When Livegamer.com sent out a press release yesterday announcing that they had partnered with numerous MMO companies including SOE and Funcom, it raised a number of questions about the nature of that relationship that Managing Editor Jon Wood tries to answer.

 

Yesterday, a press release was issued announcing the introduction of livegamer.com, a company with the tagline: “A Legitimate Market for Virtual Trading”. The company’s official website makes a clear point of listing partner studios: GoPets, Pingo, 10tacle, Acclaim, Funcom and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).

“Live Gamer Inc™ (www.livegamer.com) today announced its introduction as the premier provider of a publisher-supported, secure platform for real money trading of virtual property. Live Gamer is partnering with top massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) publishers and virtual world operators worldwide, including Funcom GMBH, Sony Online Entertainment, 10TACLE STUDIOS, Acclaim, GoPets LTD, and Ping0 Interactive Limited. The company was founded by industry veterans and backed with $24 million in venture funding from Charles River Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, and Pequot Ventures.” - Live Gamer Press Release

 

Read more here.

DO NOT WANT!

bad bad bad, but expected. RMT happens whatever companies are against it or not. It is costing them SO much (banning/tracking an person cost time and therefor money). So I assume from an companies perspective it is only smart to atleast get an % of these RMT.

I would much prefer companies selling it themselves (without an middleman aka farmers). They can then provide it cheaper. Selling non-excisting stuff means there is no labor involved. Beside the fact it was made once, it only need an admin to clone the item. So I really doubt an company like Funcom and SoE (who if I am correct already provide RMT for specified server from some of there games) would work benifit from working with these companies. Unless they provide the "money" and "ïtems" to the company selling it. This would mean they do not have to items to do it themselves, they would not get farmers and just get money for cloning what they already made.

Also working with an RTM company means they have control over it. They can even in cooperation limit it to certain servers.

So RTM site are there to stay, however the best way to fight the illigal RTM sites and there army of farmers would be to work with an RTM provider and have control over the virtual trade and gain some money from it at the same time.

This is yet another example of The Man catering to the lowest common denominator (online gold BUYERS, not sellers).  *sigh*

A shame to see the MMORPG industry falling so low.

I Oped this news item yesterday   http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/159821 with all due respect . It still does not make it right to make it legit.

After repeated failure to create any decent MMO ,

the companies in question decided that it is not enough that they take 15$ a month subscription , but they will add an item shop. Alas indirectly , so they will be able to cash on the rights of now "legal" goldsellers to paddle their wares.

I would readily avoid this companies and their products from now on - unless they remove subscriptions, as other item shop games do.

But sadly i see Funcom is involved , meaning AOC will be item shop game.

Incredibly disapointing

Not at all surprising.  Funcom was one of the first to whore out in-game ad space, so this is a natural step for them.  Likewise, SOE has been trying to break into the RMT market since the Sony Exchange servers were introduced.

I have never played on servers where this kind of thing is sanctioned, and I doubt I will ever play a game that is involved with livegamer.com.

so, the game companies want a piece of (their own) cake that is out there ....

What I don't get, is why they simply don't do it themselves? As SOE with their Station Exchange (aolthough limited to US), or EA with Ultima Online, where you can buy tokens from them for specific stuff, advanced characters, etc.

Personally, I always thought, that Blizzard could make more money, if they offered advanced characters. Make a max-level one a server, you get to buy a, say lv40 character, if you want and find the grind boring. Considering that they "made it easier to level from 20-50" or whatever, it shows they know many are not too keen on leveling multiple chars (and that their content must be pretty boring if they now make it faster (i.e. less quests necessary)).

*shrugs* oh well. money makes the (gaming) world go round. We can be glad if some MMOs continue existing. See how fast it went for Fury.....

I know why big companies like the idea of RMT.  They don't have to put development dollars into finding ways to prevent it, and they get a cut of the profits.

I don't understand people who don't see a problem with it though.  The main reason many people play online games is to escape some part of their own reality and compete on a level playing field.  If I'm physically weak, I can't win in real-life sporting events, but I might be able to play a beefy warrior in an MMO and smack people around.  If I'm financially poor, I can't have nice things in my home, but I could outfit a virtual home with all kinds of neat stuff that I crafted or looted myself.

Adding RMT as a legitimate thing takes all that away.  Now the rich get to win here too.

I know why companies want this.  I know why rich kids want it.  Unfortunately, they're the only voices that matter.

*sigh*

Trying to steal market from IGE and other chinese RMT companies?

Originally posted by Lobotomist

But sadly i see Funcom is involved , meaning AOC will be item shop game.

Hope that clears thngs up.

---

Originally posted by quixadhal
I know why big companies like the idea of RMT.  They don't have to put development dollars into finding ways to prevent it, and they get a cut of the profits. 

---

I disagree - if they do a deal with an offical company for RMT they will have to spend more money/effort cracking down on the non licensed RMT people.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

I would readily avoid this companies and their products from now on - unless they remove subscriptions, as other item shop games do.

But sadly i see Funcom is involved , meaning AOC will be item shop game.

