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.
So you say you work out the middle man in this horrible scheme of capitalism. But I'm still concerned that the people who are farming right now at a severely reduced pay rate are doing so because they don't have the money to front for the operation and they have no choice but to remain a pawn. They make very little money and the real profits go to some American guy [slashdot.org] manipulating them all and paying for their accounts.
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.
How am I assured that my gold is not earned by some innocent kid who is doing this as a job to make money?
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 gold trading in the first place and you don't need any assurances about human rights.
Seriously, what kind of loser/sucker pays real money of in-game money anyway?
If *I* were running an MMORPG, I'd give it a working economy similar to EVE Online. WoW is big enough to have a player run economy with a limited (but not quite finite) amount of total cash, isn't it?
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.
So you say you work out the middle man in this horrible scheme of capitalism. But I'm still concerned that the people who are farming right now at a severely reduced pay rate are doing so because they don't have the money to front for the operation and they have no choice but to remain a pawn. They make very little money and the real profits go to some American guy manipulating them all and paying for their accounts.
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.
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.
I'd reckon they'd be better off not working a menial job that contributes nothing to themselves or society in general except to perpetuate a system of victimization. It's true they could starve but at least then they wouldn't be making the problem worse. One would hope instead that they'd do something productive and help change the system.
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.
Yeah, but they only get one hot pocket per day, and they probably get the chicken and broccoli kind too. No one should have to suffer through those kind of conditions.
Why do you think this will eliminate the middle man? They will now just have a set of prices to beat and offer 30% cheaper then the other company.
They didn't call it gamer2company.:-)
I think they are trying to fill in, where Ebay like companies have failed, and that's to allow one person to trade with another person (more personable), rather than having to deal with a company.
And yet nothing is there to prevent a company from having a representative post on the site to sell gold... and commercial gold farms will likely be able to undercut individual gamers' prices.
I think they are trying to fill in, where Ebay like companies have failed, and that's to allow one person to trade with another person (more personable), rather than having to deal with a company.
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.
And yet nothing is there to prevent a company from having a representative post on the site to sell gold...
If you want something that would prevent a bussiness from being able to conduct bussiness, then the only way to achieve that would be to pass a law that could then be enforced by a government.
Ebay did not fail to provide a marketplace. They chose not to, stating that they were trying to reduce their users' exposure to risk...
Haha, ya, and Slashdotters choose not to get laid all the time too. How
With the recent lawsuit against peons4hire.com, Blizzard appears intent on cracking down against the larger players in the business. How do you intend on avoiding legal issues?
My mistake. I still believe it's a relevant question though. Will they C&D if Bliz asks? If not, how are they going to defend against further action?
While I'm not against currency transfers, this seems a little bit like the business model of Sharman Networks, profiting on unauthorized transfers and sitting somewhere in the grey area of the law.
And companies don't have to file lawsuits to make life difficult for people using the service; if it's against their policies (and it usually is) to exchange virtual currency for external considerations, they'll happily boot players from the game if they find out they're doing it.
I'd like to know how/whether this company will work with the companies that run the games to keep this from happening.
Will your site will work out converting currencies in one game to currencies in another game--so that if I play Warcraft and Final Fantasy I can spend my gold for gil? If you are doing this, how are you going to keep these markets in check? Will it all just be normalized against the dollar?
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?
I'm pretty sure that the people linked from this article are not too reputable**. I'm not sure that they have even thought things through enough to deal with 1) the type of people that sell gold and 2) the lack of any in-game or RL repercussions Basically, setting up a service to circumvent the Terms of Service for these games (like these Real Money Transfers) is like setting up a service to purchase and distribute illegal RL items like firearms, gambling or narcotics: there isn't going to ever be an officia
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?
Legally (in most countries anyway), barter is taxable.. and it doesn't make much difference whether the "currency" is stamps, Mars bars, cans of Red Bull, or actual "cash".
