Scott Jennings: Real Money, Real Problems
MMORPG.com Columnist Scott Jennings returns this week to talk about the gold farming problem in MMORPGs and addresses three of the most common myths about gold farming and how MMO companies react to them.
Column By Scott Jennings on November 18, 2009
A brief personal note: I’ve been hired (again) by NCsoft this week, to work as a developer and data analyst for their new Game Surveillance Unit. This CSI-sounding department is responsible for quashing botting and gold selling in their titles, some of which has been a bit of a problem of late. While this does introduce some potential biases in anything I might write here, I would hope that you, the reader would understand that I am already chock full of bias anyway, as would be anyone with strongly held opinions, and evaluate my writings accordingly. Especially when I write about something directly related to what I’m working on… say, gold farming?
Gold farming and selling in MMORPGs (the commonly used term within the industry being “RMT”, which stands for “Real Money Trading”) is, it’s safe to say, fairly controversial. A few games such as Ultima Online and Second Life embrace the blurring between virtual and real cash, but most games prohibit it, and most players (especially the more hard-core) claim to despise it. Yet, much like any other vice, there still seems to be a market for it.
I won’t rehash here whether or not RMT itself is a bad idea – there are plenty, including myself, who have written page after page on the subject. Instead, I think it would be interesting to look at a few commonly held opinions and suspicions players have about RMT and how game companies deal (or more often, fail to deal) with the problem.
“The great majority of gold farmers come from China. Why don’t Western games simply… ban China? Problem solved!”
Part of this is actually true – recent estimates place 80% to 85% of the RMT industry in China. This is because $1 goes a lot farther in China than in the West (and the Chinese government does its share to keep it that way), so it’s cost effective to pay workers to generate in-game cash and then turn around and convert it into its real-world equivalent. The stereotype of the Chinese gold farmer is unfortunately, for the most part, accurate (and the cause of a great deal of ugly racism in the process).
So given that, why don’t Western MMOs simply block players in China from accessing the game? Seems simple enough – after all, it’s not like Western MMOs are even sold in China, or intended for Chinese audiences (which have hundreds of MMOs that are). Yet, in practice? Not particularly. And again, we can blame the Chinese government for this, at least indirectly. Although a far cry from the oppressive regime it once was, the Chinese government still seeks to control the flow of information to its people on sensitive topics, and as part of that much of Chinese internet access is filtered – what some wags call “the Great Firewall of China”. Of course, this results in people being quite adept at dodging these restrictions through the use of proxies and VPN servers outside of the country. And those same proxy servers make it close to impossible to determine where users originate – something which tech-savvy Chinese farming operations make great use of. The cat and mouse game between these operations and MMO providers set on hunting them down has been going on for years, and as long as there is a real financial incentive for both sides to continue, it’s not set to stop any time soon.
And, while we’re on the topic of financial incentives:
“[MMO company] doesn’t do anything about gold farming because they’re in on it. They get kickbacks under the table from gold sellers, so they won’t ever make any serious attempt to stop them.”
Few rumors enrage me quite as much as this one – because not only is it fairly obviously untrue, it’s also pretty insulting. I’ve worked for two large MMO companies now, and have friends at most of the others, and I can say with 100% certainty that this is absolutely not happening. I have heard rumors of a few back-channel attempts by RMT companies to “come to informal arrangements” with MMO developers, and the response has always been overwhelmingly, brutally negative. In fact, few things anger MMO developers more than piratical gold farmers who make billions off of their work, and angering paying customers in the process, without so much as a by-your-leave.
But don’t take my word for it – take Occam’s Razor. If game developers wanted to monetize gold sales, they wouldn’t rely on uncontrolled offshore gold farmers that wreak havoc for their support staff. There are many examples of MMO developers who’ve tried to further monetize their game:
- The “free-to-play” option, as seen recently by Dungeons and Dragons Online. Stop charging a subscription fee, and start monetizing through well-proven free-to-pay methods such as item shops and in-game advertising. This is an attractive option for games with low subscriber numbers who’d like to get a second chance at success.
- Adding “item malls” even though you’re charging a subscription. World of Warcraft is hard to ignore here, and judging from all the people running around with Pandarens in-game it seems to be popular, if controversial.
- The “SOEBay” model, where the developer runs eBay-style auctions between players and makes money off of transaction fees. In addition to SOE (which has also been aggressively introducing item malls), Linden Lab relies on transaction fees on currency sales between players in Second Life for a significant portion of their income.
Given all of the above, hopefully I’ve demonstrated that MMO developers are rarely shy about asking you for money directly. Why would they rely on shifty brokers outside of their control when they can simply open up a shopping cart directly, if they cared to?
“If MMO developers cared about farming and botting, they’d stop it. They don’t, because they make money off the accounts that the farmers and botters use, so they ignore them.”
The answer for this one sadly isn’t as cut and dried as the others, because to some extent it contains a grain of truth. Some farmers do in fact use paid accounts (especially earlier, when MMOs were first launched), and part of the cat-and-mouse game between CS enforcement and farming operations involves trying to drive up their cost of doing business by banning their accounts and forcing them to buy more. And, much as I noted in my last column, the amount of support dedicated to driving farmers and botters out of business is directly related to how much the developer is willing to allocate (and in so doing, take limited resources off of other parts of their budget). So, to some extent, it is true that some farmers are actually paying customers.
