The MMOG Moneysellers Respond To Your Questions 228
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.
Marketing by Zonk: Many users expressed annoyance that you wanted to speak directly with them via this venue. Your interest in speaking with users was seen by many as a blatant attempt at marketing. Is your interest in contacting Slashdot motivated more by an interest in talking over the issue of RMT in a public forum, or are you primarily interested in promoting your new service?
Sparter Executives:
We believe Sparter is a product that helps gamers and so of course want to let them know about it. But a core part of our mission is putting a bright light on RMT and promoting a fair and open conversation about gamers' interest in buying and selling game items.
We think there are good things about RMT, but also recognize the bad behavior that it sometimes engenders (though bad behavior in-game is not limited to people who trade gold). We need to sort fact from conjecture and based upon a good debate of the issues work together to build a workable solution. Our point of view is that spammers, bot farmers, hackers and dupers are the real villains. The gamer who has gold to sell and the gamer who wants to buy are not bad people and supporting their needs can help the industry grow. We approached Slashdot because it's a great forum in which to initiate the conversation.
RMT Legality by Cirak:
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?
Sparter Executives:
Good question. Here's how we see it: publishers do not have the right to tell gamers that they can't accept money from someone outside of the game. Trade can only happen when the game design provides the mechanism for transfer of game items. It's quite common for gamers to barter with each other in game (e.g., I'll give you 5 gold if you'll lead me on a quest, farm these for me while I farm those for you, entry fees to join guilds, etc) but publishers want to say that it's wrong for you to give someone $5 outside of the game?
We hope to convince publishers that gamers should be viewed differently than in-game spammers, bot farmers, hackers and, to some extent, B2C sites. Our goal is to keep RMT between gamers. Buying from another gamer on Sparter is 30-40% cheaper than buying from a professional seller's web site and it puts money in the pocket of another gamer. This is bad for IGE and good for the industry. What's more, healthy secondary markets grow primary markets.
Our ultimate goal is to partner with publishers to protect their rights, reward them for the value they create, and be more effective in banning spammers, bot farmers and hackers from a sanctioned secondary marketplace. Until then, we do our best to make sure our users are aware of the risks that non-sanctioned RMT presents in games where the publisher is hostile to their consumers' needs.
Legal? by pionzypher:
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 suits against the company?
Sparter Executives:
The peons4hire suit focuses on that company's use of WoW's in-game mail system to market peons4hire's services. Gold selling is not part of the suit. As gamers we support Blizzard in its attempts to shut down in-game spamming. We don't advertise in-game and never will without publisher approval.
There are several reasons why we think publishers are not likely to sue Sparter. First, we think publishers realize that they don't have the right to restrict a user from receiving compensation from another user outside of the game. In fact, RMT cannot occur if the game design doesn't allow for one user to hand-off an item to another user. The only difference with RMT is that rather than giving the item as a gift or in barter (e.g., for another item or help in the game), you are receiving real money outside of the game. Second, the risk of losing in court is potentially disastrous for the publisher. This is why we view the lawsuit against IGE by the contingency lawyer in Miami as potentially hazardous to the industry. Sparter is trying to be proactive on this issue by requiring that all our users recognize the rights of content originators and the limitations of gamers' rights. Third, we estimate there are several hundred B2C web sites in operation, most outside of the jurisdiction of US courts. Lawsuits are not going to be effective in shutting down RMT. As long as there is a demand, there will be a supply. So let's figure out the best way for the demand to be served and take control of the situation for the benefit of gamers and the industry as a whole.
What are the real measures that will be taken? by moderatorrater:
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?
Sparter Executives:
Sparter does not buy or sell game items and we don't have an in-game presence. As a result, we cannot know for sure how our sellers behave in the game. But if you believe as we do that the truly damaging behavior is exhibited by the spammers, bot farmers, hackers and dupers, then the more we migrate the market to a true gamer-to-gamer exchange, the harder it is for those folks to profit from their actions.
