Are Real Money Transactions in MMOs Only Okay When They're Kept 'Secret'? | MMORPG.com

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Are Real Money Transactions in MMO's Only Okay When It's Kept 'Secret'? | MMORPG.com

Steven doesn't want to talk about what you do with your accounts. Instead he wants to talk about the double standard players have for dev-run RMT when secret RMT seems to get a pass.

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Neoyoshi

I've always believed there is a way to legitimately implement real-money transactions in mmorpg's, to operate in full transparency, as well as to do so in a not-so-predatory way....

....i just don't think it could ever happen- human beings in general are kind of trash and have zero etherical standards.

Wargfoot

Here is the important difference:

If I buy from a player the developers are working against RMT; whereas, if I buy from the developer the developer is working at making RMT necessary.

Everything else is noise.

Sovrath

Wargfoot said:

Here is the important difference:

If I buy from a player the developers are working against RMT; whereas, if I buy from the developer the developer is working at making RMT necessary.

Everything else is noise.

Except the developers have been working and spending money on fighting gold selling and even though there are players who don’t want it there are an inordinate number of players who buy gold and items.

It’s a bit of a rock and a hard place for developers as the amount of resources they use to combat it can’t stop it.

I’m not saying they should incorporate it but at what point do they throw up their hands as they realize it’s a lost cause?

Theocritus

I dont like players being able to use RL money to buy in game advantages ever

Kyleran

Sovrath said:

Wargfoot said:

Here is the important difference:

If I buy from a player the developers are working against RMT; whereas, if I buy from the developer the developer is working at making RMT necessary.

Everything else is noise.

Except the developers have been working and spending money on fighting gold selling and even though there are players who don’t want it there are an inordinate number of players who buy gold and items.

It’s a bit of a rock and a hard place for developers as the amount of resources they use to combat it can’t stop it.

I’m not saying they should incorporate it but at what point do they throw up their hands as they realize it’s a lost cause?

Once you go down this road when does it become OK for developers to give up on anything difficult to combat, like speed or targeting hacking or any other form of "cheating."

I've been RMTing in these games since DAOC back in 2002, when I bought my first game gold from a guy in Bethesda Maryland.

I also bought a couple of accounts, one which worked out, but the second was "stolen" back from me but fortunately the broker who made the arrangements refunded my $75.

Usually the transactions worked out, sometimes not so much.  It was a risk I took and fortunately I never had an account banned on the two occasions I got found out.

Like all cheaters I justified my actions with excuses like I'm not hurting anyone since I wasn't a PVPer so what did it matter if I bought game gold from Koreans so my son and I could have a faster mount in WOW back in 2005?

But let's face it, these are not actions I'm particularly proud of and would always accept any punishment a developer meted out for breaking their rules.

Still, I support developers efforts to run a "clean" game as such strives to promote better ethics among gamers and gaming in general.

In recent years I only buy in game items for developer provided RMT, most recently for RDO in their game store.

Yes, I am extremely opposed to Web 3, mostly because the "advantages" offered are extreme in their cost IMO, and almost all are less about the gameplay and more about the "investment and earning opportunities."

Honestly, I am too old to deal with the idea of setting up and protecting my gaming "wallet" and far smarter people than me loose control of theirs everyday, losing millions in the process.

Yeah, I know, big difference in scale but still I'd hate to loose my gaming accounts due to my lack of understanding how these systems really work. 

Besides, I don't game to make money but perhaps now that I'm retired I could turn my focus more towards that idea?

harken33

Kyleran said:

Besides, I don't game to make money but perhaps now that I'm retired I could turn my focus more towards that idea?

Congrats on your retirement Kyleran!  

I wonder how many of your posts over the years mentioned looking forward to retirement.

Slapshot1188

@StevenWebber

At the end of the day it's the same argument for legalizing any bad actions in real life. There are folks that advocate to make drug use legal because it would cut out the middle man, and bring money into the government. Same thing for prostitution.


IMHO "Because a subset of us are dirty rotten scoundrels", is not a reason to give in, say they are right, and make what they are doing "legal". Quite the opposite in fact.

I want to play a game to play a game, not to have it mixed more and more with real money transactions or people that want to "invest" in items or characters.

Sorry, if you want to go and invest in CryptoCurrency then go buy some. I've got a nice chunk of Bitcoin myself. Even some ETH. But no, I do not want it in my games. And if a game is going to make that a part of what they are selling, I'll happily skip it. I want my investments to be my investments and my games to be my games.

DadGamer2000

mmorpg.com are pushing a suspicious amount of these devils advocate articles down our throats lately. Why is that?

Wargfoot

Sovrath said:

Wargfoot said:

Here is the important difference:

If I buy from a player the developers are working against RMT; whereas, if I buy from the developer the developer is working at making RMT necessary.

Everything else is noise.

Except the developers have been working and spending money on fighting gold selling and even though there are players who don’t want it there are an inordinate number of players who buy gold and items.

It’s a bit of a rock and a hard place for developers as the amount of resources they use to combat it can’t stop it.

I’m not saying they should incorporate it but at what point do they throw up their hands as they realize it’s a lost cause?