But not all, and the number of gold farmers that pay their $15 a month is dropping. How do farmers get around that cost?
- Free trial accounts. If you’d like to know why you are prohibited from doing pretty much anything involving money or talking to people while on a free trial, this is why. Farmers would (and in some games still do) burn through an endless number of free trial accounts for games, naming their characters something nonsensical and spamming and killstealing their way through the game knowing (and not caring) that they would be banned quickly. Since that sort of behavior chases off paying customers fairly effectively as well, most developers that offer free trials have placed draconian limits on how much damage they can do in response, which then cripples new players who know the least about the game. This is why we can’t have nice things.
- Credit card fraud. The next step, then, is to get an actual account without paying for it. Credit card fraud, using stolen cards, and charging back the transaction after the sale have all become so prevalent that credit card processors are actually starting to be leery of MMO developers due to the vast amount of fraud they’re saddled with. There’s not much about this that can be done that banks in general aren’t already dealing with; it’s just another cost of doing business, but this time on the developer’s side. (And some of the least reputable RMT sites have been known to turn around and use credit card numbers used to purchase gold to buy more game accounts.)
- Account theft. Especially for World of Warcraft, stealing already developed characters has become quite the growth industry; to the point that more Trojan horses and keyloggers directly target World of Warcraft then, say, banking websites. Once an account is stolen, its wealth is disbursed (for later resale) and the character itself is used either for gold farming (especially using exploits, since the account is by definition not going to last very long) or for spamming and then rapidly discarded.
So, while there is a profit motive for dealing with farmers, it’s not the most obvious one – in addition to costing developers the subscription of angry players who don’t want to deal with farming and botting in their game, in many cases the accounts of farmers and botters are a net negative themselves.
This is a very brief summary of a fairly large problem, and one with few value judgments on the relative morality of gold buying, powerlevelling, or what have you. However you feel about these subjects, the wreckage from the current state of “the game” between developers and farmers is plain to see, and dealing with this is a challenge that every developer has to tackle if they want to deliver a successful, fun, and profitable product.
And much like any other vice, enforcement only goes so far, as long as there is a demand.
Next week: “No Russian” – Gaming, politics and morality.
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Aside from this column, Scott is also currently contracting with NCsoft.
Every Wednesday he provides us an insider's look at the MMO industry.
I'll probably get flamed for this but....
1.) No trading between characters/accounts at all. You sell or give your item (acquired by crafting or looting) to an NPC or an NPC auction house and they resell it to another player at a fixed rate(or variable based on in game availablity of the item at the time of sale) - and then send you back the money.
2.) Force antivirus on the client - same as business VPN solutions - if your not running AV or it is not up to date, then you fail the logon.
3.) Run your own scan after the AV check - looking for keyloggers or IP/MAC spoofing software on the client. - Do this in the open - not hiding it from the client.
4.) Ban people caught in RMT based on IP/MAC/credit card information.
5.) Enforce password complexity.
For starters...
A friend's WoW account was hacked. The guild noticed almost immediately, alerted Blizzard through standard channels (in-game petitions, emails, etc.), and it still took several hours for Blizzard to act. During that time, the gold farmer took everything he could from the guild bank, sold every item on most of the characters of that account and mailed it off to other characters, and started up a mining bot for the character with the highest mining skill. When the account was finally shutoff and returned to its owner, the mining character was almost full with mined ore.
We have two problems here:
1) The lack of response to multiple people telling Blizzard an account has been hijacked.
2) The lack of response to a bot being used to farm resources for several hours.
I will say this for Blizzard - after about a week and a lot of hassle, the account has been mostly restored to its former status.
No flaming from me. I've actually thought about #1 for quite some time. Sure, players who enjoy being in game moguls will get upset but there is no reason that every game has to be about every aspect of the mmo experience.
I've often thought that not allowing any direct transfers between characters is the way to go.
did he get to keep the ore? :)
I understand why some players think the devs/support team dont care about goldfarmers, as in some games it is very hard to report them and often take you some time to do, and it take days before anything is done.
While other games it takes you max 5 secs, and the goldseller/spammer is delt within 5 mins.
Number one will alienate some of your customers [including me]. IMO, the proposed cure is worse than the disease. I think the only way MMO companies will ever defeat the farmers is to beat them at their own game. Although Lum didn't mention EVE [he hates scifi games :) ] I like what CCP has done with game time cards as a mechanism to allow players to convert real money into isk.
Ihave played alotta game for a good many yrs, and have seen the growth of gold farmer exployed. I have seen why to I call this the play station era, for alotta yrs now a kid gets a playstaion or xbox what ever game concil they want, and what the first thing they do is go online and get all the cheat codes, why so they dont have to actually do the work, and that is one of the big things gold spammers do for coin. I have a frien had 8 toons payed for each 1 to be powrlvled and say 200g per he paid bout 400 in real money he and his friends who all do same thing, "Oh I want that oh no funds no prob just buy some gold and its mine", so i say it starts long before they start playing in larger MMo's.
