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Role Playing (Games)

SOE Station Exchange Launches 44

Posted by Zonk from the crass-commercialism dept.
MMORPG.com reports that the experiment in Massive retail that is the Station Exchange has launched. From the article: "SOE recently concluded a two week pre-launch trial phase for Station Exchange. We only allowed a very small number of EQII players into the pre-launch in order to help us fine-tune the system and get feedback on the user experience. The service was live for pre-launch, which meant that all of the users were exchanging US dollars for the rights to use virtual goods, characters and coin within the game."
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SOE Station Exchange Launches More

SOE Station Exchange Launches

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  • Their motto: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:34PM (#13126241)
    If you can't beat them, join them.
    • You know while I was thinking about how this probably better for Sony to deal with online purchases, I did a quick read over the pre-launch stats. Of all the participants in the prelaunch, the average amount of money a player spent was roughly $14 in 2 weeks. That's almost $30 a month? And this is ON TOP of that monthly fee?? HOLY CRAP - I can't beleive it took Sony so long to jump on the bandwagon. I mean, if the average player is spending that much per month just on goods, shit man, sony should just throw

  • Lawsuits, here we come (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Naerbnic ( 123002 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:47PM (#13126449)
    SOE is setting themselves up for some major lawsuits. When all of this auctioning was under the table via eBay et. al, Sony had plausible deniability about the practice. If anyone complained that an item they bought was lost due to a server problem or was nerfed by the developers and thus negated their purchase, they could casually gesture towards their ELUA while simply saying "Not our problem."

    Now that it's been given the blessing of the powers that be, in game items are no longer in game items, but actual currency; they are commodities which people have put value into. Any actions by Sony which even whisper about a nerf to an item (or god forbid a rollback) will quite possibly be countered with lawsuits by individuals who have real money invested in the game. And since I'm sure the ELUA has been changed to allow the actions of Station Exchange, Sony has no way of completely looking the other way.
    • And unless they tied their legal team up for the six months prior to doing this, their attack-lawyers probably re-worded the EULA to cover their butts even with the Station Exchange.

      If one accepts that the wording of the EULA protects the company that writes it, then re-writing of the EULA to make sure it still protects it is both trivial and necessary.
      • I see your point, but I still smell lawsuits (remember, in the US, anyone can sue for anything... don't sue me for saying it).

        The problem with the new system is that there is real money being used. Wether or not the wording of the EULA clearly states the intent of the system to allow exchange while not guaranteeing value related to the purchase, people will still get up in arms when their new weapon has been nerfed by a patch and no longer retains any value ingame.

      • >If one accepts that the wording of the EULA
        >protects the company that writes it, then re-
        >writing of the EULA to make sure it still
        >protects it is both trivial and necessary.

        That assumes that whatever you write there is permited according to your countries law. Most countries have consumer sales laws that govern sales of goods, services and most such things, and typically you can't set those aside through contracts. Hence you can't cover yourself for everything, nor do whatever you want. DOn't

    • the users were exchanging US dollars for the rights to use virtual goods, characters and coin within the game

      The players don't OWN the items, they only have a license to use it. Since Sony still owns the items, and the license the players purchase probably has all kinds of lawerly caveats, there's probably not as much legal ground for lawsuits as you think.

      • you buy gold. dupe bug is found. virtual market collapses. not our fault, you can't sue us.
      • you buy weapon. find out weapon is cheaper from i
      • Of course it's just a licence, but that wouldn't stop someone from making the argument of damages. They spent real money in an officially sanctioned way to get an item which can be traded back for real money via the same channel. If Sony does something which would hurt the tradeback value of the item, a damages suit could occur (not necessarily win, but at least be filed against them). This is not entirely unlike people suing because others did something to "nerf" their real-estate values. Of course, this i
    • If they can change the EULA to accomodate the Exchange, they can also change it to say they're immune from lawsuits that could arise from it. Keep in mind, you can't get to the Exchange without agreeing to the EULA before even entering to the game.
      • >If they can change the EULA to accomodate the
        >Exchange, they can also change it to say they're
        >immune from lawsuits that could arise from it.
        >Keep in mind, you can't get to the Exchange
        >without agreeing to the EULA before even
        >entering to the game.

        YOu can't just immunize yourself versus the law since very often (at least in consumer related issues in most countries) the law applies regardless of what you agree to.
        • Oddly, since you click on "I Agree", you're actually indicating your agreement with the EULA contents. Have fun defending against it.
          • >Oddly, since you click on "I Agree", you're
            >actually indicating your agreement with the EULA
            >contents. Have fun defending against it.

            What part of my post did you not understand? If there is some law that says certain conditions can't be changed through a contract, then it doesn't matter what you agree to. This is often the case in many consumer related issues such as as sales of goods and services in many countries that set certain minimum conditions that apply and that can't be changed to the wo

  • Bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Psmylie ( 169236 ) * on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:50PM (#13126492) Homepage
    They're moving one giant step closer to assigning real-world value to virtual items/currency. Now, if someone makes their living buying/selling virtual goods, how does that make it all that different then the stock market? Except that SoE has complete control over this market. I just wonder how long it will be before the first lawsuit is filed, should Sony nerf someone's best-selling item. And I wonder if the SEC is going to get involved at some point :)

    Also, if real value is assigned to a character, what happens if SoE attempts to ban them? They may say that they still own all "virtual" property, but if someone bought the character "officially", then that person may have a good basis for a lawsuit.