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?
I believe that was the substance of a/. article some months ago...a state gubmint made some noises about taxing ordinary MMOG players on their virtual income, on grounds that gold farmers were endowing it with real value.
from my point of view there can only be a taxation for the transaction that actually involves real money 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 or may not be a legal tender. The trick is trying to define where to draw the line between "handing over cash for physical goods" and "virtual world virtual transactions". There's no obvious clear cut answer that fits all situations between.
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 revenue without (we should hope) seriously impacting the overall economy.
How do you plan to deal with the litigation against you that will inevitably spring up from companies like Blizzard & Sony that state this violates TOS and restrict auctions/selling on eBay and everywhere else?
Won't your business be built on shaky ground? What is to stop the MMO makers intentionally or inadvertantly causing hyper-inflation or hyper-deflation through updates to the game?
Particularly what internet protocols are you using, or equivalently how are you accessing these banks electronically? As an example: are we talking Financial Information eXchange [fixprotocol.org] or something different?
Do you currently have a plan in place for when these "Real Money Transfers" become taxable income? Will you be supplying tax documentation for your customers, or will that be their sole responsibility?
If they make less than $600/year, or make purchases out-of-state, it's their sole responsibility to report income/use, just like any other non-employee or out-of-state exchange of money. God forbid the citizens actually be exposed to the ridiculousness of their own tax system without a corporation there to fill out the forms.
If this does fly it could produce a method to invent and earn money by paying attention to the up-and-coming games and investing when they're undervalued or overvalued and additionally, their popularity. Unfortunately this will also prompt an age minimum and consumer taxes, but it would be interesting to see if it would even fly on a global level.
Purchases can be made using credit cards or Paypal, with Gamer2Gamer providing an escrow service to guarantee a safe transaction for the buyer. After in-game delivery is confirmed by the buyer, the site releases the transacted funds to the seller, completing the sale. The service is supported across games such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online, Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest 2, and CCP's EVE Online.
How will you protect against 'buyers' who put the money in the escrow service, receive the goods and then claim they never got them and demand the escrow back? In Warcraft, I could forward the gold to another character and claim I never got it. Then you have two customers in a dirty dispute. Wouldn't it be smarter (but more work) for you to also have an intermediary account in game to hold the goods and money at the same time? How do you plan to resolve these issues that auction sites like eBay have to deal with?
What if WoW catches wind of their accounts and shuts them down or, even worse, put the gold in a black hole instead of sending it to the buyer? Blizzard's not liable because they've got plenty of CYA in their policies, the buyers are demanding their money back and the sellers are out their gold and demanding their payment.
What happens if I make a delivery but the buyer claims otherwise?
We anticipate this scenario being extremely uncommon, particularly since Sparter uses state-of-the-art technology to root out fraud and to create a clean and safe marketplace. However, in the rare event of alleged buyer-fraud, we provide a dispute mechanism process to help you resolve the situation.
I had the same question and found this on their FAQ. It all sounds like a bunch of marketing BS to me. So my question is, what assurances or expla
I'm concerned that this platform is devoted to promoting activity that the largest game (WoW) explicitly forbids. How do you plan to handle the fact that the entire premise of your site is one that could get your "customers" banned from the games they play?
This is true for other MMOGs as well. I definately want to see this one asked. Could game producers issue take-down notices if they find ToS-restricted currency transactions (e.g., Guild Wars gold)?
A lot of MMO content is less enjoyable because of gold farmers and others looking at playing the game for monetary gain rather than enjoyment. What measures, if any, will be used to make sure that the sellers are legitimately playing the game? If not, how is this service actually helping the gamers for whom gold selling is an inconvenience?
What they're saying is people should be able to affect game play out-of-band just because they don't have the time to commit to legitimately compete with other players. The end result? Legitimate players get tired of BS headshots, or in this case, artificially inflated prices that force others to spend even more time farming for the items they want. So, everyone loses.
