and international borders). I'm not seeing that I would be doing anything but working for various governments and since that would mirror real life, I don't feel the need to assist the government in the taking of any more of my time and effort (much less money). On technical side though, this has some interesting possibilities...
Regards,
MBC1977,
The market will always be there, so it makes sense for a developer to try to get a slice of the pie. This needs to be balanced with player wishes and gameplay mechanics though, done badly and it could ruin a game. The only instance I've seen work well is Eve online timecards which don't prevent black market trade, but they do limit it considerably.
That's a rational, logical, well thought out argument. Good luck selling the taxmen on it.
Where there's a buck to be had, don't assume people are going to be rational about it. And never, ever, ever assume that the legislation that introduces a new tax upon something will be well thought out.
Easy solution though. Just limit yourself to games in which gold-selling is not permitted, and you'll be fine.
Hell, I'm of the opinion that any game economy that allows real world money into it is bound to get out of control with inflation in an awful hurry, and probably won't remain worth playing for long. It's only the fact that the MMO companies don't allow such services (and do everything in their power to curb them) that limits this now - open the floodgates, and you'll see the in-game currency massively and rapidly devalued, and a big chunk of the playerbase leaving in disgust as they find themselves unable to compete without emptying their wallets.
Selling in-game resources for real-world money is simple greed, much like billing by the hour would be. If an alternative game exists that doesn't shaft the customers for every dime, they'll move one. Notice that, without exception, the successful MMOs are the ones that don't pull that crap?
I wonder how much total GDP has been transferred over the years in these games?
Are they trying to dig their own graves? The reason why the gold farmers and item traders are thriving is because it is not legal under the TOS of many MMO games out there. If it suddenly become legal, what made them think that they can profit from it? I'm pretty sure that gold farmers would cease to exist if the gaming company themselves sells gold for real $$$ at a lower rate.
I'm against real money trading for gold and items because it would definitely create a crazy and lazy in-game economy. It would also remove the sense of common-ground in the game. I would hate it if by any chance Bill Gates decided to play an MMO and would have better items and gear than me instantly. (something along those lines)
I can see why losers would want to buy things they couldn't earn. I can see why the companies running the games would want to take the losers money instead of spending resources fighting gold farming. What I fail to understand is why anyone worth a damn would keep playing a game that openly allows buying their way to the top. And a game filled only with pathetic losers isn't likely to stay fun for even the losers for long.
Democrat delenda est
Well said, man.
You guys need to read that it's the transfer that qualifies income, not the receipts itself; even so, that Income only applies to a corporate sole and not a natural man because lawful money as defined in The Coinage Act is not being used. Put on the record that private credit is being redeamed as public money pursuant to House Joint Resolution 192 and endorse all your checks on the private side (rear/dorse) as "exchanged for private credit in the form of Federal Reserve Notes, without prejudice" and you are clear in terms of Income.
Peace. of shit.
I've been playing this MMO for about 3.5 years (Entropia Universe, shamelessly) which was based on Real Cash trading/economy. There has always been a fixed exchange rate between U.S. Dollars and ingame currency (PED). Therefore everything you own in game has a real dollar value and can be sold in game. Real life funds can be transferred into the game, and withdrawn back to real life funds. This MMO has been around ~7 years with no 3rd party, nothing new here to me. In fact the parent company Mindark has just been granted a Swedish banking license. Yes maybe soon you can pay your real life bills in ingame currency. We aren't talking peanuts here either, we're talking real cash related to everything you do, so the best items in game fetch a pretty penny. The best healing tool in the game today you can fetch about 40,000 U.S. dollars for. You can buy plots of land in game for about the same that you can tax for real cash. Point is there are games that are based on real cash, and those who aren't. Those who arent it doesn't matter which way you go, private sales, E-Bay, Live Gamer, it's still all 'Black Market'. I'll stick with secure, non 3rd party solutions.
Legitimizing Real Money Trading In Games...
As a frequent "trader" I was confused there for a second.