    • It's not entirely like the stock market; when's the last time someone hacked the stock market and duped or removed some stocks? It's a REALLY bad idea because of its fundamental lack of security.
      • The 1930's (j/k :)

        I was just trying to say that this is a new market, and completely unregulated. I think SOE may get a nasty shock if some governments suddenly decide that this needs to be regulated.

      • Google for Naked Shorts. It happens all the time and is currently being checked into by the SEC.
    • So what, you could say that an MP3 is a virtual item as well yet it may of required less effort to make than a supa-sword or the like on an MMORPG. Work should be rewarded even if we do not like the methods some use to make objects of value.
      • Work does not need to be rewarded but if a particular kind of work has proven demanded on the market it has a value according to the laws of supply and demand. Making a film won't make people pay you, selling it on the market and people buying it will. An MP3 that's available for free on the web won't fetch much on the market.
  • Sheesh. It costs them nothing to manufacture these goods, but boy are they sure going to profit from the sale and exchange of them.

    Doesn't it strike anyone else odd that this popularization of video gaming is a definite kind of legalized, socially tolerated brainwashing? Is the fact that its a wide open public service overshadowing the reality that, in fact, people are being conned out of thousands of dollars for non-real objects which cost *nothing* to manufacture, and that they're simply doing it in or
    • It's similiar to pornography -- money for fantasy, but at least there's no degradation to females here. Sure, both are avenues for fantasy-seeking with no tangibles when you reach the end of that road, but I can think of much worse things that people do to satisfy intangible fantasies.

      people are being conned out of thousands of dollars for non-real objects which cost *nothing* to manufacture

      Not at all. These people pay because they want to and can afford it. They've made a conscious decision to purcha

    • people are being conned out of thousands of dollars for non-real objects

      When someone pays admission to a theme park, what *real* object are they getting? When someone pays to watch a movie, what *real* object are they getting? Although the costs to manufacture/maintain are vastly different, people have been participating in "wild fantasies" and "escaping from the reality of the world" for a while now. Its the same concept behind why people buy books; they aren't looking to purchase a bunch of boun

      • When someone pays admission to a theme park, what *real* object are they getting?

        Access to real private property.

        When someone pays to watch a movie, what *real* object are they getting?

        Access to real private property.

        Its the same concept behind why people buy books; they aren't looking to purchase a bunch of bound pages.

        So I can buy and read a book without experiencing the physical nature of it?

        I am interested in your kool-aid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hnewsletter and would like to know more ...

  • Overall problems (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nytewynd ( 829901 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @12:57PM (#13126616)
    I really worry about the overall problems this causes for a game. Now that we have an economic gain to the company for the sale of items, does that company increase the drop rate of rare items to increase their own portion of the revenue?

    Imagine how bad that could get. You could have dupes not being fixed because they would lose money. There would be incentive for people to camp the best spawns for profit, thereby preventing people from fighting those mobs for fun. This might turn out just like FFXI, where the only way to get a good item was literally to buy it online.

    This has to be the worst executive decision for a game that I've seen.
    • People still buy Magic: The Gathering cards, right? When I stopped (~5 years ago) there was a fuss every time Wizards released some new expansion that either resurrected an old card or introduced a new card that completely threw the secondhand-card market into disarray. People played nonetheless. Apparently getting screwed out of your money is an integral part of fantasy gaming.
    • Increasing the Drop rate or allowing dupes would lead to inflation. Just as if a country decided to print more money. Prices would rise. The money would be able to buy less.

      For exmaple lets say there are 10 pieces of platinum in the entire game and each piece at auction sells at a price of $2. So the total Realworld value of the game economy would be $20.

      If the game devs decided to double the available platinum then the real world value of each piece would be cut in half. so now there are 20 peices o

  • hmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Thursday July 21, 2005 @01:14PM (#13126862) Homepage Journal
    As an EQ2 player, this seems like a great way to find which users should be banned for being idiots.

    • Re:hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Nytewynd ( 829901 )
      I think that any item bought this way should be indentified on the item. Either change the color of the item or at the least put a note on the description.

      Also, I think players that sell any items should have their name colored one way to identify that they may be a farmer and/or ninja. Anyone that buys an item should have their name colored another distinct color to identify them as an idiot.
      • sort of like a person who plays mmorpgs, should have their foreheads stamped with a giant S... for stupid if you didn't get it.

        how about we stop cheating online first. that'll clear up 99.9% of the "farmers".

        frankly, if you spend money on an account and you are physically in front of the computer 12-16 hours a day, you have a right to sell the items. what you don't have a right to do is cheat .bots are cheats, a violation of the TOS. exploits/bugs etc are cheats (hell, even worse, since it can cause serve
  • ...seeing as SOE perma-banned me and a couple of my friends for trying to sell our Jedi on EBAY back in early 2004.

    Now they're providing the means and methods for doing exactly the same thing, and the rat bastards are even making a profit from it!!! Freaking ballwashing hypocrites!
    • Their customer support has to deal with a flood of complaints about scams resulting from offsite trading. It causes them a lot of grief. If they want to provide the service but only on their own site where they can prevent scamming and the related customer service nightmare, that's neither hypocritical nor ironic.
  • Well, I'd say this, at least for me, raises a positively interesting issue: In the past, SOE, as well as other MMORPG companies, swung or at least tried to swing the bat at people trading in-game services, items or characters for real-life money. (Examples: Lineage 2 was completely rendered useless and unplayable due to massive numbers of item and money farmers, World of Warcraft is facing the same issue in rizing proportions). In past, SOE has likewise threatened, or actively enforced, measures -against- s

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