eBay Delists Virtual Goods
And it’s about time. My gaming purist sensibilities make it annoying, if not offensive, to realize that some people obtain unfair advantages over others by dropping cash on virtual goods in their favorite massively multiplayer online game. But, that’s not the reason I feel eBay should have nuked the ability for people to buy their virtual happiness with real life money sooner.
I believe they should have because doing so is against the terms of service of damn near every MMO out there, and they were essentially supporting the breaking of these terms by not actively removing them. That’s not to say they were okay with it, because from what I hear they would remove the listings at the request of game companies, but it still annoyed me each time I saw an auction.
eBay will be delisting auctions for virtual items, currency, characters, and accounts from now on. Good. But that’s not going to stop people from purchasing “virtual artifacts” from other sources. Some companies have taken steps to legitimize real money transfers, but it hasn’t stopped the unauthorized auctions from occurring. SOE’s Station Exchange was a decent effort in legitimizing these transfers on specific servers, so users can’t gain an unfair advantage over others with real money unless they already consent to it happening (by playing on the specific servers that allow it to occur).
Unfortunately, even in EverQuest II where players on certain servers can purchase the right to use virtual artifacts from other players, the unauthorized transfers continue to happen on other servers. Perhaps more companies need to start embracing RMT on specific servers to help put these unauthorized companies out of business, or at least make it entirely unattractive to buy anything on them since you can do it without compromising the integrity of your account on particular servers.
There’s more on this story at Slashdot, with comments over at Broken Toys and Raph’s Website.
Your link to Raph goes to the wrong story.
Let me know when it offends your sensibilities that some people gain an unfair advantage over others by spending more time on a game.
Jason: Thanks.
JuJutsu: Prepare for bluntness. That was the most ignorant comment I’ve seen on this blog to date.
I’m surprised I’d have to explain why that’s completely different. Players, optimally, start on a level playing field. I don’t have 60 hours a week to play games. Some people do. If they can spend that much time, I at least have the option to spend as much time if I really really want to.
I’m going to contradict myself to some extent right here… Real life circumstances should not dictate differences in in-game experience. That’s impossible, of course, because some people do have to work all the time and literally don’t have 60 hours in a week that they could play games in.
But there has to be some balance. The beauty of online games is that everyone has the same (roughly) potential as everyone else. Someone who is physically handicapped in real life can be the most physically superior avatar in an MMO. That, in my opinion, is absolutely beautiful.
Before I go on a rant for 1000 words, I’ll just wrap up right now. Allowing people to use real world money dramatically imbalances in the in-game potential of avatars. Players absolutely need to have the option to choose if they want that to be the case. That is, either it needs to be upfront on specific servers that this will take place, or the entire game should be built around that model.
Real Money Transfers that take place on servers in which it’s against the ToS are 100% the same in my mind as people in Counter-Strike who use cheat programs to gain an unfair advantage. It’s as simple as that.
The bottom line is that out of world economics impacting ingame balance is a violation on TOS and is cheating. Just as boting and hack programs unfairly imbalance a game, so does external transfers, if the option is not available to all.
I don’t have the same play time as many of my friends and guildmates, and they often reach higher levels faster, but they aren’t cheating to get better me, while the guy who spends $1000 on his account, then a few more thousand to buy a top set of craftible items or drops, has cheated.
Not the same thing at all.
No worries. I hope that you will eventually realize that time is money and vice versa. You can say that you could spend 60 hours a week ‘if you want to’ but most people develop a sense of responsibility when they get a job & family if not before. Go ahead and continue to design games for people without jobs and/or families, games oriented around time sinks. Your call.
Overall, I do not think that RMTs have a negative impact on MMOs, although a number of underlying design problems are often blamed on RMTs. Fundamentally, RMTs do not introduce anything new to the game that does not already exist. They do not create new, more powerful items or create currency from means other than those already in the game. While RMTs might be more efficient than other players, nonethless there is a maximum speed at which currency can be created based on drop rates and kill speeds.
The in-game potential of every avatar is uniform (with allowances made for class, race and other options). All RMTs do is make it easier for some avatars to fulfill that potential, but the potential itself remains the same. At some point, one obtains the best possible items for one’s character, and while the means to obtaining them might vary, the end result is the the same. Now, if this end result is imbalanced, that is another issue, but not one caused by RMTs.
This is a nice sentiment, but until better video cards, faster processors and RAM are given away for free, or all games move to consoles, it is simply not the case inpractice. For a game like EQ2 or Vanguard, those with better computers enjoy an advantage. Further, voice chat is all but required for higher-end raiding, and those servers cost money to run. A website to coordinate guild activities also costs money.