It works for Second Life. Almost too well. In 2007, Ginko Financial, an in-game bank, went bust. Then Midas Bank went bust. This drew the attention of The Wall Street Journal. In 2008, Linden Labs introduced bank regulation. Most of the Second Life banks were actually Ponzi schemes, with huge interest rates. It's still possible for a real-world bank to open branches in Second Life, but nobody has bothered.
Think about the crazy new ways we can circulate money and diversify the economy with this sort of model. Each game has its own (possibly flourishing) micro-economy, which I'm sure can't exactly hurt the economy in RL.
there must be something out there that can be stretched into precedent for this. what about internal accounting systems, where a company's departments "pay" each other for services, but the government only cares about money which crosses the organization's boundary?
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Yep, taxes from every little local guv'ment to the Feds.
And this will only be passed on to the customer. The product price increases, product becomes less attractive, less people buy it.
How is this good, again?
Are they actually suggesting selling stuff created from the aether, or are they suggesting that they set up an internal 'ebay' where players can sell to other players with the game company taking a modest cut? I got the impression of the latter.
Where that the case, someone would still have to go grind out the epics to hock to the bling buyers. That is already happening in most games. The only difference is who gets paid, the gold farmer and the game company, or some of these dubious 'middle men' who run the resale houses.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I can see why losers would want to buy things they couldn't earn.
You define people as 'losers' because they don't play the game the same way you do. Mighty full of yourself, aren't you? From the way you talk, it sounds like you define yourself as a 'winner' because you spend dozens of hours a week glued to a monitor hoping the random number generator will drop some instant self-esteem for you.
I'll cut off the easy ad-hominim rebuttal for you. Never bought a gold piece, never will. However, you might be more tolerant of people who have more free money than free time, and still like to game. You might become one someday...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Not an MMO, but I think this reflects relevant concerns.
This means if the government taxes this, then they'll provide services like in real life? Like, if player one steals from another player, we can have a real-life court deal with this manner, right? Perhaps we can get some people sent to jail for online actions!
>It would be like bribing your DM to let your third level character find a +5 sword. Who would continue to play in a gaming group if such a disgusting thing were to occur?
This happens every week. It is only right to bribe the DM for all his hard work.
Rule #1: The DM need never pay his share of the pizza for he has an infinite number of Tarrasques and magical swords. ^_-
That said though, trust me when I say, "You CAN'T afford a +5 Sword!"
...or at least, it's a "game" the way The Sims is. Which is to say, it's a simulation.
I have no problem with Second Life operating with real-world dollars. My problem with Second Life is that for what it is, it should not be tied to a single controlling entity (Linden).
But in an actual game, like WoW, well, this is just the next level of gold farming. The result is the same -- status in the game is no longer driven by anything resembling skill, or even time invested, but by how much money you're willing to spend on the game.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Games AREN'T the real world. People don't play them for reality, they play them for fun. That is the #1 factor a game needs is to be entertaining.
Now as this applies to buying your way to the top, for most people that ISN'T fun. The fun of the game is the process, not hitting the top right away. I mean in any offline game I have, I can "beat" the game right away. I can have all the items, be as powerful as possible, or simply skip to the end credits. None of this is hard, I just pop open a debugger and fiddle with memory values supposing the game doesn't provide cheat codes, which almost all of them do. However, I don't do that. Why not? Well it would be fun. I don't buy a game to just instantly win, I buy the game for the fun of playing it.
Now in terms of online games, the people who want to do this are sociopaths or bullies, more or less. They are the kind of people who take pleasure in causing pain to others. The reason they want to buy their way to the top is so that they can be better than other people with no effort.
Well, that isn't going to be fun for most gamers. So you are going to have two potential situations, neither which is likely to make a substantial player base happy:
1) Buying your way to the top is extremely cheap. Everyone can do it. Something like $20 gets you everything you could want. Ok well in this case all players will do it (they'll have to lest they are beaten up by those who have) and get bored real quick because all the challenge is gone. You've reached the end as soon as you've begun. Thus after exploring and goofing around, the game will get old fast.
2) Buying your way to the top is extremely expensive, few people can do it. Something like it costs $1,000 to get everything. Well not many people have that kind of money to blow on a game, and even if they do they won't. So most of the player base will settle for having not a lot of stuff. However, there are the bullies out there who will, because it boosts their ego to be mean to others. Won't take long with that before most players get tired of it and leave.