I played DAOC since beta till this yr bout may, and I seen were they boot them withing 20 min to still seeing them a week later. I also seen how it ruined the economy for regular players cause they cannot afford 200plat for a item no were near that. How do i try to fix that I report as sooon as i see a goldspammer, but i make all the crafters that way i dont pay the coin for it and get fairly good equipment .I liked Daoc cause crafters made best stuff so i had top the line stuff, u say that takes forever, well I do play the game to play not just to brag what i got and u dont.It didnt fix the prob but mayed it easier for me to ignore what i couldnt stop. I play to play and paying for someone to lvl a toon (am old man, and believe in earning my own way) is not even a question in my book.
Do not confuse the lack of visable immediate action with a lack of response. This is one of the common mistakes that our instant gratification generation makes. Instead just read through your post carefully and see why the Providor may have waited and watched for a little bit before simply banning. The hacker/gold farmer created a trail. Honestly Blizzard, Scott or anyone who deals with this does not want to simply shut down and ban a single hacked account. They want to ban a whole trail and where possible shutdown a process. That means observing and generating logs of what they do. Where did that hacker send gold and items? How did he dispose of things? WHat in game mechanisms did he use? What other accounts were touched? How far out did the account relays chain? How was the mining bot behaving? Where was it being run? over what sort of patern? Is there something about it that could be detected by Warden? How are those resources being used or distributed?
Yes, instantly locking down and banning a hacked character does prevent a certain level of annoyance to the guild and the players. But most of that damage can be easily undone. Whereas instantly banning the hacker simply gives info to the hacker himself on how the games security and CS works. Sometimes it is better to wait and watch a little bit. (This is not saying that your friend did not simply hit an extended CS queue or an after hours point where a response may have been otherwise delayed.)
No flaming from me. I've actually thought about #1 for quite some time. Sure, players who enjoy being in game moguls will get upset but there is no reason that every game has to be about every aspect of the mmo experience.
I've often thought that not allowing any direct transfers between characters is the way to go.
It won't work for more then a few hours. Many of the RMT transactions now are provided through in game auction services and similar. Dummy transactions used to mask the actual purpose.
Gratz on a successful job hunt, Lum. :)
It's a tough balancing act for MMOs: how to keep the paying customers happy, how to keep the bad guys out, how to keep the game fun to play. The trick seems to be balancing just enough to make it workable and worthwhile for the majority, which means the minorities will still have plenty to complain about. It's tough on everyone.
I thik the first step to combating this problem is simple: Transaction regulations on box sales.
My point is that someone is buying all these accts, and you bet the company can track down certain sales and where they originate, and if they cant that seems pretty silly to me.
NCSoft definitely needs a watch dog for gold sellers. Have you logged into Aion? It's atrocious. Well....the game is too, but the gold spammers are even worse. I remember playing Ultima when it first came out and the only spam I ever saw was people at the bank in Britain yelling about things they had for sale, as there were no auction houses in MMO's at the time.
Ah the good old days of actual communication.
Ok
So here is the rub. NcSoft stated those exact things 4 years ago. I know because I posted them verbatum on the website after my evening with gmSpam.
So in those years, NcSoft has lost confidence because of the continuation of the preception of the botting and the gold selling. Interesting part is, in game, everyone knows who is doing it, but NcSoft waited too long in Lineage 2 land to deal with the issue. The market in the North American games is now reliant on them because of the usebase numbers don't support the current drop rates needed for the crafting of high level objects.
In the newer game, NcSoft has tried to be proactive but alas, these same issues dog them. If that is what you are going to focus on, you have gmSpam who feels as strongly as you do, but the tools to stop this are lacking. NcSoft America was assured by their Korean counterparts that better tools would be available to stop all of this.
The bottom line is it can't be stopped because the financial benefits of the goldsellers and the botters far outweights the what NcSoft can throw at the problem via GM's and active reporting.
And it is not the deman sir, it is the game mechanics design that is truly the issue here. Look at it really from NcSoft's side. A bit of gold to a person who doesn't have 24/7 to devote to a game, keeps a paying customer in the game longer, balances the playing area against the kid that can stay in game forever and allows everyone to progress. The company of NcSoft doesn't want ot loose paying customers but it has to balance this with the ones who twink themselves to be the top of the server and drive everyone else out of the game because of the imbalance given via the armors and weapon levels.
While your intentions are fine and good, it ultimatle comes down to the game's design to be fixed so these in game assessts don't mean as much as they do now and allow for all kinds of game players to be able to compete at some decent level.
well the first will pretty much make the GMs or the game be the economy, simple put player would not have any control over ir anymore, what would cause people not to play together.
ban for ip /mac, pc adress name or whatever you can simulate another mac, ip using other programs so it do nothing.
the problem for rmt is have people who buy from then, is almost the same thing was buying stealed things if you buy you are helping then to continue they work. so you would need to hunt not only the gold seller, but also the buyer what I see some people complain about it, to ignore buyers and just go after the gold seller.
and I really hope no one do what blizzard and the publisher of the eve are doingnow making some extra money selling pets(even if make no diference in game) or selling money or any other item, I really hate the mode of subs + RMT on the same game, when I see a game like that I just move on.
and to our friend Scott Jennings here (I hope you read this ^^) since i'm playing aion I can say one thing, almost all the gold seller keep a shop open with they site there in the citys, sometimes one or another yell on LFG chats or even send tell to others, having a lvl limit just make then have a little more work, putting a limit of 30 min make no diference for me or anyone who can make a optical mouse move alone (you just need a nice piece of paper) so even when I wnat to sell things using a personal shop I could just leave him there for all nigh, pretty much what people do to make the gold seller less annoying don't work and that normally piss off the normal player.
but in the end the only way I see any game can be free from gold sellers is people not buy from then, when we still have people buying this thing will happen.
and I only saw one game really free for gold seller and it was a F2P game from aeria, because money there was easy to make and people there don't buy from then, also from that time money used a slot so can't have a lot of money back then
NCSoft has a great feature in City of Heroes, global ignore. Instead of just ignoring 1 character with a gibberish name, you ignore ALL characters that account makes. Now developers could use this to see if any account gets mass global ignores, that would be 1 sign that it's a gold spammer.
