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9/26/11 8:22:53 PM#81
The point isn't that gambling is illegal. The point is that online gambling (and monetary transactions in general) are too dificult to control and you really can't do anything to stop children from involving themselves. Korea has a long and serious history of video game addiction. When you add real money the equation, it looks more and more like gambling.
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9/26/11 8:26:01 PM#82
I am not certain that most of you understand what is being is challenged here. Let me try to explain.
The logic is as follows: If items that drop in game have real value, then playing to get them is gambling.
The inclusion of the RMT market is not the issue, it is the trigger. It is this formal recognition that in game items have value that is causing the KRB to re-asses whether this game is gambling. In the past, games had a strict policy against reselling items (for real money), so it could be argued that there was no real (legal) value.
There was a ruling in Korea recently that virtual currency is the same as real currency (and taxable). It is not a big stretch to couple this with recognition of virtual goods as having real value, especially when the game operator legalizes its sale.
I would not expect that it will be concluded that this is gambling, but I would expect to see it concluded that these items have value, and are taxable. |
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9/26/11 8:27:47 PM#83
Blizzard will not let go of their RMT AH for the revenue stream that their anticipating from it.
Nope, they wont place a simple non-RMT AH in the game because so many have already bowed to their interest for this micro-transaction activity. |
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9/26/11 8:30:22 PM#84
Originally posted by Cik_Asalin WTF? there is already a NON-RMT AH.. in the game. Get informed ffs.. they can remove the RMAH for region if they have too. http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/347892/My-review-of-Diablo-3.html My take on Diablo 3 |
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9/26/11 8:33:28 PM#85
Heh , you don't see a problem with a real cash auction shop? Fine. Then don't have a problem removing the EULA. If it's "OK" to put real money for virtual goods , then I am allowed to sell that same virtual good for real money , if not then don't put the freaking feature in the first place. That's the thing that people fail to understand about these cash shop games , and that's how RMTs make a fortune off of about every single one of you buying from cash shops. This is the main reason why this genre is going down hill and sucking for the past 8 years , the ammount of gold seller web sites currently up and running is quite impressive and depressing at the same time , because no matter how hard you try on being legit , 80% of the player base if not more don't give a hoot and go down the path of the gold sellers to get what they need to own your rear end. So it's a mix of emotions , on one side you got very strong minority of legits that are proud of getting to end game without putting a dime , then you got the others that hack / buy gold / scam / ect , to get to where they want to be. So basically the whole genre of MMORPG in itself isn't legit anymore , no matter what the Devs try to say , at the end of the day , if their bank accounts are in the green , they don't care wether you buy / scam / hack , trust me from experience , if they DID care , Maple Story wouldn't be operational a long with every other F2P games out there. Anyways , TorchLight series is the real Diablo , Diablo 3 should be World of Diablo. From where I stand , Diablo 3 will have huge sales in the first month with a huge fan base , and at the 2nd month will start to drop rapidly. After 12 years , you'd think they would of planned something better , but I guess they planned 12 years around a auction house rather then on game play. Just to make one thing clear , if we were back in the 90's , I can garantee that those who cheated their way to fame thanks to RMTs were hunted down and shot at , no joke. Back then we had pride within our MMOs. Today the whole genre is a joke. |
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9/26/11 8:33:31 PM#86
Sound about right, they have been trying to stop online gambling there for a while just the same as China. The way they try to stop it is by stopping fund transfers online but then they found this was circumvented with industries like gold farming/selling so in china they cracked down on those as well. D3 RMT shop has just opened a whole other messy can of worms for countries that have problems with online gambling. |
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9/26/11 8:41:46 PM#87
Originally posted by TheCrow2k Considering a huge majority of Korean MMO's have a cash shop i don't see there issue lol. I mean you spent countless dollars to get increase chance of success items that are 100% gambling.. Okie dokie don't get it. http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/347892/My-review-of-Diablo-3.html My take on Diablo 3 |
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9/26/11 8:47:57 PM#88
I am struggling to see the RMAH as a form of gambling but do see why a government would block the game from a country that has serious issues with online gaming addiction. Should it really be up to the governement to decide this? Can't people show a bit of responsibility for their own money and what they spend it on? Don't take life too seriously, you will never escape it alive anyway. |
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9/26/11 8:49:45 PM#89
Originally posted by maxy1214 If their intent was to remove the asian RMT scabs from the equation using the customer's credit card, they would have stuck with a simple account hold to ensure that the card was valid and attached to a real person (eg; those $1 charges that temporarily pop up on your statement when signing up for an MMO). Read the Blizzard FAQ, the real reason is written in plain English in #7: "Can players choose to get cash from currency-based auction house sales, instead of having the proceeds deposited into their Battle.net account? Fees are the only motivation for this system, pure greed. They have zero interest (nor have they ever, judging by their management of WoW) in knocking down third party RMT. Edit: if anything, now that I think about it, it seems more like a system designed to be mutually beneficial to professional farmers and Blizzard. Similar to how in WoW, they turned a blind eye to farmers and bots most of the time (because in the end it is just another sub), then once a year they would pick some small batch of them to toss the hammer at so they could keep up appearances. This reeks of the classic "we don't serve your kind here" attitude toward item sellers, while meeting them behind the alley and saying "hey, we'll let you use Paypal (or something similar) to process your transactions over, but you have to give us a cut of the action." |
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9/26/11 8:52:14 PM#90
If people could control their own impulses, most of the world's legal systems would be unnecessary. Join the League For Gamers. |
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9/26/11 9:00:56 PM#91
Originally posted by Superman0X
Ok. I read up on Blizzards defence. Here is what I am seeing:
Blizzard believes that this is not gambling. It is like working in a mine (my example). Sure, you have to pay some money for equipment, and then you can spend your time looking for items that you can sell. Players are not gambling by investing their time, in an effort to earn value. That is considered work, even if the payout is not gaurenteed, and if they must then sell the result to others in an effort to make money.