I just don't see how this model works for the majority of gamers, who want to play a game to have fun. This appeals only to people who want to be better than everyone else with no effort. For any other gamer, taking away the process is to take away the reason to play a game in the first place.
So I think the grand parent is accurate in calling people like that "losers". You really are a loser if you want to take a shortcut in a game just so you can be better than everyone with no effort. Same shit as people who use aim bots in first person shooters online. All the challenge is gone, all the fun for playing is gone, so the only reason to do it is if you are so pathetic that bullying people online gives you an ego boost.
Frankly I'm just for banning people like that. If making others miserable is your idea of fun, leave.
There is "consumer demand" because lazy bum players who "can't be assed" to play the game want to cheat by buying ingame assets and currency with real money.
Once it becomes okay to cheat, only the cheaters will stay around. It's fine to cheat in single player games - all you are really doing is cheating yourself out of the proper experience. Cheating in multiplayer games (especially persistent multiplayer games) you'll just participate in destroying the game you are playing.
The only reason game companies are even looking at this is because enforcing the rules is expensive. Too many lazy bums around that need the banstick. Plus they look at how Asian companies rake in the money from idiots out there who all like to play "whoever has the most disposable income wins"-style game. SOE already tried this with EQ2 and it really didn't work - cheaters kept cheating on the regular servers and the gameplay and community on the "enabled" servers was a cesspit of teenagers trying to convert excess free time into dollars and lazy idiots feeding the teenagers with too much disposable income. Professional farmers stayed on the normal servers as black market prices were always higher and the "consumer demand" was higher on the servers where you could actually buy an advantage.
Cheating with real money is an advantage only when it is cheating. When everyone is doing it, it's just a stupid way to milk more money from all the people who bother to play the "game".
Trading in Games really could shock anyone. The profit is really very huge. Meanwhile, any accessories in Games also got improve like converter, point card, message and etc. We could find more places to got profit
The MMO Gamer: When people hear that phrase, âoereal money trading,â their initial thoughts are probably of a dark basement in China somewhere, with men slaving over keyboards night and day, and some guy who whips them if they donâ(TM)t meet their gold quotas.
Your vision was wrong. Being a gold farm overlord, I can tell ya we whip them for pure pleasure only. Meeting gold quotas is their meaning to life, not a choice whatsoever. When they don't meet their gold quotas, I'll throw bones. If the result was in their favour, I'd only remove legs or eyes from them; otherwise execution is inevitable.
"Conversion Rate of Active to Paid Players
Both Paul Preece from Casual Collective and Daniel James from Three Rings shared some interesting stats from their own games on conversion rates associated with paid players (players who purchase levels, virtual goods, etc through micro-transactions). Paul said that for their single player games, they see that 2% of their active players have converted to paid players. Keep in mind this stat is for âoeactive playersâ who come back to the site regularly, not overall unique visitors. What was interesting was that for his multi-player games, 3% of active players converted to paid players, suggesting their may be some additional conversion lift from multi-player games. Daniel James echoed Paul Preeceâ(TM)s numbers, suggesting 3-4% of Three Rings users pay as well.
The key thing they stressed was that only a very small percentage of your users end up converting, because first they need to become active users that come back and are retained by your game as well as be eager enough to pay through one of a variety of ways...."
http://is.gd/vhWS
I think the rush to virtual item trading is going to crash with a big audible THUD.
People will think virtual item trading is cute for a little while most are under the impresssion they are cute little free things. The moment the vast majority of people find out in an economy like this, people are going to expect lots of money in return for those cute virtual items, there will be a wave of wide spread revulsion toward the concept that is usually reserved for the worst "crimes" of nerddom... like a full high school cheerleading squad walking in on a guy from their marching band in full Klingon battle garb (with batlif).
After that, only young children will dare be caught "trafficked" in virtual items.
I have to agree, the MMO's i played that were infested with RMT, are having a rapidly devaluated currency, the result being that it becomes impossible to buy items without having to resort to RMT.