Another simple solution is have a GM 24/7 that watches the main trade/general/global channel. They are (in theory) online anyways monitoring petitions, so would not be hard to have a window up showing whatever channel the spammers frequent. The moment he sees one, boot that person offline and suspend the account.
Also, delete the account on anyone caught buying items thru the RMT market. Sure buy that gold, get your epic mount then POOF your 80 toon is gone forever as well as any alts you may have. No excuses, no exceptions, delete the player's account. They can be free to start a new one if they wish.
I think checking for antivirus software before allowing login would fine too, as long as it is clearly stated the client is doing that check.
How can NcSoft be 100% sure you bought gold with r/l money. With in our clan there are loans, gifts, rewards all the time in adena and we talk about them in Vent, so no log of those transactions and why would be in game as reference. Also, there is the abiltiy to scam people so if you look for something being sold at a very high price, you ban both players?
No, NcSoft can't just ban. They must be so sure and that is the 2nd rub of the gm's life. It would be nice if they grep'd the sql logs every morning, ran a report to see the amount of adena that changed hands and looked further, but now you have the real problem of places selling in game items too for real life money. How does one track and kill those? Can't be done unless someone says something stupid in chat.
We don't have the gold spammers in Lineage 2 that much any more, but the global block wouldn't help much. They need to be able to kill those accounts as fast as they spam their announcements. That would require Ncsoft to double or triple the GM staff and up their training and find gm's that love the game and not just borg's looking for a paycheck.
It seems to me the main problem of every company is a lack of software (or additional function in the game) that able to monitor simple things like character names, time spent in game and so on. Take Aion, for example. I know, NCsoft developed a special tool to prove the bot from a normal customer (like placing some item on the ground that only bot program can target). Nice thing but only for individual work. And in Aion we have hundreds of bots. You need enormous time to get them all this way. Yet, the simplest things like inappropriate names, 24/7 play time, IP changes – all seems to be ignored.
In Aion there is a strong rule – the name has to start from one capital letter and there can be no more then one of this letter and only at the beginning of the name. Yet you can constantly see characters with names like zVVs or something like that. Is not that obvious that this is bot-created character? Do you really need another proof? Why not to ban him (and account too) right away? The only explanation I see here – no monitoring. Same with playtime. If there was a way to show every account where player stays for 12+ hours in game (I doubt there are a lot of them – not more then bots) – then it would be possible to check them out. And IP changes. If some account has been always played from a certain IP and then that IP was changed (account hacked, stolen or sold) – good reason to check the in game toon for botting-gold spamming.
Mb Ncsoft does something like this but presence of the same bots for days (and on the same spots) sais otherwise.
Good article outlining the problems RMT presents the industry, addresses some of the long standing myths and assumptions, and lacks in only one real area, potential solutions to the problem. (which I'm sure OP is keeping close to the vest in light of his new position with NCSoft).
There are many possible solutions, from more active enforcement using GM's, algorithms that scan for illegal gold trading activities and perhaps, just maybe, designing a game so that told buying and selling has little real impact on the game world. (which many companies are doing of course)
Each solution has pluses and minues of course, and its not an issue that will soon go away.
Amusingly, and paradoxically, every party in this mess has the same interests:
Players, Developers, GMs and Goldsellers all need the company in question to try their best to ban, restrict and hinder Goldsellers, as long as they do not do so by devalueing farmable ingame items or currency.
Why would a Goldseller want GMs to ban him? Well, of course he would prefer if the GM banned all other Goldseller Chars but his own, but since that isnt likely, and backdoor deals are simply not done (kudos for bringing that up, Lum!), he ll take the good with the bad.
THe reason is that the product, or service, of the Goldseller rises and falls in value depending on the popularity of the game, which in turn relies on its playability and health.
Goldfarmers, esp. rampant Botting, cause large damage to the game, make some areas almost impossible to play in, and generally esp. in the western markets drive off players and damage the ingame economy. If Goldsellers were left alone to their devices, within weeks the competing companies would, in an attempt to outdo each other, overrun the entire server with their bots, drive off the players, kill off the server for most intents and purposes, if not the entire game. Of course, that inevitably renders their investment (time, accounts, workhours, hardware etc.) useless: They have effectively killed their own market. Already beforehand, sales will drop fast as people lose confidence in the game.... few people will buy ingame currency if there just isnt much of a gameworld left.
Thus, as long as you dont get rid of the Goldsellers entirely, every ban is a minor increase in quality of gameplay, and thus raises the value of the Goldsellers service, because it keeps people playing, and that means it keeps giving goldbuyers reason to buy.