For me it is a question of developer focus.

You've brought up the perfectly valid point of where the developers draw the line in their crusade.   That is worth exploring.

However, I'm more concerned with development being driven by the need to drive people to the store to buy convenience items to make it easy to get past grindy game play.



Developer 1: So, to get to rank, the players need to kill 10 wolves.

Developer 2: Yeah, any more than that would be tedious.

Developer 1: Good idea, we should make it 20 wolves and sell a buff in the store that makes each wolf kill count X2.

Developer 2: Bingo.



If someone buys an account that doesn't directly impact the conscientious development of the game - but stores make their way into the design discussions, and that is the cause of much pain.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The store starts out as a game feature, and then the game becomes a feature of the store.

deniter

If there's a market, there will be a product to buy. That's very simple. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to spend your money on digital goods in an imaginary world, that's completely fine.

I'll be playing other games, tho, that's for sure.

Wargfoot

deniter said:

If there's a market, there will be a product to buy. That's very simple. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to spend your money on digital goods in an imaginary world, that's completely fine.

I'll be playing other games, tho, that's for sure.

It depends on what they sell.

If they sell cosmetics and I blow $10 a month on that, or they fund the game through subscription and that costs me $10 a month, to me that is a wash.

deniter

Wargfoot said:

deniter said:

If there's a market, there will be a product to buy. That's very simple. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to spend your money on digital goods in an imaginary world, that's completely fine.



I'll be playing other games, tho, that's for sure.

It depends on what they sell.

If they sell cosmetics and I blow $10 a month on that, or they fund the game through subscription and that costs me $10 a month, to me that is a wash.

Well, i'm not a fan of that either but i could live with it. Meddling with third party websites is still a big no-no for me.

Sovrath

Kyleran said:

Once you go down this road when does it become OK for developers to give up on anything difficult to combat, like speed or targeting hacking or any other form of "cheating."

I've been RMTing in these games since DAOC back in 2002, when I bought my first game gold from a guy in Bethesda Maryland.

I also bought a couple of accounts, one which worked out, but the second was "stolen" back from me but fortunately the broker who made the arrangements refunded my $75.

Usually the transactions worked out, sometimes not so much.  It was a risk I took and fortunately I never had an account banned on the two occasions I got found out.

Like all cheaters I justified my actions with excuses like I'm not hurting anyone since I wasn't a PVPer so what did it matter if I bought game gold from Koreans so my son and I could have a faster mount in WOW back in 2005?

But let's face it, these are not actions I'm particularly proud of and would always accept any punishment a developer meted out for breaking their rules.

Still, I support developers efforts to run a "clean" game as such strives to promote better ethics among gamers and gaming in general.

In recent years I only buy in game items for developer provided RMT, most recently for RDO in their game store.

Yes, I am extremely opposed to Web 3, mostly because the "advantages" offered are extreme in their cost IMO, and almost all are less about the gameplay and more about the "investment and earning opportunities."

Honestly, I am too old to deal with the idea of setting up and protecting my gaming "wallet" and far smarter people than me loose control of theirs everyday, losing millions in the process.

Yeah, I know, big difference in scale but still I'd hate to loose my gaming accounts due to my lack of understanding how these systems really work. 

Besides, I don't game to make money but perhaps now that I'm retired I could turn my focus more towards that idea?

They’ve already gone down the this road. This isn’t me suggesting a lot thing, it’s already happened.

As for you making money at games? You’re retired now, go nuts!

Wargfoot

Sovrath said:

As for you making money at games? You’re retired now, go nuts!

Oh no... you don't know what you've done.

Sovrath

Wargfoot said:

Sovrath said:

Wargfoot said:

Here is the important difference:

If I buy from a player the developers are working against RMT; whereas, if I buy from the developer the developer is working at making RMT necessary.

Everything else is noise.

Except the developers have been working and spending money on fighting gold selling and even though there are players who don’t want it there are an inordinate number of players who buy gold and items.

It’s a bit of a rock and a hard place for developers as the amount of resources they use to combat it can’t stop it.

I’m not saying they should incorporate it but at what point do they throw up their hands as they realize it’s a lost cause?

For me it is a question of developer focus.

You've brought up the perfectly valid point of where the developers draw the line in their crusade.   That is worth exploring.

However, I'm more concerned with development being driven by the need to drive people to the store to buy convenience items to make it easy to get past grindy game play.



Developer 1: So, to get to rank, the players need to kill 10 wolves.

Developer 2: Yeah, any more than that would be tedious.

Developer 1: Good idea, we should make it 20 wolves and sell a buff in the store that makes each wolf kill count X2.

Developer 2: Bingo.



If someone buys an account that doesn't directly impact the conscientious development of the game - but stores make their way into the design discussions, and that is the cause of much pain.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The store starts out as a game feature, and then the game becomes a feature of the store.

They’re already doing that. I have to have a sub if I want acceptable storage space for Elder Scrolls Online, I have to buy storage in Lord of the Rings Online. Heck there is even the rumored extra skill bar for Star Wars the Old Republic.