And indeed, that's why me and a lot of friends just stopped playing.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice - Grey's Law
Or they could just give unlimited gold so people could enjoy the game in a fair manner instead of creating a timesink. I played many wow characters for many years and unlimited items would not have destroyed the good parts of the game. Only the trash parts(raiding). Thank god i quit!
How 'close' would a game come to being covered under gambling laws, if any and every item you randomly find/get given as a reward in a game, actually has official real-life monetary value?
'Stupidity is an often fatal disease' - R. A. Heinlein
I'm not sure that's correct - EVE Online has let players buy in-game money with real-world money (through buying and selling game time cards) for years, and the economy there is pretty stable - definitely no massive inflation.
Except that they are _supposed_ to be a time sink. That's the whole purpose of gaming: to spend some time in a more fun way than staring at your own walls. That's the actual game.
Whether it's dozens of hours a week or an hour on sundays, the principle is the same. You spend _some_ time in there to be entertained.
And that's what it remains, from level 1 when you're killing wolf cubs in Northshire to level 80 when you raid Ulduar. There is no point where it becomes anything more meaningful than that.
So someone who essentially pays to have someone else to play the game in his stead... well, he called it a loser, but I'll call it stupid too. They're people who pay to skip some of the content they've already paid for. It's as stupid as paying someone to see the first 3 quarters of the LOTR trilogy for you, just so you can then watch the final battle and pretend you're so l33t for it.
And it's funny that you should mention "instant self-esteem" because it seems to me like it usually applies not to us who play the game the normal way, but to the losers paying their way to level 80 or to some virtual status symbols. I've actually known a few (especially in COH during the "City Of Fire Tankers" period, it was hard not to), and yes, it seems to me like that's what they bought: instant self-esteem.
Invariably it was people who believed one or more of the following, and were trying to shove them in your face at that:
1. That being higher level somehow made them better or more worthy of respect, as opposed to just being pegged in another slice of the game's content.
2. That being able to do this or that (e.g., because of their l33t equipment) somehow made them superior persons, instead of just being yet another normal phase of the game's content.
3. That sporting some visible status symbol, somehow made them better and more respect worthy, as opposed to being just another piece of the game's content.
Etc.
And you recognize them at any level. They're the kind that, when you group with their new alt, have to mention every 5 minutes how many level 80's they have (or had even in beta!) and generally act as if their level is physically tied to their penis size, say an inch every 10 levels, and being even seen under level 70 is some kind shame and failure. They're the kind who'll sit parked at the Deadmines or wherever else and whine for a "boost"/"powerlevel"/whatever-it's-called-in-that-game for hours instead of actually playing the damned game. They're the kind who in, say, EQ2 will just have to drag you kicking and screaming to see their epic mount or mansion full of T8 furniture... at level 10... on their first character, as if that says anything else about them than "I bought platinum."
And yes, by the pretense that they're somehow superior because they're not investing time... in something that's just a time sink anyway.
They're in a nutshell the people who don't understand that the game is the road, not the destination. The ones who don't understand that levels 1-10 or 70-80 are just ways to parcel the game's content, as opposed to anything else. It's not more meaningful than, say, episodes 1 to 10 vs 70 to 80 of a soap opera.
But, no, they just have to artificially partition that mass of content in their mind into a 90% slice that's for them anywhere between shameful and merely not good enough for them, and at most 10% that's, yes, "instant self-esteem". And that's what they're buying: instant self esteem. The illusion that they're somehow more esteem-worthy if they skipped a chunk of the actual game.
Would I call them "losers" for it? Hell, yes.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
1) Start virtual brothel
2) Charge punters real money
3) *****
4)Profit!
Smivs on the intertubes!
I worked on one of the earliest MMOs, Meridian 59. Yeah, I know it was tiny compared to the "big boys" when Ultima Online came out, but it was still a lot bigger than the eight-player LAN games that were the competition back then.