We designed Sparter to give the gamer every opportunity to compete with the professional seller. They play for love of the game, don't have any overhead, marketing costs or customer service operations. The gamer will always be able to undercut the B2C. There will always be sellers of different sizes, but gamers are selling on Sparter and taking business away from the B2Cs like IGE and peons4hire (some of whom not only spam in-game but, we suspect, are the primary currency outlet for the dupers, hackers and bot farmers). In fact, our typical seller undercuts IGE by 30-40% and is making enough to pay for his WoW subscription.
Without a partnership with the publisher, we have no way of knowing how our sellers are behaving in game. That's why we're talking with developers and publishers and asking them to partner with us to help regulate the secondary market and, when justified, ban those who behave badly from not only the game (e.g., publisher shuts down their account) but also the marketplace (e.g., Sparter bans their selling account for all games). We are well positioned to view trading activity and supply levels by game, server and seller. If we see something suspicious, we would gladly flag this for a publisher for further investigation. Our goal is to be the marketplace for good gamers; the truly bad actors of the RMT world can sell their gold elsewhere.
Heavyweight Perception by Zonk
The heads of several Massive development firms have come out squarely against the concept of Real Money Transfer in current AAA online games. For example, Mark Jacobs of EA Mythic has been particularly vocal in his opinion of the practice. Given the negative view of RMT by these companies, do you have any plans to attempt to sway their opinions? Ie: will there be any attempt to have game companies 'buy in' on the Gamers2Gamers concept, in a theoretical rather than financial manner?
Sparter Executives:
We definitely want to get publishers and developers on board with Sparter and Gamer2Gamer trade. We're talking to many publishers and explaining our perspective on the situation. We spend a lot of time asking questions and listening to their concerns. We think Sparter is on the right path to create a workable solution for the industry, but if there are better ideas we want to hear them. That is also why we approached Slashdot, so we could hear from gamers other than those using our service.
We think it's certain behaviors such as spamming, bot farming, hacking and duping that cause the most concern. Many see the B2Cs such as IGE as supporters of these behaviors; we see B2Cs as unnecessary in the long term if we can turn this into a C2C market. If publishers can help us do this we can keep the purchasing power that is going to B2Cs in the pockets of gamers. That's good for publishers and good for the industry. There are many issues wrapped into how RMT is perceived and we need to start breaking the problem down and creating solutions.
Cheating Your System by eldavojohn:
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?
Sparter Executives:
Our first goal is to protect the buyer; we do this by escrowing the buyer's funds and not paying the seller unless they deliver. As a result it is impossible for a seller to profit on Sparter by defrauding a buyer. The "lying buyer" is a different problem. We do have systems in place to catch fraudsters and identify suspicious patterns of behavior, and we use this information to ban buyers we suspect of lying (a costly ban since they can never buy on Sparter again). But we cannot entirely fix this problem without help from publishers. By choosing to not support their consumers' needs, publishers have cast gamers into a very risky grey market dominated by B2Cs and replete with fraud. Organizing a clean and sanctioned market is the best way to protect good gamers.
The Assured Protection of Human Rights by eldavojohn:
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 middleman from acting like a player? How am I assured that some innocent kid who is doing this as a job to make money does not earn my gold? How am I assured this isn't still some cog in a scheme to exploit foreign workers?
Sparter Executives:
We believe that C2C markets like Sparter's Gamer2Gamer exchange empower and help the people you mentioned. By lowering the cost of entry, Sparter allows everyone to be listed and compete in an integrated, open marketplace. Just as eBay and others have made it possible for thousands of small home-based businesses to flourish, we believe a C2C approach to RMT will create entrepreneurs out of the people who can only be employees now.
In recent years, a lot of folks have come to connect RMT to goldfarming sweatshops. We fully recognize that many gamers have hard feelings toward farmers, but the sweatshop assumption has been blown out of proportion. Our experience is that the reality is far more complex. It is important to keep in mind that farming produces a competitive wage and is not a low-quality job in the countries we are talking about. To see what we mean, check out the recent article about this subject in the New York Times Magazine by Julian Dibbell (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html).
FraudStopping by Howzer:
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?
Sparter Executives:
This question is very similar to the earlier "Cheating Your System" question which outlines the fraud problem. As mentioned there, we have systems which look at all aspects of the transaction to gauge its likeliness to be fraudulent. Our strongest long-term weapon is the ability to ban participants from the marketplace, a tactic which is much more effective in the C2C world where a scammer cannot just move on to the next gold selling B2C website. Since gamers on Sparter tend to under price the B2Cs by 30-40%, getting banned for bad behavior is stealing from your own pocket.