Incredibly disapointing

 

Next time...read the article before posting ^^.

~HappyGaming

I guess SOE has found a future for themselves after their new games fail and EQ fades away.  They will farm gold in WoW and sell it.

Well I used to feel strongly against gold, item or account buyers. I still believe the later ones should be fought, but mostly because it leads to end game players with little to no knowledge of the game and their character abilities.

But I have changed my mind about gold/item selling buying. Why? Because I recently tried a few free to play MMOs whose business model is based on item mall sales.

I no longer believe it is cheating or unfair. Let's face it... is there a big difference between grinding your in-game gold and items or 'grinding' RL money to pay for those? If you have enough free time to do it the game way... fine. Hope you have fun :) I no longer have the time to do that. But I do have a good job that gets me enough cash to buy any items I want without even a blink, at least at current market prices. Why should my RL work 'grind' be worth less than your in-game one?

In F2P games, the people like me are the ones that actually support the other's free play. So they should love us, instead of looking down at us.

On subscription games, the problem has to be approached differently, of course: there is no 'exchange' like in F2Ps. But... there are bots, gold farmers, inflated prices in all of them. The companies (or most of them) spend a large amount of resources fighting the farmers and botters, resources that could be used to improve the service. I do not condone or use gold selling services for subscription games at the moment, but that's just a matter of personal ethics. Still, wouldn't it be better if companies like Blizzard, SoE, Funcom, PlayNC, etc finally acknowledged that there is a significant part of their customer base that are open to such a service? To clearly state that spending money for game progression by people who have little free time and lots of money is not unfair when compared to spending free time for game progression from people with lots of free time and little money?

I believe so. This would also help control the farmers problem, because they would ultimately wither and die out. It would prevent inflation by giving companies the tools to keep in-game prices under control. It would also most likely increase their income and maybe allow them to lower subscription prices, thus enlarging their customer base.

It makes sense from a business point of view. I would like people to realize it also makes sense from a player's point of view.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for the dedicated crafter.

It seems that SOE's "John Smedley's" cryptic posts about the next Sony MMO, perhaps that one consisting of the DC Comics brand. Could use some sort of RMT system, which if i recall correctly John Smedley had stated. That the upcoming DC Comics MMO wouldn't be a subscription based customer model.

The Livegamer.com site also has an interview posted over at GamaSutra.com website.

Link:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16663

GamaSutra via their sister site "Worlds in Motion" had a Q&A with the CEO of LiveGamer.com Andy Schneider.

It seems that LiveGamer will be offering a secure platform system for these RMT trades. Be it a middleware developed specifically for this or an in-house bureau of their own customer support team.

Let's see how this stuff develops with new MMO titles coming down the pipe. Or some of the lesser performer MMO's in the SOE catalog might get retrofitted. (perhaps Vanguard ala the EQ2 Station Exchange model but with a "LiveGamer" treatment).

hmmm. kinda glad I am growing out of the mmo phase.   Eve model works simply because money gets vacumed out of the economy  just as fast as it gets brought in.  A single alliance battle can drain a bucket load of isk out of the economy.

In a game such as Anarchy Online. It simply doesn't. Credits do not go anywhere in that game other than traveling thru other players hands. I saw  this coming from a mile away ever since that fluff item mall was anounced. Not really fluff anymore now is it. What are you all paying sub fees for again?  Why do some items cost more credits than what all of the characters on a single account are allowed to hold?

If companys wan't me to accept something like this. They better introduce big money sinks such as in Eve with clone costs and ship insurance costs.  Which last I was aware insurance didn't even come close to rebuying a well kitted vessal back.  But it is enough to help negate the cost unless you loose a 800+ mill ship everyday.  Then it would just be stupid to keep getting insurance.

 Funcom is below the level  of what I think about Asian games.  They do little to fix the monopoly that controls supposedly public zones. They do nothing to drain their own economy of credits.  I watched the economy literally double in price from around august to september this year.   This is in a 6ish year old game which should be fairly stable at this point. There hasn't been a huge influx of new players for quite sometime, nore would I say a great loss of the playerbase.  Since the majority who stick with it have been doing so for years.  Sure theirs a turnover rate. But rarely do those short term players make it to a high enough lvl to affect the economy as far as bots or high end loots go.

Simply amazing after that speech given by funcom saying they would not be doing this.    And all the harping I took on this site in the AO section when I freaked out because of that stupid gold buying survey done on the AO forums.

Whats a monthly fee for again? ooohhhhh.. hmmmmm   ....

Edited in to be more clear on what survey i was refering too.

Resistance is futile...

In all seriousness, people need to lighten up.  Not only is rmt in very high demand, but there's not much more fun then finding a piece of equipment worth a few hundred dollars.  Why should anyone care about someone's epeen when there's good money to be made?

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Resistance is futile...

but there's not much more fun then finding a piece of equipment worth a few hundred dollars.  Why should anyone care about someone's epeen when there's good money to be made?

Just wait until you find out that it's all bind on pickup.