Anyway, there were two very strong reasons not to get into real-money transactions. Bugs and Gambling. Any bug in the code would be exploited, and of course every MMO has shown this to be true. Unexpected object duplication or money transaction bugs will either rip off the company, or rip off other players. Also, any game that has real-money transactions could catch the ire of the US authorities who have a schizophrenic and protectionist attitude towards gambling. If you can turn real-money into virtual things, and then do a game of skill or chance, and then most crucially convert the virtual things to real-money, that's legally a gamble (for the players) and a legal gamble (for the company).
[
"Troll" does not mean "anything with which I disagree". It means that someone has said something they don't believe in order to elicit a specific desired response. The above is clearly not a troll; not only is it true, but I believe it :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
CCP introduced Game Time cards that can be purchased with real cash and then sold in game. Player rich in game can play from their in-game profits and casual players who would otherwise fund the farmers get cash from them. CCP keep all the money within their system and have virtually eliminated gold-farmers from their universe, it's not worth their time or the consumers risk when compared to the system they've made available themselves. Granted there's no way for a player to get cash out of the system, but once we start doing that there's going to be alot of Treasuries taking an interest in people with tax-free incomes.
there must be something out there that can be stretched into precedent for this. what about internal accounting systems, where a company's departments "pay" each other for services, but the government only cares about money which crosses the organization's boundary?
Okay, that's enaough. You already messed up IRL, keep the fucking economics out of my fucking game.
Was it really a success in Asia, or did they just ruin the game for those who were not addicted enough to pay even more?
NASCAR, the NBA, and the NHL all make their money by selling tickets and TV rights.
MMORPGs make their money through participants. If they expect people to participate, they have to at least give the illusion that participation can lead to success. (Without having to invest huge amounts of level-up money.)
there must be something out there that can be stretched into precedent for this.
And this is why the current legal climate is so fucked up. If you want a new law, make a new law. Distorting 200 year old laws to fit the internet does not work. See copyright.
Doesn't matter. The taxman can't do anything until you acquire assets outside the game.
Read your TOS/EULA. Make it work for you for once. Anything inside the game is owned by the people running the game. If the taxman comes knocking I have a binding legal contract, ProCD v Zeidenberg 7th Circuit, that says they need to go talk to Blizzard/Sony/Turbine/Whoever because they are the owners of record. It's their asset not mine.
I find being offended by me offensive.
I need to clarify here.
In EVE Online you are allowed to buy in-game money from other players. This is regular cash that was created through normal means.
This is _NOT_, I repeat _NOT_, game cash created out of thin air by the publisher.
Thus there is no risk of massive inflation.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Which is all well and good, but like most things involving corporate and government abuse, it's just not worth it. 10k gold in WoW goes for something like $75. That's, what, ten bucks extra on your taxes? Are you really going to spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars trying to defend your point against the IRS?
There are lots of things that we shouldn't pay. I shouldn't have paid Bank of America when they screwed me on a credit card late fee by holding my check past the due date. But it was $39. It would have cost me $60 just to file a claim I had no guarantee of winning, so instead I swore at the guy on the phone, paid their theft fee, canceled the account and never dealt with them again.
Fighting on principles is too expensive in America, which is why few people bother to do it.
If a player has an account w/ $1,000 dollars worth of gold and gear and that account is deleted will the company directly reimburse the player?
If a company has a game world w/ 1,000 players, each of whom has $1,000 and the company decides to close the game world down will they have to have $1,000,000 on the books to pay off the players?
There was an interesting fictional treatment on this in _Dragon Magazine_ ages ago though, ``Catacomb'' by Henry Melton I believe it was which shows one potentially expensive aspect of such a game.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I don't understand your point.
If you received $75 for 10K you fall under existing tax law. You always have.
My post dealt with taxing assets held in game.
You should have sued in small claims. BoA would have rolled over and settled with you. Too expensive for them to go to court over such a low amount.
I find being offended by me offensive.
them failing was the gov't.
The SL Banks were linked to the SL Casinos, which were making money hand-over-fist. Loan to Ginko, which expanded the casino, and you were effectively in for a percentage of the house's take.
When the US Gov't decided to apply the online gambling laws to the SL Casinos, they all shut down.... and that caused a ripple through the whole SL economic system that took about a year to stabilize.