At a larger level, MMOs do not provide a level playing field, and that playing field becomes more imbalanced as the game progresses. RMTs help equalize this by providing more people the means to experience more game content.
Additionally, RMTs represent a more efficient distribution of labor, thus allowing for more specialization and more diverse playstyles. For example, someone who only wishes to engage in roleplayng and creating in-game locations to host user-created content like player-run taverns and such might need a large quantity of seed capital to start their operations. Since the last time I checked, there are no small business loans in game, and while attempts at player-run banks have been made, fraud is rampant and the games do not provide the equivalent of the FDIC to protect players. Thus, purchasing currency is a sensible alternative – it allows the player to engage in their desired form of gameplay, which in turn, benefits the entire community.
One this I am curios about is why people really do buy currency and other items. Most seem to assume it is solely to gain an advantage, but I suspect that people who already are negatively disposed towards RMT simply ascribe less than noble motives to those who engage in RMTs. I wonder how many people buy currency simply to maintain a lifestlye – roleplayers who seek to bypass the drugery of endless hours spent farming to buy the high-priced luxury goods that are needed to create roleplaying spaces, or PvP’ers who only play to PvP, and thus seek to bypass endless hours of PvE grinding, since most games offer little to no real advancement through PvP. The problem is, most MMOs are really designed to suport a single advancement path that everyone is expected to take, and this is simply not very much fun for many people. RMTs offer a way to bypass some of that unenjoyable work and get to the real gameplay experience.
JuJutsu: I don’t believe in designing MMOs to be timesinks, but I do believe in designing them to be engaging enough that people will desire to play them for years.
In order for players to desire to play frequently (and therefore subscribe to the game, meaning you make enough money to keep developing new content), they need to be able to earn something. Levels, items, land, better relationships, who knows? Something.
If that something takes time to get, some people will play many hours a week pretty much no matter what. But that is one of those challenges, isn’t it? Giving players with less time goals to work toward, even if they aren’t as lofty as the goals people with dozens of hours have. Hard, surely, because people always want to be the best at something, whether they have something “smaller” to work toward or not, but I’d rather not be a defeatist about it.
My two biggest personal problems with RMT as a player:
1) It makes me feel like my accomplishments are diminished because Warrior 11 could be just as powerful as me, but he never worked to get there.
2) The more it is legitimized, the greater the desire for “Chinese plat farmers” to exist, and they do tangibly impact my experience. They, meaning botters or groups of players who have no goals but to gain virtual assets, and don’t care if they ruin the play experience for others (me).
You may say that it’s the developers who need to take care of that, but if RMT is legitimized on all servers, there would be so many botters and farmers we could never track them all down (especially if we’re talking games with WoW numbers).
I cannot second that enough
There are already enough ebay’d and RMT’d avatars running around who have no clue about the game. They are a burden to everyone they interact with if they have a certain key role in a group, for example as tank or healer.
If I see someone with a lot of very good gear (i.e. legendary or fabled stuff in EQ2) this is a sign for me that this avatar and more importantly the player behind it has spend the amount of time necessary to LEARN to play his class and “earn” his stuff within the game mechanics the designers have created
Skill and some time are the tools in an MMO. If you want to use RL money go gamble or something but leave the fair players alone please
I can understand that people who want to run around in “uber” stuff and who think that time = skill in todays MMOs are very appealed by RMT. But that is a bad misconception and the fair players have to pay the price cause they are being cheated on.
You are comparing apples to donuts here. Computers and quality of computers are not regulated by the TOS. RMTs are. You are debating where or not there should be a socialist playing field for all players which is not what this discussion is about.
Cheating is violating the rules of the game company in any fashion. Buying ingame matierials with out of game currency is a violation of the game company rules, and is cheating.
I have absolutly no problem with RMTs when it is not a violation of the TOS. Take Second Life for instnace. If you want status and prestiege, you can pump a few thousand dollars into Second Life, build something epic and have a big orgy-fest all at the same time. Its legal, does not violate any rule and every player can do it. In Vanguard, EQ or WoW, not everyone are cheaters, and those that are, should be banned.
But he did work to get there; the ‘time is good currency, money is bad currency’ people would like to argue that the money came from an inheritance or something but lets be realistic, RMT isn’t founded on plutocrats. Lets be clear about it, you equate effort to time in game. That, imo, is the foundation of the problem.
I would argue that, that IS what this discussion is about. Setting aside TOS and EULA for a second, I think Ryan laid out the core of the argument when he said “Real life circumstances should not dictate differences in in-game experience.” What I object to the most is the notion that having a lot of free time [and presumably little money] is a real life circumstance that is designed to dictate differences in the in-game experience while having very little free time is not.