Not to go into the motivations for gold buying too much, but many do it to be richer than the people around them, to show off their superior equipment and luxury items, and the less people there are, the less useful these things become.
At this time, I believe the RMT problem has to be incorporated and solved at basic game design level. Its not something you can viably battle through customer service anymore, it got too big and too professional.
It won't work for more then a few hours. Many of the RMT transactions now are provided through in game auction services and similar. Dummy transactions used to mask the actual purpose.
but you have to read his whole solution. And yes, this will not work for people whose main purpose is to buy and sell.
His solution is that you sell to npc's. Npc's sell to the players and at a controlled price point or price range.
So you won't get one person selling a piece of thread for a million of the current currency.
One could still make money by collecting and crafting but they wouldn't be able to charge huge sums for their wares. I realize people would hate this but since I've always hated the whole economy thing it would work for me just fine.
Unfortuantly this issue seems to have real world impact, for example here in the State of Colorado where I live, there is a effort underway to introduce legislation that would put a TAX on anything online, users playing a MMO online would be forced to pay a TAX, Users selling or buying any sort of online gold be it by honest means or by gold farming would be facing a TAX. The tax would be part of the STATE INCOME TAX structure.
Did some checking, Colorado is not the only state that has tried this and it has been defeated, even the US Congress tried this route only to be defeated by big giants like Microsoft, Blizzard, Electrontic Arts threatening to moving thier operations overseas and thereby removing billions of dollars of revenue from the US Government.
Seems to me that companies like Blizzard are somewhat hypocritical when it comes to gold farming, they turn a blind eye since it increases revenue for them and yet put the smack down on the US Congress when someone there tries to Introduce a ONLINE INCOME TAX due to gold farmers and buying and selling of ingame money which is currently TAX FREE.
The European Union and the United Kingdom already has something similiar but it is part of the VAT. If you look at it closely, the USA has the highest number of gold farmers in US based MMO games then in the European/UK based MMO games and you have to wonder why and see that it makes perfect sense why the US Federal and State Governments have been trying to impose a similiar "Internet TAX".
Sir,
You CLEARLY look at he the problem from a (3rd party) developers point of view.
If you EVER had even been close to a real RMT group, in-game, playing with them, hacking with them, exploiting with them, talking to gm's with them, you wouldn't have made some --assumptions-- you made, never ever. About enraging. Whatever your may have exprieced, your 100% claim doesn't fly. We're sorry. GMs got banned before as well, you know.
But I guess you still miss that experience. Probably always will as well.
The first paragraph was great. Thanks
Well, the good news here is that this is one of the first concrete steps that has become public that NCSoft is listening and responding. If there is anything you can take with you to NCSoft is the need for them to up the level of their communications to the customer. They don't have to do it directly to each customer and for each complaint but the thunderous roar of silence so far from NCSoft has been disheartening.
I have always laughed at the conspirators that claimed a developer was in league with the gold famers. If a company wanted to do this they would either do it themselves and cut out the middle man since after all they can just create a character with a billion or two of cash on it and no need to grind or they would arrange for a company to purchase x number of subscriptions and get y amount of loot in return again with no need to actually login and use resources or upset the customer. Item malls and transaction fees are easy enough for them to do with out the need of doing deals with suspect companies that if they came to light would ruin their reputation.
With RMT it doesn't matter if you love it or hate it as long as it is controlled and limited to have minimal impact. It is like speeding you don't have to get every speeder but you do need to make examples of the ones you do catch.
That's not going to be at all popular - for this solution to work I can't give an item or a pile of gold to a friend or a guildie (or a random newbie) that I want to help out. You've just cracked down on RMT by banning generosity and altruism from your game. I can't think of anything quite as likely to screw up the social dynamic of your MMO - and in the long run, it's the social side that keeps your subscribers subscribing.
That's not going to be at all popular - for this solution to work I can't give an item or a pile of gold to a friend or a guildie (or a random newbie) that I want to help out. You've just cracked down on RMT by banning generosity and altruism from your game. I can't think of anything quite as likely to screw up the social dynamic of your MMO - and in the long run, it's the social side that keeps your subscribers subscribing.
Jagex tried that exact thing with Runescape ( limiting/removing gold and item trades between players ) and got bit hard in the ass for it.
Scott, may I make a recommendation? Have someone sweep the locations in Aion outside the warehouses in the Asmo and Elyos capital cities once an hour on each server looking for gold sellers camping with private stores. It would do a lot for the PR with the community to see those farmers kicked and banned promptly. If there's anything that telegraphs apathy to the community, it's seeing the same asdf troll spamming for $14/mil kinah outside the bank for many days running.
I can understand how detecting and banning bots is a harder question, but the folks outside the warehouses make NCSoft look complicit. I too have heard the "they're in on a cut" rumors and it would be insane to believe them (I'm an indy game company CEO), but when this level of apparent slack on a pinpoint chronic issue continues, it's hard to debunk it.
When the spamming in chat channels started in open beta, it took NCSoft more than a month to implement Bayesian filters -- they have them pretty well tuned now -- which also seemed incredibly slack. This is a solved problem. SOE and others have papers discussing how to implement it out on the open web. It should have taken a day or so to implement, and a day or so for QC. Patched. Done.
