Real Money Trading
2009-04-20
I play MMOs; currently it's WoW and EVE, with a bit of RuneScape when I fancy a change of pace. (I can't be bothered to link those things; if you don't about them you probably don't want to. ... What do you mean you've never heard of RuneScape?). One of the more interesting things about them as they interact with Real Life is the demand for in-game things for real currency, or vice versa.
SWG was my first MMO, and I didn't really notice real-money trading (RMT, or Real-World Trading if you'd rather). I'm sure it went on, but not under my nose. Plus it was kind of difficult to be short of money in SWG; it helped that it mostly didn't matter what stuff you had, and that levelling was sufficiently fast to make it a little pointless to hire someone else to level a character.
Both of these things happen in WoW. Characters with stupid random names - it doesn't matter what they're called when they'll be banned after a few minutes anyway - stand in the capital cities and try and entice people to their websites where they promise to arrange in-game delivery of virtual funds in exchange for payment of (quite reasonable) real-world sums. Alternatively, if you're short of time you could give them some money and your account details and they'll log in for you and level a character.
Those of you with any sense can no doubt see a problem there.
Eurogamer has a series of articles. Unfortunately I can only ever find one of them at a time. Edit: Dragon pointed me to another one.
Unregulated, RMT is very bad for a game. Gold farmers - as those who 'professionally' collect in-game resources are called - suck everything they can out of a game without a care for the enjoyment of genuine players; Blizzard has been variously quoted describing the way they use various means to hijack accounts and steal their virtual possessions (not least the tactic of revisiting past customers of power-levelling services and using account details freely given to get back in). The makers of RuneScape cut one of the more popular PvP mechanics out of the game entirely because it was one of the means traders were using to get wealth from one account onto another; a forum post from the game's founder talks about how traders were often using stolen credit cards, and the decision although costly in player numbers saved the game from ruinous fines.
Not only are these people abusing the rules of the game they're in (and breaking the conditions of licensing the software), but allegedly they're also not averse to breaking some real-world laws.
EVE has another approach. They've had big problems with RMT in the past, but they have a neat trick [it's been there for a while now, I think, but it seems to have been revamped recently]. Basically it's an online payment method, like all the other games, but rather than crediting the game time directly to your account it spawns in-game items that your character can use to renew your subscription. And once they're in game, you're within your rights to sell them on the in-game market.
I think it's a great idea. It takes players who have time but are short of money, and lets them play the game without spending real-world money just by setting aside some of their playing time each to make enough in-game currency to buy more subscription. Similarly it lets people who are short on time make the most of it by letting them buy away their in-game money troubles. The publisher is still getting the right number of subscription payments, the gold traders are losing a chunk of their market, and players of both kinds who might otherwise give up on the game because it costs too much or takes too much time are free to hang on in there.
I was getting to a big revelation as to my position on RMT, but you've no doubt got there by now. When the developers and the publisher don't make a proper place for it, RMT is a vicious rot that can kill games. On the other hand, provided it's carefully designed and managed it can be implemented for a net benefit, not least that a game with allowed and controlled RMT is less in danger from those who'd like it the other way.
I bought a couple of months of subscription for my EVE account the other day (curiously you can only buy the things in pairs) and sold them in-game, making in a few moments (for a really quite reasonable amount of real-world currency) more than a hundred times what the week of evenings I'd spent in-game so far had net me. I spent a sixth of it on things that would make my character train faster [EVE skills train in real time, meaning that a) you don't have to play every minute you get to improve, but b) you can't do much to improve any faster]. Now I can afford to drift in and out of the game, dropping by to instruct my character in which skills to train and knowing that I can play casually and not be threatened by some overwhelming grind that needs doing.
And somewhere out there someone with much more time but a little less spare cash is more comfortable in having been able to buy that game time for in-game currency, at what was presumably a fair price to him.
Really liking EVE, by the way, but I don't know many people in it. If you're playing, give me a shout.
SWG was my first MMO, and I didn't really notice real-money trading (RMT, or Real-World Trading if you'd rather). I'm sure it went on, but not under my nose. Plus it was kind of difficult to be short of money in SWG; it helped that it mostly didn't matter what stuff you had, and that levelling was sufficiently fast to make it a little pointless to hire someone else to level a character.
Both of these things happen in WoW. Characters with stupid random names - it doesn't matter what they're called when they'll be banned after a few minutes anyway - stand in the capital cities and try and entice people to their websites where they promise to arrange in-game delivery of virtual funds in exchange for payment of (quite reasonable) real-world sums. Alternatively, if you're short of time you could give them some money and your account details and they'll log in for you and level a character.
Those of you with any sense can no doubt see a problem there.
Eurogamer has a series of articles. Unfortunately I can only ever find one of them at a time. Edit: Dragon pointed me to another one.
Unregulated, RMT is very bad for a game. Gold farmers - as those who 'professionally' collect in-game resources are called - suck everything they can out of a game without a care for the enjoyment of genuine players; Blizzard has been variously quoted describing the way they use various means to hijack accounts and steal their virtual possessions (not least the tactic of revisiting past customers of power-levelling services and using account details freely given to get back in). The makers of RuneScape cut one of the more popular PvP mechanics out of the game entirely because it was one of the means traders were using to get wealth from one account onto another; a forum post from the game's founder talks about how traders were often using stolen credit cards, and the decision although costly in player numbers saved the game from ruinous fines.
Not only are these people abusing the rules of the game they're in (and breaking the conditions of licensing the software), but allegedly they're also not averse to breaking some real-world laws.
EVE has another approach. They've had big problems with RMT in the past, but they have a neat trick [it's been there for a while now, I think, but it seems to have been revamped recently]. Basically it's an online payment method, like all the other games, but rather than crediting the game time directly to your account it spawns in-game items that your character can use to renew your subscription. And once they're in game, you're within your rights to sell them on the in-game market.
I think it's a great idea. It takes players who have time but are short of money, and lets them play the game without spending real-world money just by setting aside some of their playing time each to make enough in-game currency to buy more subscription. Similarly it lets people who are short on time make the most of it by letting them buy away their in-game money troubles. The publisher is still getting the right number of subscription payments, the gold traders are losing a chunk of their market, and players of both kinds who might otherwise give up on the game because it costs too much or takes too much time are free to hang on in there.
I was getting to a big revelation as to my position on RMT, but you've no doubt got there by now. When the developers and the publisher don't make a proper place for it, RMT is a vicious rot that can kill games. On the other hand, provided it's carefully designed and managed it can be implemented for a net benefit, not least that a game with allowed and controlled RMT is less in danger from those who'd like it the other way.
I bought a couple of months of subscription for my EVE account the other day (curiously you can only buy the things in pairs) and sold them in-game, making in a few moments (for a really quite reasonable amount of real-world currency) more than a hundred times what the week of evenings I'd spent in-game so far had net me. I spent a sixth of it on things that would make my character train faster [EVE skills train in real time, meaning that a) you don't have to play every minute you get to improve, but b) you can't do much to improve any faster]. Now I can afford to drift in and out of the game, dropping by to instruct my character in which skills to train and knowing that I can play casually and not be threatened by some overwhelming grind that needs doing.
And somewhere out there someone with much more time but a little less spare cash is more comfortable in having been able to buy that game time for in-game currency, at what was presumably a fair price to him.
Really liking EVE, by the way, but I don't know many people in it. If you're playing, give me a shout.
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