"...we think plenty of folks will like a world where Real Money Transfer is workable and unintrusive"
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?
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.
Many MMOs explicitly state in their Terms of Service that buying and selling of in-game goods for real currency is prohibited. While Sparter does not seem to be directly violating the ToS in this regard, Sparter will likely be deriving commercial benefit from use of trademarks owned by the game publishers. Another area of possible legal liability is in enabling and encouraging players to circumvent their contracts with game companies (as with Blizzard and Vivendi's recent countersuit against the creator of WoWglider) -- this would apply to any game where trading in game items or currency using real currency is prohibited.
Can you please comment on how Sparter plans to protect itself from the inevitable lawsuits and C&D notices from game publishers?
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?
Where will you be getting the gold that you will be selling? Do you purchase your initial stock from players? Will the game companies themselves be giving you a cache of cash to turn into cash? How will you keep your supply going? If you need to replenish your stock by yourself, are you going to farm gold, or hire third parties to do it for you?
(I will use WoW as my example- but I don't play it, so I apologize if I get terms or numbers wrong).
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.
Everquest 2 took this system, and it was a main reason that many people avoided it. The average user doesn't "want" to buy gold, and they want a level playing field. Gold-selling inherantly makes a system more biased towards favoring those who spend more money on the game.
Are you planning on making option and futures contracts available? It would be interesting to be able to do things like strangles, collars and calendar spreads. And Forex! WoW against Everquest currencies! Schools don't teach finance anymore - maybe something like this could take its place.
Given that nearly everyone in this industry asks you to agree to some kind of EULA to get access to their servers, you must break promises to be in this business at all.
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?
Are you going to be clear to your customers that trading virtual money might get them banned from the MMO they are playing? 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?
I've noticed this question several times on this list. Since Sparter doesn't actually play the MMORPG itself, why do people keep thinking that Sparter must abide by the EULA? The EULA is a contract between the game player and the game provider. 3rd parties such as Sparter are under no obligation to abide by the terms & conditions of contract to which they are not a participant. This question would be like asking why Sparter shouldn't be required to pay my mortgage. My mortgage is a contract between me
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 gold trading in the first place and you don't need any assurances about human rights.
Seriously, what kind of loser/sucker pays real money of in-game money anyway?
-matthew
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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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why? (Score:2)
I think the name answers that (Score:2)
I think they are trying to fill in, where Ebay like companies have failed, and that's to allow one person to trade with another person (more personable), rather than having to deal with a company.
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.
Parent
Ebay did fail (Score:2)
If you want something that would prevent a bussiness from being able to conduct bussiness, then the only way to achieve that would be to pass a law that could then be enforced by a government.
Haha, ya, and Slashdotters choose not to get laid all the time too. How
Legal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While I'm not against currency transfers, this seems a little bit like the business model of Sharman Networks, profiting on unauthorized transfers and sitting somewhere in the grey area of the law.
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I'd like to know how/whether this company will work with the companies that run the games to keep this from happening.
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, setting up a service to circumvent the Terms of Service for these games (like these Real Money Transfers) is like setting up a service to purchase and distribute illegal RL items like firearms, gambling or narcotics: there isn't going to ever be an officia
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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?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
rj
Re: (Score:2)
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 or may not be a legal tender. The trick is trying to define where to draw the line between "handing over cash for physical goods" and "virtual world virtual transactions". There's no obvious clear cut answer that fits all situations between.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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 revenue without (we should hope) seriously impacting the overall economy.
Litigation (Score:5, Interesting)
Will your servers be foreign based to avoid this?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Taxes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Something unforseen: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheating Your System (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I had the same question and found this on their FAQ. It all sounds like a bunch of marketing BS to me. So my question is, what assurances or expla
RMT Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Parent
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
This question would be like asking why Sparter shouldn't be required to pay my mortgage. My mortgage is a contract between me