Being treated as second class customers is not endearing, no matter how sincere the motivation might be.
That’s not been my experience on F2P games with item shops etc but I will defer to your broader experience. Were there more ‘farmers’ on the Station Exchange servers than other servers?
So you agree that the only reason it would be a problem is when the company makes it one?
I think the problem is even broader than RMT. I personally don’t engage in RMT. Not because I think its bad but because its not an adequate fix. When a game designed around time sinks turns into a grind-fest I just quit playing and quit paying. Why put an RMT bandage on it, that’s a short term fix. I’m optimistic that there will be more games that don’t the ‘time=good, money=bad’ design foundation. Who knows, maybe Ryan will come around and he’ll work on one
Like the unauthorized transactions get stopped by making RMT official. Umm, no.
The Bazaar server (Station-exchange aka RMT officially enabled) sees an absolute ton of unauthorized activity, and it’s getting worse and worse as the weeks and months roll by. Devs are going to have to work harder to stop the illicit activity than just declaring RMT permissible under their auspices.
What I’ll never understand is these two attitudes, combined :
And :
You can’t have both. Choose one instead. Make disposable MMO’s for the people who like to flit from one game to the next over the course of months of time; or make deep engaging MMO’s where players accumulate virtual wealth, by both RMT and in-game activities.
If you think E-Bay is:
The most frequently used site, or even the most user friendly site, that people use for RTM you are sadly mistaken.
While ebay is protecting it’s own butt it’s not doing you or anyone else a favor.
“Banned” items are constantly purchased and sold on ebay and this won’t stop it.
I will be the first to admit I buy from RTM traders. If the game companies offered the same services then I would be glad to put more money in to their pockets.
I do not have more than 5-10 hours a week to play various games. I refuse to grind anything more than the typical XP.
I have dumped about $5,000 in RTM.
But I had FUN doing it and will continue to do so until a game comes out that doesn’t scream GRIND for everything in the game.
This is a cop-out. Of course you can have both. Deep engaging content that motivates people to play for years, without excessive use of time sink mechanics is entirely possible. Expecting this to occur without RMT is the very minimum that designers must start with. Why should a game require money to suppliment or replace the grind?
If people feel that they need to buy their way past a game obsticle, then they are either instant gratification whores with excessively large epeens, or the game was designed with time sink mechanics and the players ‘can’t’ compete at all without it.
I have a family, a full time job, and a social life. I also am a member of a fairly successful raid guild. I use the time I do have wisely, play with skill and I compete eventually with everyone else out there.
In WoW I am not the first to 70, nor will I be faster than most, but when I get there I will steadily work my way through content until I am better positioned then most other people, gear and progression-wise. It doesn’t require ebay or IGE to get there, just patience and half a brain.
I agree.
I must respectfully disagree. Why is that the very minimum? Why shouldn’t a game allow money to supplement or replace the grind?
Re the language that frequently gets used, ‘offensive’, ‘cheating’, ‘whores’, etc. Gordon Walton just posted a comment at Terra Nova [about EBay] that resonates with me…
RMTs and Virtual Economies
One way to crack down on RTM that is not fully utlized is banning player accounts. Everquest II, for example, seems to not ban players for using unauthorised RMT sites in my experience.
It’s one thing to say it’s not allowed, but the publisher has to put their money where there mouth is and decide that losing a paying customer is worth it.
That’s what it all boils down to for me. There’s no broad agreement on the morality of RMT. Written discussions tend to wind down to “it’s bad”, and yet the huge level of activity seems to imply “It’s good”.
If you can solve this one, you probably have a good handle on solving other intractable social problems like drug abuse. And drawing that parallel makes me think RMT will never end up completely wiped out.
Your support for IGE/Yanis amuses me.
People will RMT. But rather than a few direct interactions on ebay, which probably won’t cost a MMO a single player, Yantis will persuade a guidemaster to empty his coffers, and a week down the line when it’s discovered you’re down 30 customers.
Which, again, is more harmful?
The neo-luddite stance on RMT, trying to run a virtual war on drugs which has mainly succeded in annoying paying customers, isn’t working. Start designing away from the grind, and start thinking – Eve Online allows the sale of gametime codes for in-game cash… you can cash IN, but not OUT. And it crushed the Ebay value of the currency by a factor of FIFTEEN with no inflation.
Now. THAT is progress.
Ryan Shwayder, the “he’s a warrior 11 too” issue is quite simple – player skill elemements.
But why is the overall feeling that it is bad and should be wiped-out?