Every day, in Twitter (I'm shava24 there, for gaming purposes) I see more people quitting Aion because of bots. It's a solid game, imo, but it's not too big to fail. Look for the things that make obvious visible impact first, and the bleeding could be stopped quicker than the larger scope of the problem can.
Yrs,
Shava
Great article, Scott and thank you for writing it.
I'm really glad to hear that NCSoft is -finally- taking a stand on RMT, which seems to be (at least from the sound of it) on level with Square-Enix's "RMT Task Force" for FFXI and eventually FFXIV. The Task Force has done a great job of bringing RMT under control in FFXI, within only a few months of it being introduced,and it continues to help keep that game's economy under control. It's encouraging to see that NCSoft seems to be taking it far more seriously.
Has it eliminated RMT completely? Nope. It never will... but it's driven a few smaller RMT companies from the game and has put a dent in the remaining ones' efforts.
I believe the RMT problem has grown to the point where it can't be thrown in as part of a GM's routine work. It needs serious attention from a dedicated team.
I'm also glad you gave a bit of insight to some of the activities that take place in support of RMT (account theft, keylogging, etc). There are people out there who believe and will insist that buying in-game gold, or items, or power-leveling services, etc. from a 3rd party company is perfectly safe, that there are no dangers in it and that people who complain are just whining. As you've pointed out, by purchasing from these companies, they are supporting the very activities you present in your article, all of which go above and beyond their immediate effect on a game's economy - which they most definitely have.
So... Thanks again for the article. The best of luck at NC in getting their anti-RMT team up and running. I look forward to seeing the results in the coming months once it's put into effect.
So you go to the effort of creating a nub account and post this message implying you were part of a gold farming group that was organized or sponsored by the developers of the game yet provide nothing but innuendo and vague statements. Is there a chance that some small company or someone within a company might have gotten involved in doing something along these lines? Sure (can YOU say Eve Online scandals?), but I believe his post while not specifically stating is that in his experience any serious company operating a MMO as a business has not gotten involved in that sort of crap as part of their business plan. There is no more way to stop a bad GM from taking advantage of their position than there is to stop a bad employee from stealing from their company. All you can do is pay attention and don't assume that everyone is always honest.
Feel free to provide names, dates and specifics as it would interesting to know more about how such things go on but not much point to your post to be honest.
I'll say the same thing I do to all of these threads, blame the fellow players.
If sad little players didn't feel the need to buy gold so they could be the uberest in the game, then there wouldn't be a market for gold farmers and none of us would have these issues.
Do us all a favor and STOP BEING LAZY AND BUYING GOLD.
Decent article, but I liked the link to 'how to stop gold farming' article better. I like the idea of capitalism. I will not play a game that I can't run multiple accounts. I'm not rich but I decided I like gaming enough to spend the cash on another account. This generally puts me ahead of the curve a decent amount in how much in game cash I can make, but sometimes I just don't care to put the effort in. And this is where I feel all the hate from gold farmers come from. People feel that spending ten hours of their time in game farming gold is somehow more noble than me spending ten hours at my job and then spending a fraction of that real money for the same amount of gold. What these people seem to be missing is that an MMO is not real life. Real life is what matters. It ends up looking like jealousy towards someone who values real life above online life. And if I can put eight hours of my life towards getting my rent paid AND get the same amount of gold as you, I have to in my mind. Its about prioritizing your time. What everyone seems more than happy to gloss over is the fact that the gold buyers got that money somewhere. Usually at a job that advances the life that matters, real life while also advancing their game life. Just because you value game life over real life doesn't make it more noble its just a different prioritization of your time.
To the guy above, you are absolutely right, breaking my back working a job is infinitely more lazy behavior than sitting at my desk not moving for 10 hours...
I don't feel the need to purchase cash or items in a game as I like to be self-sufficient. In most games I will have a couple of accounts and a number of alts on each one. I like to try and create alts of different classes and if there is crafting then crafters. As I level my main I collect and keep most things and feed them to my alts and crafters either as upgrades or materials. As the materials flow in the crafters can make things for my main and for the other alts and generally while I may not have the absolute best items in any specific category I can normally have pretty good stuff across the board and I have the pleasure of knowing that I made and earned it all.
But, I can understand why people might want to find a quicker or easier way to get what they want. Do you all remember the girl that advertised a "Get a mount for buying a mount" deal that she supposedly consumated?
Your number 1 is 1/2 right. There should not be any " currency based " trading between characters. Let people barter with items, but do not let currency flow directly between characters.
I do think there is a much easier way than adding " in game " security. Take away the " anonymity " when players create an account. Make players use SSNs and phone numbers when creating accounts, then contact the account owner that their information is being used. Technology is there and developers should learn to use it.
Is there a chance that some small company or someone within a company might have gotten involved in doing something along these lines? Sure (can YOU say Eve Online scandals?)
I dont undestand why you brought eve to this .Eve online scandal was one Dev gave some tech2 blueprints to his own alliance ,it has nothing to do with RMT
As I wrote in an article I linked, the F2P game I was working on at NCsoft had specifically that feature (blind auctions). We were also considering allowing for some dual-currency model involving RMT (similar to how Puzzle Pirates handles it) and having the for-pay to earned-in-game transactions between players handled via blind auction, so that players themselves would assign a floating value to the in-game currency.