There are also some concerns about how blizzard charges fees for the use of their auction service. This varies based on the country/region as to what is legal (the same applies to ebay). Blizzard may have to have a more complex fee structure to allow for variation between countries. |
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9/26/11 9:05:32 PM#92
In the court case ( http://koreajoongangdaily.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2915126 ), two players of Lineage II purchased a LOT of in game money, bought items, then sold those items for more money than they spent on the in game currency. The players were fined in lower courts for gambling, but they took it to the South Korean Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that the virtual currency was earned through skill, not gambled with luck, so it was a real currency, and so can be exchanged for South Korean currency without fines. It could go either way...but Blizzard will have a tough argument. The sticking point is that items drop based on a random number generator. It's luck. If items and currency are earned through luck, then you can't exchange those items for real world money, which is what the RMAH does. ** edit ** @Superman0X - they did not blanket rule that virtual currency was real money. They ruled that two people earned virtual money without gambling (using luck) so they could not be fined under South Korea's laws against internet gambling. If they see Blizzard's implementation as gambling, it means you can't 'cash out' for South Korean currency. If they rule it isn't gambling, then you can 'cash out' for South Korean currency. No mention was made of taxation for the sale of virtual goods. The men were acquitted of internet gambling. Join the League For Gamers. |
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9/26/11 10:33:14 PM#93
Originally posted by st4t1ck
I think what you're not "getting" is the correlation to gambling. It's gambling for the SELLER, not the buyer in this case. The seller has to pay listing fees and possibly a separate item fee (I don't think we know this yet) and then they have the CHANCE to sell the item. Essentially....I can see whereas people could look at that as gambling. President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club |
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9/26/11 10:35:29 PM#94
Originally posted by Cavod
You have a good point. That's exactly why gold selling is illegal, so what makes this different? Either both should be illegal or neither. President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club |
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9/26/11 10:40:28 PM#95
Originally posted by romanator0 So, by your logic, when you pay for something to make a profit... it's gambling?! LOL!! Welcome to the world of business. If I own a used car lot, and buy a car for $500 - for a chance to resell it for a thousand... I'm gambling? RMAH and gambling are NOT AT ALL the same thing. |
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9/26/11 10:43:06 PM#96
Originally posted by SaintViktor Does nobody on this site know what gambling is? Bidding on items in a AH is NOT gambling... that's absolutely laughable. There are estate auctions, home auctions, antique auctions, collectors auctions, charity auctions... on and on and on. They have absolutely nothing in common with gambling.
I'm beginning to lose all faith in humanity.
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9/26/11 10:45:35 PM#97
Originally posted by just1opinion When you take a collectable to an auction, you have to pay to have it entered and auctioned. It might not sell. This happens every day in every state in every city and has no correlation to gambling. When you run an ad to sell something in the newspaper, it might not sell, but you paid for the ad. This is not gambling. Sure "you took a gamble," that doesn't make it GAMBLING in a legal sense of the word. Please people give up, it's not frickin gambling. |
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9/26/11 10:51:13 PM#98
Originally posted by lthompson94
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9/27/11 3:23:13 AM#99
Originally posted by lizardbones Fair call. Just seems sad that we need someone to manage our money for us xD Don't take life too seriously, you will never escape it alive anyway. |
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9/27/11 3:42:55 AM#100
I fail to see how it is not gambling. The simple virtual aspect of the goods make it gambling since you have no real value put into any of the objects. You don't know if tomorrow it will still exist, maintain its value or whatever, a game could close tomorrow and have your money sink in lala land. Their value is highly volatile. And it is a kind of volatile no other product can reach, even stuff that have no reality like a book or an idea isn't as volatile as a virtual item. But i don't think this is the point here, the point is more about how you get those items in this kind of game, sell them in an auction and buy them, and the fact there is a very high luck factor in the way you obtain them first hand. So playing this kind of game with real money can obviously be seen as gambling, it's really not hard to understand especially when some games have a 0.00001% drop ratio on valuable items. It was all good until this was kept inside their game, but if you involve real money in it, then yes its pretty close to gambling. In usual p2w game you directly buy items from the company, in D3 its an other thing entirely, since they involve real money into in game trading since everything in game have a real money price tag on it. This mean what you drop have a value, and this mean your playing time is exactly like gambling on a casino machine. |
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