Ask the MMOG Money Traders 239
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.
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.
Legal? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Items? (Score:1, Interesting)
Litigation (Score:5, Interesting)
Will your servers be foreign based to avoid this?
How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Taxes (Score:3, Interesting)
Cheating Your System (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the real measures that will be taken? (Score:4, Interesting)
Terms of Service (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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?
Re:Legal? (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.
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?
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.
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?
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:MUDflation (Score:2, Interesting)
It DOES happen and it's not because MUD economies are broken. Give them some credit. Every MUD has money sinks as well as unlimited resources. You know what the factor is which moderates it all? TIME.
Gaining money takes time and effort. That determines the price of goods. That's time and effort you spent that someone else didn't have to. Simple (real) example: if you can kill mobs for 100g/hour, or mine 20 "khorium" bars per hour, then khorium bars are going to be worth 5g each, plus a fee for having to specialise to mine it in the first place.
What also needs bearing in mind is that often these activities involve doing repetitive/boring/unrewarding tasks. That usually increases the price some more still - and in fact this is the most profitable thing to do - because people are most willing to spend their gold on goods which they don't want to farm for themselves. Or goods which requires severe specialisation and time sinks to craft or obtain.
It is the gold selling industry that is the problem. They don't value their time as much as you do. They don't value it at all, in fact. The people they hire are lowest wage workers who spent their entire day doing the same thing over, and over again. They don't have some other fun questing to do, or raid to do, or some item they're working towards. No, they just have to do that to get their real life wages.
A recent problem is that often these farmers are bots. That is a clear violation of ToS - and people that buy from them are scum. They have virtually no cost to run and have no concept of how valuable their time is.
And so the economy starts getting fucked. Gold is sold straight to a player. Players start running around with ridiculous amounts of gold. It's usually very, very obvious when people do this because they end up with massive amounts of high end gear that would have taken masses of time and experience to obtain, but SOMEHOW don't have the playing skills or knowledge that you would have figured out having done that... The effect is that the cost of items goes up, because suddenly everyone has a lot of gold.
And then all the people with weak personalities cry that everyone else has more gear than them, and they can't afford to keep up. They go buy gold, and make the problem worse. More demand for goods, more people with money... higher cost of goods again. The cycle continues. The weak personalities say it's the only way you can keep up... etc... etc...
So yes, there is inflation, but ironically it's caused by the gold selling industry. So the next time you buy gold from them because the item you want is expensive, just think about how you did it to yourself when you first bought gold, how you've been caught like a fool in a nice little trap, and how you're screwing up the game for the rest of us. Die in a fire.
You're still posting as a hippie. Or a communist. (Score:1, Interesting)
If you are going to argue exploitation in the case of gold farming companies, you had better start arguing exploitation in the case of every single company in existence. The net result, of course, would firmly label you as a communist. Is that the point you want to be making? If so, just come out and say it. If not, quit with the exploitation crap.
Re:Litigation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Assured Protection of Human Rights (Score:2, Interesting)