We’re there kids… 

Scot

DadGamer2000 said:

mmorpg.com are pushing a suspicious amount of these devils advocate articles down our throats lately. Why is that?

It gets people talking, but that does not mean that every article writer is pretending this his or her take on a particular issue.

Scot

Well how about if the studios started out by setting an example? If you take money from gamers every which way like they were punters at a betting shop, how do you expect them to view buying gold etc from other players?

I remember when one of out posters was telling us us that his nephew could not believe an old MMORPG he was showing him did not have a cash shop. That is what gaming youth have been brought up by studios to think, it is all about the money.

So on here where you have more old timers we reject RMT's, but I wonder what players on a forum with a younger base would think? I recon they would be quite blase.

KnightFalz

DadGamer2000 said:

mmorpg.com are pushing a suspicious amount of these devils advocate articles down our throats lately. Why is that?

It's to provoke discussion and it has been working well.

KnightFalz

Wargfoot said:

Sovrath said:

Wargfoot said:

Here is the important difference:



If I buy from a player the developers are working against RMT; whereas, if I buy from the developer the developer is working at making RMT necessary.



Everything else is noise.

Except the developers have been working and spending money on fighting gold selling and even though there are players who don’t want it there are an inordinate number of players who buy gold and items.

It’s a bit of a rock and a hard place for developers as the amount of resources they use to combat it can’t stop it.

I’m not saying they should incorporate it but at what point do they throw up their hands as they realize it’s a lost cause?

For me it is a question of developer focus.

You've brought up the perfectly valid point of where the developers draw the line in their crusade.   That is worth exploring.

However, I'm more concerned with development being driven by the need to drive people to the store to buy convenience items to make it easy to get past grindy game play.



Developer 1: So, to get to rank, the players need to kill 10 wolves.

Developer 2: Yeah, any more than that would be tedious.

Developer 1: Good idea, we should make it 20 wolves and sell a buff in the store that makes each wolf kill count X2.

Developer 2: Bingo.



If someone buys an account that doesn't directly impact the conscientious development of the game - but stores make their way into the design discussions, and that is the cause of much pain.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The store starts out as a game feature, and then the game becomes a feature of the store.

That's where the issue is, a shift in focus from bettering the game to making better use of the cash shop. Unfortunately this needs to be done as games need revenue and players are now widely adverse to the purchase and subscription model which preceded it.

While purchase and subscription games also now have cash shops I suspect that is largely due to the price of subscriptions being essentially fixed. Getting rid of cash shops entirely would likely require increasing subscription fees to keep up with increasing costs.

Still, getting rid of cash shops entirely may be worth returning to mandatory subscriptions at a higher price that reflects rising costs.

cameltosis

KnightFalz said:

Wargfoot said:

Sovrath said:

Wargfoot said:

That's where the issue is, a shift in focus from bettering the game to making better use of the cash shop. Unfortunately this needs to be done as games need revenue and players are now widely adverse to the purchase and subscription model which preceded it.

While purchase and subscription games also now have cash shops I suspect that is largely due to the price of subscriptions being essentially fixed. Getting rid of cash shops entirely would likely require increasing subscription fees to keep up with increasing costs.

Still, getting rid of cash shops entirely may be worth returning to mandatory subscriptions at a higher price that reflects rising costs.

There is a large part of me that thinks the fixed price of subscriptions *should* be offset by significantly larger market. There are sooooo many more gamers now than there were 20 years ago.

I know that's probably naive, and certainly my amateurish research has shown me that the size of the MMO market hasn't grown in years. But still. More gamers should equal more available money in my opinion!

Personally, i don't play any F2P games and have never spent money in a cash shop, so im OK with them increasing subscription prices if that's what it takes to get a sub-only MMO. It just better damn well be a good game!

Theocritus

"There is a large part of me that thinks the fixed price of subscriptions *should* be offset by significantly larger market. There are sooooo many more gamers now than there were 20 years ago."

I'm guessing server costs and salaries have increased significantly in those last 20 years also......We are probably lucky subs aren't $49.99 a month or some insane number.

Frost7X

In my opinion, the difference is, games should always make an honest effort to be balanced. When games bring in the RMT officially, the game officially becomes "Pay to Win". We all know it happens on the sidelines of many of our MMO and ARPG favorite games, but they have to go to some length and risk to do it. At that point whatever, let them risk viruses or ransomware or whatever else to get their in-game currency. I don't like it, but there's also nothing that will ever really eliminate it, as long as trading or some form of dropping items exists. BUT, when a game officially embraces it, they automatically embrace the "Pay to Win" label by default and that's why gamers get upset. Not only are they profiting further off their game, but they do so knowing that people with the fattest wallets will win out. And then it's just another SK MMO lol

Frost7X

Also I should mention, I'm a huge SK MMO fan and have played many, but I can't ever get too involved with them knowing how P2W they are.

xanthouscrown

Devs could do a better job of identifying and banning people who buy gold and characters, but banning players for RMT means losing customers.

Scot

Frost7X said:

Also I should mention, I'm a huge SK MMO fan and have played many, but I can't ever get too involved with them knowing how P2W they are.

Welcome to the forums!