I often chuckle about the folks demanding "The gov't regulate SL so we don't have bank failures" since the cause of them failing was gov't regulation in the first place.
I always wondered about this. Not so much from a player's POV that is sort of simple it can go a few ways. But from the game companies POV. They could support transfers by 'undoing' the tax by increasing the money during transfer. If it is counted as real wealth then is it a currency or a good? And then who owns it? If the players in the game own their gold fine. Then does the company own the rest of the gold (which would be really haard to determine at any given point). If gold is spawned on mob death vs spawned on mob creation. Do the mobs themselves take ownership over their own money.
Taxing then can only occur when e$ is traded for $$. I guess it would work the same way as paying for a service. Ignore the fact there is a virtual good and say you paid for the guy to play the game for you for so many hours. Then this is the same as ANY transaction. Anytime you buy a game from a friend and don't declare the purchase for taxation it is a black-market transaction. Or if you pay 5$ for a friend to go to the store and get you a beer it is a black-market transaction. The taxman will come after the Businesses. Just like if you set up a business where you would run to the store for people and have a clientele of 5000people. This won't stop people from selling on small scales. Also US law likely won't effect the CHINESE farmers in anycase. If a chinese law was implemented to tax 50% of $ made w/ gaming then you would have a problem. I doubt there will be any international agreements on this type of taxation for many years to come. So its not really a big deal.
If you have 75k, you can be hit for a property tax on that 75k.
So the situation being presented is this possible future:
Sure, legally it's blizzard's property but the government passed a law that your blizzard bill must include an assessement for in game property.
If you don't pay it, then your blizzard account is shut down.
The tax is $10 this year split into 12 easy payments of 80 cents. It would cost your $2,600 to fight the issue in court and you'd probably lose.
What action you take:
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The government passes a law saying I'm responsible for the tax liability of someone else's property?
That's just nonsensical.
I find being offended by me offensive.
It doesn't matter if it's nonsensical. If they pass the law it's the law and you're obligated to abide by it unless it's overturned or repealed.
Which goes back to my original point: yes, it would be absurd, and yes, you could fight to overturn it, but it wouldn't be worth it to most people.
There is a cost associated with fighting back against those sorts of things. You can fight the IRS over a $10 tax bill you shouldn't have to pay, but it's going to cost you thousands of dollars in attorney fees - which you may or may not recover - and many, many frustrating hours. And you may lose the case anyway in which case you'll lose thousands in attorney fees, likely hundreds in penalties and late fees, possibly the attorney fees of the IRS, and your original $10 tax bill.
Saying you should just go ahead and sue is all fine and dandy, and if you're fighting for the principle of the thing that's great, but the cost of being right is often much greater than the cost of just accepting the wrong in these sorts of cases.
There are three things that come to mind that a "legitimized" money trading feature would have to address - all related to the poor in-game effects of the current model.
1 - It would have to remove or negate the player behavior of farmers. The camping (and subsequent artificially increased rarity of gold/items), the spamming, the foreign language ninja looters, etc. IMO a certain amount of that is human nature, but the only "cure" is to make sure that in game behavior cannot translate into real-life profit. In other words, this money trade has to be one-way: you can spend real money to buy gold, but you can't trade in gold to get real money.
2 - It would have to address the effect on the game economy. If all normal players are still making the same in-game income, but inflation screws up the prices, that really screws around with the difficulty level of the game. And if that happens in the in-game auction house, it encourages the loot farming from #1.
3 - It would have to address the effect of twinking on the player-vs-player side of things, and the positive feedback loop of #3 into #2 and #1 - pay money up front, twink character, dominate the best loot areas to corner the auction house. Not only are the twinks, um, twinked... but everyone else is under-geared due to inflation limiting their ability to buy gear and mass farming limiting their ability to loot gear (and even under-leveled due to the same mass farming limiting their ability to get XP).