Market Control & Conversion System? by eldavojohn:
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?
Sparter Executives:
We are always evaluating new features and functionality for Sparter's platform, and some gamers have asked for direct currency to currency trades. As you suggest, the current solution is to trade one MMO currency into USD and then buy the other MMO currency with USD. The current per game/realm/faction currency graphs against USD would allow you to synthesize cross-currency graphs if you were interested in a particular combination.
Your "control of the market" questions raise a very interesting point that bears some careful analysis. There is a good reason why the Federal Reserve is separate and distinct from the SEC and the banks--this allows each to make the best decision for their area of responsibility. Internally, we have discussed implementing curbs on certain activities, but those actions have not been taken to date. This is an area where we would welcome input from developers, publishers, traders, gamers and economists on the best set of rules to follow. The right rules for environments where production theoretically is infinite are not always easy to determine.
Taxes by hardburn:
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?
Sparter Executives:
We cannot give tax advice and anyone who has specific questions about their situation should consult a tax professional. However, as we see it this issue is much bigger than just RMT, with governments thinking very hard about how to tap the revenue from all forms of online commerce. The constant debate about charging sales tax for Internet transactions is a perfect example--maybe a hopeful one since the catalog/online industries have managed to avoid that so far.
As to your question about income tax, because our typical seller is earning roughly enough to pay for his WoW subscription, we see selling on Sparter as analogous to selling on eBay, putting on a garage sale, or running a great lemonade stand.
But the TOS agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
but they do have the right to say if you want to play our game then you may not accept money from someone outside of the game for in game services/items/whatever because it's a private game on private servers, and the TOS you agree to when you play the game. Just seems like more people and more people want to make a buck no matter who they trample over.
+1 Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
I like how they say how bad bots and exploits are, but they have no in game method to watch it.
A startup company shouldn't start with the double-talk until the actually start being successful.
Dear MMOG RTM sellers.... (Score:2, Insightful)
While I'm happy you feel the need to roll around in large wads of money, I don't feel the need to become beholden to you when you drive up market costs so much that everyone is forced to buy from you.
RMT is the natural result of the grind (Score:5, Insightful)
So if publishers really want to stop RMT, they should look at the cause and not the symptom.
Nice Marketing Piece (Score:5, Insightful)
A non-answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But the TOS agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
So long as virtual items remain virtual the agreement has some legal binding (though that is questionable as well, even a contract can't make you sign away certain rights as I understand it). I'd rank the questionality of these activities somewhere around watching anime only released in Japan online, it's not exactly legal, but the chance of being sued for making it available is low and the chance of losing a lot by doing it even lower. Blizzard (or another company) would have to get evidence that one or more in-game trades were precipitated by this service, which would require a lot more work than it sounds like. Firstly the act of trading a large amount of money in and of itself can't be considered for evidence. Even if it can be shown that both players involved have accounts with these moneysellers, and that one may work for the moneysellers, that doesn't mean the trade was due to real money being exchanged. To go after these guys Blizzard (or another company) would have to show that real money was exchanged, a difficult proposition with detectives and much more difficult for a group who have little real world presence in terms of law enforcement.
He's probably wrong, at the moment. In all likelyhood the count would uphold that, for now, the company has the right to tell gamers they can't do that. But, much as with DRM at the moment, they have little ability to stop gamers. The moment they confiscate too many accounts that weren't involved in questionable activities is the moment the court may start looking at them in a different light, even taking away virtual possessions that have time value to their owner can be considered confiscation of possessions which requires at least some proof. It's a gray area, I doubt the big MMO's will go after them because of the dangers involved but what they are doing is, at least to my understanding at the present time, questionably legal...
Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind (Score:5, Insightful)
Liars and fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, "our site will be full of fraud and we can't stop it but we're going to try to make this the game publisher's problem." In the mean time we can count on them to ban an internet based identity, something which has been shown to be a totally effective way of holding people accountable for their behavior.
Even if they could prevent fraud this site would become a clearing house for converting stolen or compromised accounts into real money.