Lately, I find myself sitting on both sides of the argument whether game-enabled RMT is a good or bad thing. I admit to have being an ultra “gaming purist”, as Ryan had self-described, however after rolling a character on one of EQ2’s Station Exchange servers, you could say my assumptions on in-game “morality” have changed. I get the feeling that many anti-RMT have closeted views on why someone would use game-enabled RMT. The majority of the arguments I see (knowing that these too are limited experiences) is that its “cheating”, “unfair advantage”, “loot-centric greed”. Most uses I have discovered are to purchase varying characters/classes to support personal gaming activities, whether it be raiding, role-playing, general game appeal, or crafting purposes. Game money purchases come in a close second and center on the same purposes as above. The key here is “supporting personal gaming activities” which equals “continued play” which fundamentally equals “game lifespan and server population“.
Here is a personal example:
“After playing and leveling a single character/class for several months (to high level = end game), I was developing game burn-out at rapidly elevating level the more I played. Bottom-line, I hated the class. However, after so much effort invested, re-rolling was a daunting task. My free time is precious, and re-doing all the low level content was not appealing. So I sold my main and used the money to buy an equal level different class. Needless to say, I still play the game and truly enjoy playing now that I am not stuck with a class that I hate. Without the RMT, I would have cancelled my account.”
Now, does this reason make me a cheater? Perhaps to some, yes. Does this make me a poorly skilled player? Heck no, I was far worse at my previous character. Does this make me a greedy person? I was farming for good loot far before I switched characters. Actually, I don’t know a single player who does not run a dungeon a few times to get a good drop. So what I am trying to get at is that the only problem someone may have with me is that, unlike him or her, I had not run this particular character through all the content that she or he had to achieve their current state. = Basically, the comparisons we try to make between each other- to compete in a game we cannot win, ever (much like reality).
Like in reality, someone will always have a better job, house, possessions, seemingly better family life, etc, etc, etc. The only way to actually enjoy life/gaming experiences is to not worry about others, but only yourself and your experiences. But then again, some enjoy making themselves miserable.
What’s wrong is RMT, is a subset of player’s perceptions.
What right with RMT, is fulfilling a sub-set of players wants for gaming enjoyment.
What makes money for games in the long run = RMT enabled servers.
That was the most ignorant comment I’ve seen on this blog to date.
Man, you should try reading your own comments sometimes.
Anyway, I wrote about this topic on my own blog a while ago. The pay-for-perks (or “RMT from the company”) business model is becoming more of a driving force. I think that buying in-game goods is a positive thing, because it allows us to have a wider variety of game types; it allows for more profitability with fewer players, so not every company has to clone the most popular game of the moment to “succeed”.
My thoughts.
@Psychochild
That was a very nice post. I particularly liked
That’s why I wish the discourse was less of a morality play and more about the design issues.
RMTs violate the user agreements. This is a fact, but reality ignores facts, human nature ignores facts. I work at a ski area. Every lift-ticket form, every rental form and any skier can tell you that ‘Skiing is dangerous’. It is an established part of a Ski Area’s user agreement. So how come ski areas pay out millions of dollars in settlements? Some dumb-ass can’t accept skiing is dangerous and wins money and even court cases. Generally, juries see the dumb-ass as a victim and award them millions. So what’s my point? User Agreements are worthless. Don’t hold them up like the Constitution.
Another thing to think about: Most gaming companies aren’t going to crack down on RMTs and bot farmers because they mean more accounts and more money. If the company banned the accounts they would make less money. Therefore the company doesn’t enforce it’s own User Agreement.
Other than that, I have to agree with Jujutsu. Time equals money. Mr. Schwayder, you even admit to contradicting yourself in making your counter-point to that. I’ve played for years, grinding like a fiend and I have problems buying new, good armor. I certainly can’t afford most of the Masters Spells. I don’t play regulary enough, or even long enough to get in on any good raids/groups/guilds. I am on dial-up and will never get voice-chat. But I am a Cheater because I think about buying Plat? I consider spending some of MY real money so I can enjoy MY account more? This makes me a cheater? ‘It ruins the economy’ is shouted by those economics experts, who, I guess, took the class pass/fail. Read Dasein’s post about game resources.
And anytime I hear ‘Level-Playing Field’ I wince. There is no such thing, never has been, never will be. Those that think there are… well, enjoy your happy, bubble world.
I found this interesting in the SOE white paper on the Exchange servers.
“The introduction of Station Exchange did, however, have a marked effect on SOE’s ability to mediate problems that arose as a result of illicit trading via third party auctions. Prior to the introduction of Station Exchange, 40 percent of customer service time was spent on disputes over virtual item sales. Since the debut of the Exchange, the overall customer service time spent has dropped 30 percent.”