This requires more than just tacking on one more gui panel for confirming your credit card number for gold++. It requires a major rehaul of the game mechanics. I'd do it three ways; first, you'd need to quasi-instance *everywhere* in a load-balancing way instead of a per-group way, so everyone has equal access to resources. You'd need to have "matchmaking" code that takes gear into account, not just level, such that players are put into appropriate instances except for whatever free-for-all zones the game has. And you'd probably want the money->gold flow to feed only into the auction house; equal access to resources means that while this inflates prices in the auction house up to a new equilibrium, said equilibrium actually exists - normal players can get stuff to sell too, so normal players a) cap prices by undercutting and b) make more money, thus c) are still able to afford the stuff they're supposed to be able to afford on the auction house.
And even then I'm sure it'd probably take more new checks and balances, because that auction house equilibrium could still be *really high* and I'm not sure it's a good idea for the game mechanics to *force* every player in an MMO to choose to either fork over more dollars or spend excessive time playing the mandatory auction-house mini-game. And the improved matchmaking and instancing code would take a lot of work. And deciding how to manage the free-for-all PvP areas would be a lot of careful work too - too much, and twinking is mandatory, too little and you drive away twinks who were willing to hand you big bags of money.
I guess my point is: I'm not yet hearing about the big MMO companies actually trying to make this work; I'm just hearing them try to make a quick buck on it by bolting on a new moneysink without dealing with the issues that'll potentially ruin the game.
No. I live in a country that has restrictions on what laws can be put in place. This would never be enacted let alone stand up to challenge.
Making a law that imposes a tax on you for me owning something is nonsensical.
Regardless your cost argument is meaningless. You would not be fighting such a law. Someone with orders of magnitude more resources, and thus orders of magnitude more able to be fucked by such a law, would be fighting it.
I find being offended by me offensive.
"Which is all well and good as far as it goes. But that treats symptoms not the real problem. The problem is losers wanting pretend items they couldn't possibly earn in a frickin' game so badly they will pay serious real coin to get them. It would be like bribing your DM to let your third level character find a +5 sword. Who would continue to play in a gaming group if such a disgusting thing were to occur?"
And because such ignorant fuckwads continue to exist and play MMOs there will always be a demand for ways to cheat the system and get the appearance of having earned something without having to actually go and make the effort. There is really nothing that can be done about this unless companies start pursuing real world prosecution of players who break the TOS in this manner. Forget chasing the farmers, their market will dry up when their customers stop buying engaging in RMTs. I would be all for companies putting a clause in their TOS that states you are liable to a $10k fine if caught - if there was some way to pursue it in the courts.
People who buy money and items ruin the balance of the game, and destroy the playability of the game for everyone else who plays legitimately. I would kick anyone from my guild who I discovered had done so without any hestiation, but thats about the limit of my ability to affect them in game for their actions. I want to see companies take serious action against offenders, and I think thats the only solution that might have a chance to work.
I do like the halfway solution from CCP, which if I understand it amounts to them selling subscription cards and letting players translate those into in game items which can then be bought by other players and then used to pay their subscription costs. The company gets money from being the middleman in the transaction (The player paid RL money to buy the subscription card) and the player who has the in game currency can pay their subscription costs with that in game money. It still means that someone is using their cash to gain an advantage of course, but at least it cuts the farmers out of the equation which is I suppose a form of solution
Personally I think that allowing, in fact encouraging RMT transactions in a game means the game is rendered unplayable and only a fool would play it. I can't think of a single thing that would make me want to play a game less than that. It effectively announces that whatever you do in game is completely meaningless because some bastard with a CC can equal your achievements in a few seconds because he has more money than you do. Since that sense of achieving something challenging is part of the attraction of playing a game, rendering that achievement null and void destroys part of the attractiveness of a game. There are unfortunately a lot of MMO players who DO think that having more money than I do makes them a better person and better player, and they feel entitled to cheat to get ahead in this manner. Changing that attitude would be another solution but it would rely on players having a sense of honour and sportsmanship and I don't think you can count on that being present in most players. Our society encourages the idea that having more money makes you superior to others, and encourages the attitude that this entitles you to better treatment etc.