Their entire plan seems to be an attempt to try to get game publishers to give them access to the game world itself in order to integrate their services into the game.
answers without answers (Score:2, Insightful)
Everything asked, nothing answered (Score:5, Insightful)
Allow me to summarize:
Is this a marketing stunt?
No. It's just a way to get word of our product out to our target demo.
Will your product get us banned from WoW?
Probably, but use our service anyways 'cause Blizzard is such a meanie.
Will you get sued?
We're hoping not to.
How are you going to prevent farmers from selling?
We aren't 'cause, like, farmers will pay us too. Did we mention that other RMT sites totally suck?
Do the makers of the games like you?
Our business plan is awesome, and the game makers think so. At least, we think they should. We haven't really asked them. But we're totally going to real soon.
Can a buyer cheat a seller?
Yes. Nothing we can do about it, and that's totally Blizzard's fault for not liking us.
How will you "eliminate the middleman"? What about sweatshops?
Middleman: We don't (please ignore that we say we do). Sweatshops: By pretending they don't exist, lalalala.
Will you tell us about the "anti-fraud" tech you use?
No, because we don't actually have any aside from looking at the logs every now and then.
How will you handle conversion? How will you stop someone from hording gold?
Conversion: Duh, dunno. Somehow. Hording: Uhh, we're hoping someone else will do that for us. For free. Any takers?
How will you deal with players being taxed, present and possible future?
We have no fucking clue. Go ask H&R Block or something.
They managed to evade answering any of the questions asked of them by either redirecting the answer to a talking-point, or by ignoring the question altogether. Everything was put in the frame of their "average, ideal customer" who is bright eyed Johnny trying to trade his extra Sword of Goodness for a few dollars to take Molly to the drive-in. They have no plans or use cases for dealing with fraudsters, changing markets, hoarders, an intrusive government, lawsuits, customer disputes (legitimate or not), human rights violations, international law, changing tax environments, or business-to-business relations. They are literally assuming that everything will just go right-- and their entire business model depends entirely on everything going right.
So in other-words, another buzzy company with no clue who is going to singlehandedly revolutionize the marketplace, and everyone will love them. Sure thing. I'll be by in 3 months to purchase your astroglide chairs and pinball machines for pennies on the dollar at your bankruptcy auction.
Re:But the TOS agreement (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:RMT is the natural result of the grind (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly you mentioned roleplaying. That's another kind of MMO player that needs less from devs. No one's really provided a mass market game for them except on the lowest level... I guess SWG was the closest and they're working on it more. But take something like the SWG engine, make PvP the central part of the gameplay, keep adding in more tools for people to play in their guild towns and stuff, and you got a cheap, low maintenance MMO that will attract a good amount of people.
Re:But the TOS agreement (Score:3, Insightful)
Second. What effects are those? Buying and selling gold certainly doesn't hurt anyone. That part where you grind and work hard for something in the game to earn it and get pissed when I buy it is not you feeling the effects. That is just you being an asshole. My difficulty or lack thereof in acquiring a reward does NOT impact you or have anything to do with how easy or difficult it was for you to obtain the same thing. You need to stop grinding your teeth whenever someone has a better lot than you and start worrying about YOUR fortune.
Perhaps the reason I bought the item/gold was because while you were grinding in the game, I was grinding in the real world earning the money I used to buy said item/gold.
The problem is the grind, not the people violating the TOS. Leveling should be more of an introductory tutorial to the game and your character and should last a couple days. Gold should fall off trees, and everyone should start at maximum skill in tradeskills. As long as parts of the game are work rather than play, I am going to choose alternative methods that let me bypass them. Me doing so, doesn't affect you in the slightest.
Re:But the TOS agreement (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember you don't won the characters or items. You pay Blizzard to have the privilege of using their servers in the way they tell you too. Everything belongs to blizzard.
It affects people by inflation, making spam bots, gold farmers sealing off areas (enter one where you need a drop...good luck). If what you do affects anyone's playing experience because you broke the terms of the TOS then that's the issue. So yes it DOES affect me. If what you did had 0 impact on anyone else not a problem too bad it doesn't
But then again people are so selfish now a days who cares right? I mean you call me an asshole just for disagreeing with you with valid counter points.
