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A Case Study of RMTs In EVE Online
Kheldon writes with an article at MMO Gamer which explores how well real money transactions work in online games, using EVE Online as a test case. Quoting:
"... My next problem came from trying to sell the [Game Time cards] through the 'Time Code Bazaar' on the forums. While I quickly found buyers, none of them actually went through with the deal. This is the inherent problem with developer sanctioned RMT. Unless true, unfettered, player-to-player transactions are allowed without developer 'regulation,' the market will inevitably be operating inefficiently. Consider gold-farmers for a moment. Setting aside the moral or legal aspects of the trade, and considering from a purely economic standpoint, gold-farmers are the RMT equivalent of large corporations. They operate on the concept of 'economies-of-scale,' which basically means that up to a certain point, the larger a company is, the cheaper they can produce that product. Of course, companies that can produce a product more cheaply can undercut the competition while maintaining the same profit margin; meaning they'll make more sales, giving them more overall profit, and supporting the corporate growth, which furthers the economy of scale. This is the market at its most pure."
Ehmmm, not really. Let's do a case by case comparison with player A and player B.
Scenario 1:
Player A pays his subscription the regular way and spends the month earning 1 billion isk.
Player B pays his subscription the regular way and spends the month earning 200 million isk.
Scenario 2:
Player B pays his own subscription the regular way and buys a gametime card with real life money.
Player A, being very good at making isk, buys the gametime card from player B for a sum of ingame money.
End result of both scenarios is the same. CCP has received the real life money for 2 subscriptions, and the actual amount of isk(ingame money) has not changed. Ergo, no inflation has taken place.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
"The other major problem is that there is no sanctioned way to convert the ISK back into real world dollars."
This is important. Very important. This is the only reason why EVEs system is something the players are willing to accept. As soon as you could convert ISK into real USD, the whole game would go down the crapper in record time.
The current EVE system allows the "high end" players to shift the cost of their subscription to a more casual player while paying in ingame assets. There is little incentive to go all-out mad ISK farm as all you can get with ISK (legimately) is game time and the economy is not harmed. It places a soft cap in what you can get by "selling ISK", yet lets people "buy ISK" legimately. Coupled with CCPs self-interest to ban people who deal illegimately (outside the PLEX/GTC system) it truly helps. Every seller (ISK for real money) CCP bans is their competitor as CCP gets the money from the fees used to buy game time. Makes it also easy to justify the enforcement costs.
In the end, every EVE account subscription is paid to CCP in real money and the ISK just changes hands in-game without anyone profiting from it out-of-game. The only party that truly gains is CCP in the form of additional subscriptions - mostly high end players subscribing to multiple accounts simply because they can shift the cost to someone else by paying the subscriptions with ingame assets that the high end players can accumulate faster. Free market also keeps everything in check - if too many people want to buy ISK with time, the ISK value of 30 days of gametime plummets. If too many people want to pay their game time with ISK, the ISK value of game time goes up. Recently the ISK value of game time has been going up.
It truly is the most ingenous way of tackling the problem of RMT I've seen so far. Different from every other system in subtle yet important ways that tie directly to the EVE model where PvP is everywhere and every ship you lose really hurts your bottom line. It truly is the only MMO with a real, working in-game economic system at the moment. The rest are usually inflationary (see: World of Warcraft, even if they have kept the system somewhat sane, there is way too much excess gold floating there)