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Ask the MMOG Money Traders
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jun 14, 2007 12:18 PM
from the how-much-for-that-sword-in-the-window dept.
from the how-much-for-that-sword-in-the-window dept.
Late yesterday, Sparter Inc. announced the Gamer2Gamer virtual currency trading platform. The goal: to provide a secure currency trading environment for players of Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Rather than purchasing currency outright, the goal of the project is to cut out the middleman and (implicitly) the gold-farming consortiums that supply larger for-pay sites. We were contacted by a representative from the company before the release went out, looking to speak with the Slashdot community about the service. In his words, the folks at Gamer2Gamer "are devoted gamers themselves and are well aware that not everyone will like the idea -- but we think plenty of folks will like a world where Real Money Transfer is workable and unintrusive." And so, you get the chance today to put the hard questions to them. One question per comment, please, and we'll pass on the best of the lot to be answered as soon as possible. Update: 06/14 17:58 GMT by Z : Howzer points out that there is an extensive FAQ on the service, that you can use as a springboard for questions.
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The MMOG Moneysellers Respond To Your Questions 228 comments
Last week we asked you for questions to pass on to the folks behind the Gamers2Gamers RMT service. The response, from reading the comments, was mixed. The thinking seemed to mostly be that this was a marketing stunt, aimed at getting people to check out their website. There were several good questions, though, and we passed on the hardest ones to Sparter CEO Dan Kelly and CTO Boris Putanec. The response from these executives should lay to rest for you the issue of whether this was a marketing ploy or not. Moreover, some of their answers give insight into the company's grasp of the RMT market as a whole, and their chances of success in the competitive MMOG genre. I encourage you to read on to see how they've responded to our queries. Thanks to the Sparter execs for their timely response.
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The Assured Protection of Human Rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell me again how your service does not promote this middle man from acting like a player? How am I assured that my gold is not earned by some innocent kid who is doing this as a job to make money? How am I assured this isn't still some cog in a scheme to exploit foreign workers?
Disclaimer for the rest of Slashdot: I'm well aware of the situations where this may be the person's only means of income. I still would rather not support this system.
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As someone else said, the easy answer to this is to just play the damn game yourself and earn your own in-game money. Simple. Don't get involved in
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I find ironic that the most popular online *game* in the world is so readily compared to work.
-matthew
Re:The Assured Protection of Human Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that WoW shards aren't large enough to have the critical mass needed for a real economy. Even in EVE, with everyone crammed into a single "world / shard / server", it's still possible that you can't find item X for sale. Or that a few producers have banded together and created a monopoly on item Y. (Although, at least with EVE and the roughly 30-45k active players, it's rare that it happens.)
The usual problems in MMO economies are:
- Crafting / manufacturing is not as profitable per hour as adventuring. Often because NPC vendors sell identical product too cheaply (worse, with infinite inventory). EVE handles this by making nearly everything as player-made, NPC vendors sell only a small handful of base goods.
- NPCs that buy goods. This gets more into the money supply issue. But it causes problems for producers. If NPCs are buying a raw material at price X, that sets a floor on the raw material price. Often that floor price is out of sync with what the market really feels that the raw material is worth. Which leads to problems obtaining raw materials. In EVE, NPCs don't buy raw or finished materials.
- Item destruction is a required aspect. If items never wear out, players never need to purchase new items. Which means that the economy grinds to a halt. Soul-binding of equipment isn't the answer. Equipment needs to wear out, with the option to repair it - but repairs should cost money and possibly a *lot* of money. In EVE, because of PvP and the death penalty, equipment is constantly being destroyed (you might get back 5% of your gear after a ship loss).
- Single markets = 2-dimensional economies that don't work. Distance and location need to be part of the economy. Travel in the MMO needs to require time / effort or money. That allows multiple producers to compete without one producer getting 100% of the volume because they undercut prices by 1 copper. EVE handles this by limiting markets to Regions (and there are 50+ regions). You can only search pricing within a region, so you have to travel a bit in order to check on prices in other regions. There's no "fast travel" - 20 jumps is 20 jumps. So often a buyer will pay a premium to purchase goods that are physically closer.
And that just glosses the surface of what is required to have a "working" economy in an MMO.
Nonsense. Popular nonsense, but still nonsense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Your premise is entirely wrong, therefor it's not really possible to answer your question in a way that will satisfy you.