Re:Decent Interview (Score:3, Insightful)
The best you can say about this company is that they have a plausible argument. Frankly, that's impressive by itself in this particular industry.
Re:Nice Marketing Piece (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice Marketing Piece (Score:4, Insightful)
Except in a p&p RPG you usually can bribe the GM with game logs, and it is usually considered "okay". Some game systems even encourage rewarding players that do so! Or pick your other ways of describing "contributing": costume, lighting, music, props/models, or even pizza!
In monopoly, for instance, the dude in his mom's basement gets 1 turn for every turn I get. In a MMO, he gets a lot more "turns" (hours spent in game) than I do. In the MMO arena, however, that is considered fair. In monopoly, giving him extra turns would be considered unfair.
Poker might be a better analogy. Hands of poker end, but then there's another hand for play. Of course, someone who is rich (or foolish) will come to the table with more money than the other players. Is this a problem in poker? Answer: sometimes. Thus some (groups or games) may impose a cap (or not play for real money) on how much money you can bring to the table.
Solution (for MMOs): Make RMT and non-RMT servers. Consumers can then decide which they'd rather play on. In addition, the RMT servers need the company that runs them to facilitate the RMT. They already have your cc #, so just tack it on to monthly fees (or deduct off prepaid time).
Re:But the TOS agreement (Score:3, Insightful)
- It creates real world economies that produce hordes of third-world sweat shops farming in areas where I'd like to just be enjoying myself with other gamers. Farmers suck. In-game spammers suck. These things would be a rarity if not for real world value driving them.
- I enjoy playing by "the rules of the game". I don't want to cheat by leaving the constraints of the rules. I want everyone else to obey the rules as well. If you have more gold than I do, I don't want it to be because your mommy gives you a nice cash allowance. I want it to be because you're all pasty faced from a lack of sunlight because you put the time in on the game.
- It affects me because I know about it.
The shittiest part, though, is the constant reminder that you can't even be allowed to agree with a group of folks on how to play a god damned game without cheating -- then go enjoy yourself. No, the world is full of cheating assholes who absolutely, positively, must get in there and hose your enjoyment doing things to you and your GAME world that you never agreed to remotely in the first place. I don't enjoy playing tennis with losers who cheat. Why should I enjoy sharing a game world with cheaters?Rationalize all you want with "I work hard out of the game world" excuses. That's all twisted self-justifying bullshit. You're a cheater. Wear the badge proudly.
This is not even wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
First, the government will never be interested in taxing virtual goods because it already does. Taxable income is, roughly speaking, any increase in wealth not derived by previous obligation. Any time you get a dinner from a friend that is taxable income. Any time you get a pair of tickets you won off of the local radio station that is taxable income. Again, any time you do something for benefit (tangible or not) where you did not gain an obligation (i.e. you loaned money) it is taxable income.
Now, the reality is that a lot of income is not worth the effort to track, nor even necessary. If I recall, if non-disclosed income is less than $800 for the year, I.R.S. doesn't care. What the I.R.S. does care about is if people have a significant ability to hide income through an institution. This is why banks have to report your transactions to the I.R.S. This is why investment firms have to report transactions to the I.R.S. The I.R.S. wants to know.
What congress is considering is that any company that looks like a bank, act likes a bank, and quacks like a bank should be considered a bank. In the case of Second Life, they maintain an exchange, allow transactions to and from U.S. currency, and store currency. If their market is large enough, the concern is not taxable income, but the means to use said market to hide the income. This is why congress is looking at requirements from Ebay because there are people's whose whole income is cash and can be hidden from the I.R.S.
So, first point, congress isn't interested in taxing virtual goods in games, they want to tax the benefit individuals get in trades that meet with U.S. currency, as they always have. Your bank metaphor does not follow.
Next, you are mixing service with property. While there are a lot of questions lingering over what people can and cannot do with your property (and whether or not you actually got property in the transaction for buying that MP3), services are quite a bit more clear. There are basically three things that can stop a contract: You cannot sign away your ability to litigate. You can always go the courts; however, a judge may rule that the requirements for a specific venue (i.e. arbitration) are acceptable, rules the contract valid, and does not interfere. You cannot sign for actions that are illegal. Finally, the contract must be with conscience and consideration. Both parties must get something (but not necessarily equal in value) and the contract cannot be simply one-sided.