It was an ambitious plan and I'm not at all sure it would have survived into implementation, but plenty of folks including myself are thinking in those terms.
Windows tends to not recognize the AV software I use... I can only imagine the support headaches if game companies had to try the same. :)
CC information is already used to detect and remove banned accounts in many instances (not all). IP addresses are too prone to false positives to provide any real identification beyond the most basic.
Yep. Leaving lawbreakers out in the open for everyone to see is a big problem. It's the "broken windows" theory of law enforcement - as long as you see blatant decay and disdain for order, you'll continue to encourage a culture of impunity.
Not sure what exactly you're trying to imply, but I have first-hand knowledge of CSRs who have been fired for working with gold farmers and exploiters, and every MMO developer's policy is to fire any CSR caught in such shenanigans immediately. Does this mean some do anyway? Of course. Blizzard has thousands and thousands of CSRs (just as an example) and the laws of averages dictate some will be ill-behaved. But game companies keep logs and track CSR actions specifically to detect and remove such bad actors.
But when I mentioned being enraged by such a "MMO companies are in collusion with gold farmers" question, I assure you, I know my own feelings on the subject well and need to make no assumptions. :)
Got a link? I'd be interested in reading that.
Well, I *did* write both :)
I guess I really don't get it?
To me - the answers are obvious
Gold Farmers are a business. So, how to you put a business out of business? You make it unprofitable.
How do you do that?
Well, clearly there are players prepared to use this 'service' (otherwise they wouldn't exist) so give them what they want.
You've all seen the ads on TV "If you see a better offer...we'll beat it!"?
How about simply saying to your players - if you see a genuine goldfarmer offer and send it to us (link or text report etc) we will beat it by 5%!
Have games that aren't 'bot friendly'.
Design games so that gold isn't everything. Maybe concentrate on giving players bonuses for social interactions? (making sure it is not bot friendly!)
Restrict Gold Farmer accounts - don't ban them. Limit chat. Limit trade. Contact the CC company and make it clear that account is still playable - a charge back is NOT justified.
But you want that Credit Card transaction to go through - Fraudulent Card? GOOD.
Credit Card companies have more power and international reach than many law enforcement agencies. (Simply by acting through local offices rather than having to go through international legal complications).
Who cares if the Credit Card Companies are unhappy? That is their problem. That's why they charge extortionate fees. If their security is not up to a sufficient standard then how is that an MMO companies problem? That's an issue for them.
Account theft is more difficult - but you touch on the solution by mentioning 'keyloggers' - perhaps introducing something within the login procedure that does not require key presses?
The interesting thing for me is I am currently playing 4 different MMOs and none of them have a problem with Goldfarmers.
1 has no gold.
1 has a low population but is not very bot friendly anyway - and it relies more on skill than just gear.
2 are F2P games - so it is the Devs who are the Goldfarmers.
I guess I just don't play Goldfarmer friendly games?
No. CCP is ok with me buying ISK with game time cards.
STOP BEING A BUTTINSKY AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
Interesting... Every Hack, Junkie, Addict & Low-life in the world has the ability to ''rationilize" their immoral behavior to make it seem acceptable to the rest of the moral community. Because I play a game "just to enjoy" the game somehow makes me inferior to you is ridiculous. Your Noble position of preferring to spend your time in Real Life rather than Game-Life is utter crap. Basically you are an instant-gratification person & will do, say, whatever to appear superior to other people who live or play by the rules. And... if you do it in-game then guess what??? You do it in real life too. Enjoy your fake life, in-game & out.
Most of the fees for credit card fraud (instant chargebacks, service fees, etc) are charged to the MMO provider, not the credit card company.
I agree with this. If you are banning gold spammers in-game it is already too late.
Lum didn't mention it, but another way that it is alleged gold farmers get into MMOs is through key generators. Once they crack the key generation system, it isn't difficult to pull out free, full functioning account keys.
Ultimately I think that unless you want to make the MMO economy the central star feature of the game, it needs to be sidelined. Either in-game currency needs to be worthless - CoH/V had no real gold seller involvement until after the auction houses were implemented because pretty much everything was available at a fixed cost and inf was easy to come by, plus no uber-rare loot - or it needs to be sold through official channels (and again, no auction house!). You can't half-do an economy in a MMO - constant inflation of prices is like beautiful music to gold sellers.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can and will justify absolutely any behavior and then project all sorts of evil motives on the people who point out that they're acting unethically.
People who buy gold are no different from people who buy bowling trophies and get their names etched on them, or people who get mail-order diplomas from non-existent schools. They're people who want to claim achievements that they have not earned, and, at the heart of it, the root of all evil is the desire for the unearned.