The only part of your question that's relevent is this: Is everyone freely engaging in these transactions? If so, they must believe that they benefit from it. Can the worker quit and find another way to eek out a living? Can the employer fire him and hire someone else? Are you free to not play the MMOG in question? Are you free to not buy gold from this seller? Is the seller free to not sell gold from you? The alternatives may be less pleasent, but they are still alternatives.
By arbitrarily saying I'm well aware of the situations where this may be the person's only means of income. I still would rather not support this. You're setting up field such that no answer will satisfy you, and any transaction that involves Americans paying foriegners for unskilled labor is evil exploitation.
No one who thinks like you do can possibly be pleased. Why bother?
This is what happens when you take too many classes about 'social justice': Your head gets filled with confused thinking about victims, oppressors, capitilist pigs, poor exploited foreigners and the like.
Re:The Assured Protection of Human Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
The farming job is the one they choose and the one that THEY Decided was the best choice for them.
FYI - I use to work at one of these 'victim' jobs and so have many others like me who went on and started successful businesses and have attained relatively great levels of prosperity. You must be one of those 'college know it all' hippies.
They live in mud and have no money. A foreign company comes in and offers them jobs with no skills - which are the only kind of jobs they can do. And you want to take those jobs away?
Besides, suggesting that they are just as well of starving doesn't help your arguement.
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Why? (Score:2)
I think the name answers that (Score:2)
I think they are trying to fill in, where Ebay like companies have
Re:I think the name answers that (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebay did not fail to provide a marketplace. They chose not to, stating that they were trying to reduce their users' exposure to risk (assumedly, from both fraud and legal action by the game companies). I'm certain they were also reducing their risk and expenses, both from dealing with fraud (in-game currency transactions have a high rate of fraud) and from legal fees if asked to C&D by game companies.
Ebay did fail (Score:2)
Legal? (Score:4, Interesting)
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While I'm not against currency transfers, this seems a little bit like the business model of Sha
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Market Control & Conversion System? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bottom line question is whether or not you'll control dumping of virtual currency or if you'll institute ranges. If you're not instituting limits or regulating in a Federal Reserve type manner, how are you going to protect against a single person running the market (buying all the gold and sitting on it while letting it drip out slowly at an extreme amount of USD)?
Will you post graphs of each MMO's currency so we can watch currencies like SWG's credit against Warcraft's Gold?
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Basically,
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Man, eldavjohn you sure to have a lot of replies in this thread!
Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Inevitably, when Governments hear about money being passed around, their first thought is how to tax it. MMOGs can take the position that their currency isn't real, and therefore shouldn't be taxed. However, being able to transfer virtual currency for real cash weakens that argument.
I personally don't want to play a game where I have to pay sales tax on buying items, or income tax for an in-game business, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Given this, do you see any foreseeable ways to keep taxes out of games?
Re:Taxes (Score:4, Informative)
That said, hardly anyone actually declares barter to tha tax man.. so the question really should go to the taxman.. are they going to enforce taxes on bartering of virtual cash, or not?
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rj
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I realise that what you mean by 'real money' is 'legal tender' but there are any number of things that are used as money in the world that may
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from my point of view there can only be a taxation for the transaction that actually involves real money.
That's your point of view. The point of view that really counts here is the government, which tends to make up whatever rules will maximize its rev
Litigation (Score:5, Interesting)
Will your servers be foreign based to avoid this?
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How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Taxes (Score:3, Interesting)
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Something unforseen: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheating Your System (Score:5, Interesting)
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RMT Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
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What are the real measures that will be taken? (Score:4, Interesting)
Terms of Service (Score:5, Interesting)
Same argument used by cheaters (Score:2)
MUDflation (Score:3, Interesting)
It's well known that real money for game currency helps contribute to mudflation by providing volumes of game capital to players unable to achieve the same. Such dilution of the value of currency on a game thereby impacts every player of that game as costs go up but gained rewards by playing the game does not.
If you envision a world where Real Money Transfer is "unintrusive", how do you compensate for MUDflation? What steps do you intend to take to truly be unintrusive on other players?
Re:MUDflation (Score:5, Insightful)
Selling in-game cash for real cash is not the primary cause of MUDflation! I know you've heard a lot of people say it is, but that doesn't make it true.
Think about how most MUD game economies work from first principles for a minute: you "harvest" unlimited resources mostly to sell to in-game "vendors" that have unlimited cash. That's what causes the inflation -- an unlimited supply of money!