Blizzard can and does have the right to terminate users for trading outside of the game. Hell, Blizzard has the right to terminate because they don't like you. You have the right to seek wrongful termination of service in small claims court, if you so choose. In the end, Blizzard is a service for playing in their game world. You can tack on all the ideas about how much it is worth to some to play, it Blizzard's game is still treated as a service. Blizzard doesn't look like a bank, doesn't act like a bank, doesn't talk like a bank. You're mixing property with service. Blizzard's terms of service means you do not possess anything. While some people may feel the desire to exchange money for something you do not own, it doesn't stop your relationship to Blizzard from being a service. But when you do trade money, the government's interest in taxation show up.
Re:But the TOS agreement (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is that you can't buy your way into being better at chess, you're just either good or not good and that's that. The pieces and rules are always the same, and the only thing you can really buy is a nicer looking and longer lasting set, but never one that is notably different to play with.
Maybe if WoW were a game based on skill, rather than on the amount of time devoted to playing, this problem wouldn't exist.
One BIG Glaring Hole... (Score:3, Insightful)
quote:
Why do you list prices for other sites?
We crawl a number of retail sites to provide our visitors with an accurate view of pricing in the market; these sites neither provide their pricing data to us directly nor pay us to list them. In some cases we may collect referral fees from listed sites, but we do not restrict our listings to sites that offer such programs. At any given time one of our sellers may or may not have the best price in the market, but part of our objective is to be your first stop when shopping for virtual currency. All external price data is labeled with an indication of how recently it was retrieved from the target site.
****
So essentially, because they let in other, non-verified sources, it's exactly as unsafe and bad as the other sites. The only way to get rid of bots and farmers is this:
- Each person has an account verified through secure ID or similar - like Ebay does. This is in addition to the Paypal/etc account.
- Each person can trade X per month, max. The limit should be equivalent to no more than 2-3 months average work in the game. For instance, in EVE online, that would be 50 mil per month.
- There needs to be a strict limit on the number of trades per year as well.
- Each person can only have one account. Attempts at duplicate accounts will result in a permanent ban. Get Paypal and the like involved as well to help on the double-checking, of course - I'm sure they would be glad to help.
Currently it has none of these very rudimentary safeguards in place(there are others to be sure, but thses need to be the bare minimum at least). Yes, call them restrictions if you want, but individuals don't have years worth of money to throw around on a monthly basis - only farmers and the like do.
As it is, it's more of the same B.S.
Re:But the TOS agreement (Score:3, Insightful)
So it's deep pockets versus "deep clock." You have a lot of spare time. Others don't. Some people without spare time may actually be excellent players: attentive, well-organized, good planners, excellent reflexes, and communication skills. They just don't have time to grind.
Is it fair that some people have more money? Well, is it fair that some people have more time?
Re:This is not even wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
As was mentioned, there may be an EULA forbidding certain actions, but it's not clear that a contract for use of a service can dictate your ability to charge money for an otherwise legal thing. Especially since the contract is one-sided and obviously from an unequal balance of power.
It's as silly as if a PvP game that decided talking to someone outside the game (icq, msn, voip, etc) was cheating and attempted to kick anyone who did it. They simply don't have the right to dictate who you communicate with and outside of certain competitions. To terminate someone's account for this reason is then theft and extortion. The gamer paid for the service, but it's being withheld unlawfully to enforce compliance in something outside the scope of a legal contract.
Blizzard has a history of releasing games that don't work due to copy protection and refusing to fix the issue. I discussed the issue (Diablo I think) with them, they suggested I buy a new CDROM (my burner was freaking it out), I suggested I crack the game. They told me I was breaking the law, I told them to try to sue me. Still no lawsuit so I can only assume they're liars about everything. Rather than letting me employ a work-around to make a game work, or provide a work-around on their own, they tried to scare me through baseless legal threats into giving up.
WOW seems like more of the same, but you pay on an ongoing basis... Besides, I use a debugger and other programming tools on a daily basis, they'd probably just terminate my service for hacking or something.