Personally speaking, although it would present substantial security problems, some method by which games companies could exchange the credit cards used on a banned account so that when you are banned on game A, you are also automatically banned on any other game that used that card would be a neat addition to the mix, although I am sure lots of people would dislike that. I am not sure how you could do so effectively and legally though.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
No, it's not just nonsensical. It's nonsensical. Do you pay property tax on your car? Do you pay property tax on your bank account? Do you pay property tax on your clothes? Do you own anything? Do you know how taxes work?
EVE online allows you to sell PLEX (basically 30-day game cards you buy w/ real money) for in-game currency.
It is, contrary to your argument, doing quite well economically.
There is a problem, couple months ago, I used to work in Lehman Brothers, there was a game installed on each machine, in which you played like you were trading with subprime loans, some day I just decided to see what happened if I started to make wrong decitions on that game, then couple weeks later somebody fired me telling it was crisis time and blah, but i still think he didnt liked me.... ... ...
no, wait, why does a bank has games on their computers???? eehw...crap
Would I call them "losers" for it? Hell, yes.
I completely understand the points you make about playing a game to enjoy it. I'm just pointing out that while you quickly jump to call them losers for buying their way to the top, others would call you a loser for playing computer 'games' in the basement all day.
Personally, I don't care if someone buys their way into a game, it's their choice. Life is full of people who don't share my values. The way people are getting angry over the idea in this thread is more telling about their own mentality. The feel cheated because they had to spend the time to get to the top of the stack, and others don't. Their status is being devaluated, because anyone can play at their level for a few bucks. Their accomplishment is cheapened as a result.
I wouldn't be so quick to toss around labels of 'loser'. It just kind of makes you look like a angry child who is pissed because he has to share his ball with other kids.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Whether or not he pays property tax on his car is going to depend a lot on what state he lives in. Some do have this.
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
The government passes a law saying I'm responsible for the tax liability of someone else's property?
That's just nonsensical.
So are all the trillions of US$ being thrown at bankers who gambled and lost. What else is new?
This really isn't that complicated. If Congress passes a law it's the law and it doesn't matter how nonsensical it is. I don't care if they pass a law saying that you have to wear a zebra suit and scream the words to O Canada from the top of a belltower at noon every day or face the death penalty. It's the law and as far as the courts are concerned you're obligated to follow it until you or someone else successfully challenges it and has it revoked. You can sit around thinking it's nonsensical as intensely as you like, but it will do nothing to change the fact that it's the law. You actually have to challenge the law in court or convince legislators to repeal it to have it overturned no matter how stupid it is. That's how stupid laws stay on the books to begin with. Since nobody ever enforces them, there's never anybody with a compelling interest to challenge them, and you wind up with silly morning news show fodder about how in Pitstink, OK there's a law that says you aren't allowed to wax a duck on Sundays. Technically, then, it's illegal in Pitstink OK to wax a duck on Sundays no matter how silly it is.
I don't know how self-centered I'd have to be to think my opinions shaped realities like law, but I really don't care to find out.
Adhominim
Fighting on principles is too expensive in America, which is why few people bother to do it.
It's not necessarily that fighting on principles in America is too expensive, it's just that things that go against principles are cost competitive with the fight.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Dude...
come on-- at least google "automobile property taxes" first.
Automobile and House property taxes are both extremely common.
And you are correct- you do not OWN your house. You only own it as long as you can pay your rent.. er.. property taxes to the government.
I'm against property taxes and for income taxes.
Property taxes really hurt people who lose their jobs or retire badly.
Income taxes only effect people who have jobs.
Sales taxes are objectionable but also acceptable.
But property taxes are really quite evil.
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But you must have taxes of some kind to pay for roads, municipal water, other government services (judges, policemen, city and state government buildings and salaries, etc.)
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I think I pay about $65 a year for auto property taxes and $3k a year for house property taxes. It's a major reason I do not own a bigger house- I could technically afford about twice the house I have but that would be $6k a year (basically $12k out of my gross) just for property taxes alone.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Since you can sell that property for money, it has value to you.
Picture it like this... you don't own a rental car- but you certainly pay taxes on it as part of your fee. They just don't break it out like your phone bills. (and i think the government passed a law two or three years ago that prevents phone companies from breaking out certain taxes to hide the level of taxes you are really paying).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.