Consider, too, what most purchasers of in-game cash use it for: to pour into the in-game money sinks (buying your "spells", buying your "horse") which instantly removes it from circulation.
MUD economies are broken, and primed for massive inflation from the get-go. In-game money-sinks are efforts to stave this off, but whenever there is infinite supply of money, there will be inflation.
Most MUDs also have players of widely disparate levels (and thus "incomes") playing "together" which further exacerbates the inflation (Eg. It's worth less to me, a high level, to haggle with you, a low level, about some in-game resource I'm buying from you than to simply pay you whatever you're asking. Pretty soon the "accepted price" for whatever it is rises.)
All the above considered, gold farming might slightly increase the inflation rate --- but this is dwarfed by factors that are built into the system.
Game Terms of Service (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you please comment on how Sparter plans to protect itself from the inevitable lawsuits and C&D notices from game publishers?
Let's ask questions not in the FAQ! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sparter has an extensive FAQ [sparter.com] which answers everything from how they make money (commission) to how they "guarantee" you get the "goods" (they stick your money in escrow until you say "got the gold!" from the seller)
So let's ask some questions not in the FAQ, eh?! Here's mine:
For such an incredibly simple service, you seem to have a hugely top-heavy management team, which means big running costs, which explains your exorbitant 10 percent commission. What's to stop me (or anyone) setting up a simpler, leaner service doing exactly the same thing and charging 5 percent?
Or, if that's too hard, try this one:
You claim you use (quoting from your site) "state-of-the-art technology to root out fraud". Since simple fraud -- I say I didn't get something that someone says they gave me in game -- can't be checked by you unless you have the keys to WoW or EQ2 or SWG (or whatever) what "state-of-the-art technology" would you be talking about?
Product Source (Score:2)
How do you know the seller isn't a farmer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Possible solution- (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this could solve the problems of gold selling. You have an in-game auction house where you can sell and buy gold for real money, using the credit card you have on the account. Blizzard would probably take a small cut of the money (say 5-10%). However, it would be set up so that the gold you sell will be taken off next month's bill, with the stipulation that you can reduce your bill to 0, but you can't reduce it past 0. People trying to make a profit would have to use another system (and since people aren't actually making money with this system, Blizzard can avoid alot of IRS madness).
This would pose a huge problem for dedicated gold sellers.
1. Since you can't earn more money than you are paying Blizzard anyway, you can't turn a profit using this system.
2. People trying to turn a profit will need to establish a secondary 'black market'
3. The black market would be less convinient than the legitimate one- you'd have to set up a meeting outside of the game entirely, just like gold sellers do now.
4. The black market is less trustworthy than Blizzard's market- your gold isn't guaranteed the way Blizzard's system would be.
5. Since anyone can sell gold easily, the competition in the legit market would be huge.
6. #3 and #4 means that the black market would have to sell gold at a fraction of the price of the legit market to sell gold at all- and #5 means the base price is low.
7. End result: Gold farming for massive profit is impossible. Gold farming for minor profit is really hard. Gold farming for for free WoW time is possible, and those with plenty of time will be able to.
I know some people object to gold buying because they believe that it's cheating. These people could be placed on server(s) that don't have the cash-gold auction house. Most people's objections to gold farmers, though, is that profit-seeking groups destroy fun by wrecking economies, camping mobs, hogging quest items, etc. Those groups will cease to exist once they can't turn a good profit. Everyone wins- people who object to the trade get their own server where there is no selling, and people who want to trade get servers where gold farming groups don't have a motive to disrupt anyone else. Oh, I guess the gold farmer's don't win, but that's sorta the point.
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Derivatives market? (Score:2)
What about agreements? (Score:4, Interesting)
So why should we trust you? If you're willing to lie to them, how do we know you aren't lying to us, too?
Honesty? (Score:3, Interesting)
World of Warcraft's Terms of Service is pretty nasty. It basically reserves the right to ban any account they feel like without providing any reason. Your FAQ says that you realize that some game companies don't want players trading virtual goods while you think it is a gamer's right to be able to trade virtual itmes. I'm pretty sure that statement isn't going to save your customers from getting banned from WoW.
Also, how does your company feel about possibly ruining game experiences for others gamers? Many MMO companies design their game economy around the fact that players can only obtain money through the game mechanics, without any outside effects. If your company destroys the fun factor of a game by ruining the economy, how will you deal with the possible legal action coming from the companies that have a decimated user base?
Copyright != Stealing (Score:2)
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