Someone buys a membership to a gym (these games are memberships to, for all intents and purposes, a service or a club). Said person spends a lot of time working out with the bench press. So much time in fact, that he hogs it up 12 hours a day, during prime time hours.
Eventually, said person doesn't want or need to use it all that time, so, they decide to sell off usage. He figures that he has the potential of using that entire time, so, why not sell some of "his" time to other members?
It's basically the same concept. You are leasing an intellectual property that belongs to someone else. You should not be able to profit from it, without an agreement with the property owner.
Same thing goes for movies, music, books, software and the list goes on.
The big question I have though, how do we know that the majority of said auctioneers are not indeed employees at Verant Interactive - Sony, or whatever the associated software company is?
If I was a manager at VI/Sony and I seen the interest in people buying in game items for real money, I would probably setup auctions as an official, un-written, policy. What better way of making more money with your intellectual property? Heck, they could probably make as much or more on selling items in auction then they do on membership fees. =)
Of course, you would have to have an official policy that stated such things were not allowed, to help defeat competition from members doing the same thing. =)
Slashdot Mirror
Think of it this way:
Someone buys a membership to a gym (these games are memberships to, for all intents and purposes, a service or a club). Said person spends a lot of time working out with the bench press. So much time in fact, that he hogs it up 12 hours a day, during prime time hours.
Eventually, said person doesn't want or need to use it all that time, so, they decide to sell off usage. He figures that he has the potential of using that entire time, so, why not sell some of "his" time to other members?
It's basically the same concept. You are leasing an intellectual property that belongs to someone else. You should not be able to profit from it, without an agreement with the property owner.
Same thing goes for movies, music, books, software and the list goes on.
The big question I have though, how do we know that the majority of said auctioneers are not indeed employees at Verant Interactive - Sony, or whatever the associated software company is?
If I was a manager at VI/Sony and I seen the interest in people buying in game items for real money, I would probably setup auctions as an official, un-written, policy. What better way of making more money with your intellectual property? Heck, they could probably make as much or more on selling items in auction then they do on membership fees. =)
Of course, you would have to have an official policy that stated such things were not allowed, to help defeat competition from members doing the same thing. =)
Laters,
CRT_Leech