The issue isn't that you value "real life" over "game life". The issue is that you want the rewards of playing the game without, y'know, playing the game. You want an "I win!" button. And, frankly, I do not believe people have different ethical systems for different parts of their life -- just, perhaps, different fears about the consequences. The man who wants items in a game he did not earn probably also wants real-world money or power he did not earn -- he is just (possibly) more afraid of going to prison if he's caught than he is of getting his account cancelled. (But, if he is caught, he will probably claim he's being harassed, that it's no fair he was expected to work for money when other people got a trust fund inheritance, that everyone does it and if he didn't, he'd be left behind, etc. )
I mean, let's face it: Every game I can think of has an EULA banning RMT. That's a legal contract you, as a consenting adult, agreed to -- and you have chosen to break it. While this is unlikely to actually result in any penalty other than an account ban, the fact is, you gave your word, you agreed of your own free will to abide by a contract, and then you broke that promise, apparently with no guilt and with much pride. It's difficult for me to consider anything an oathbreaker says as useful or honest. I don't know what you do for a living, but I seriously doubt you work nearly as hard as you claim. By your own logic, if you can manage to goof off for eight hours but still collect the same pay as someone who works hard, you *must* do so. It's about prioritizing your time, right? If you get eight hours pay for working hard, and the same eight hours pay for hardly working (as it were), only a fool would do the former rather than the latter, right? Any of your coworkers who think you're a lazy parasite are just "jealous" and only WISH they were as clever as you.
Like the saying goes, "Character is who you are in the dark." It's how you act when you are unlikely to suffer any penalty that determines what kind of a person you are.
I just spoke to my credit card company about this to confirm how it works and this is my understanding.
If a Credit Card User uses a credit card (valid or fraudulent) to purchase a product / service and that service IS provided then the Credit Card User may NOT ask for a charge back - unless there is some wrong doing on the part of the merchant (you bill for services that were not requested or provided).
In the event a Credit Card User asks for a charge back then an 'investigation' is made (the CC Company will contact the merchant) and a charge back will only be made if / when it is confirmed that the merchant did not provide the goods or billed incorrectly.
The merchant should face no fees if they provided the product or service and billed correctly.
In the event a Fraudulent (Stolen) Credit Card is used then the merchant does have some responsibility up front to take reasonable steps to ensure that the Credit Card is Valid and not Stolen. Having done that, the merchant can then let the transaction proceed.
If / when it turns out the card is not valid there will be an investigation. If it is found that the merchant took all reasonale steps to detect fraudulent cards then the merchant is not at fault and the merchant will not be charged a fee.
Other than that there are the standard fees charged by all CC Companies to allow you to use their service.
If an MMO company (the merchant) accepts a Credit Card payment and then bans that account prior to the end of the billing cycle then yes, the MMO Company (the merchant) has failed to provide the service.
So, in that case, yes the customer (even a goldfarmer) is entitled to their money back!
In that case, yes, the MMO company would get hit by a fee - because the MMO company did the wrong thing.
That's why I say don't close their accounts.
That way when the CC Company calls and says "Our Customer Mr Isel Gold, card number 4557123456789012 is requesting a chargeback." The MMO Company can say - "Mr Gold's account is still open. Please see our records."
If Fraudulent Cards are used then all the MMO company needs to do is to carry out the security checks required by the CC Company (which they should be doing anyway) and maintain records (which they should be doing anyway).
Maybe the law is different in some countries? (In which case avoid doing business there)
But Credit Card companies definitely do NOT act in favour of criminals to the detriment of legitimate merchants - if they did that the whole CC system would collapse and Credit Cards would not exist.
Okay people here's a simple solution to stop gold farmers and advertising spammers. STOP buying gold and power leveling. You (mainly players in American and Europe players) keep on complaining of how they lag you and it's unfair and end up making racist crap about the Chinese. If you didn't buy their gold and power leveling systems they would run out of business. If you haven't notice America is known to be the laziest country and Europe are very racist. So since most of you are lazy you buy their gold or power leveling package, and later end up complaining. And most of them aren't Chinese, some players sell gold to obtain the money to pay for their account (average of $15 a month) for a mmorpg game. And if you play European server they make racist joke constantly about CHINESE GOLD FARMERS. I saw a EU Lotro movie on youtube title as "Noob Chinese gold farmers" and on the video a was a group of noob french players attempting to so a quest, and the one filming is assuming they are failed gold farmers. Even check the comments and they all agreed with the player. More than 60% of players on a MMORPG game all brought gold and power levling before so don't go dissing the gold farmers if you brought their gold and power leveling before. SO IF YOU WANT THIS TO STOP, STOP BUYING THEIR GOLD AND POWER LEVELING PACKAGE AND THEY WILL RUN OUT OF BUSINESS. COMPLAINING, MAKING RACIST COMMENTS AND BLAMING THE GM FOR BEING LAZY IS NOT GOING TO STOP THESE GOLD FARMERS.
Gyrus - however, credit card authorisers WILL load charges on merchants who have high levels of fraud or chargebacks, presumably on the grounds that "there's no smoke without fire" and thoose high levels must be the result of negligence or unsavoury practices by the merchant.
There are actually TWO "credit card companies" involved - the card ISSUER is the company who gave you the card and send you a bill every month. The card AUTHORISER is the one that the merchant deals with - they provide the terminals in shops, process the transactions and then send the bill on to the appropriate card issuer. In most transactions, the two are different companies.
If there is one topic that should bring us all together it is this. Players, designers, corporate’s alike can see the damage this causes MMO’s. From our side just don’t buy guys, the reason prices are so high and you feel a need to buy gold is that others are doing this and driving up prices. This is one topic where I lay the blame firmly with us. Yes MMO’s could do more but we are the ones causing this.
Nice article.
Please tell me its Aion your working on you must be the first member of staff NCSoft has for this purpose because it not evident so far.
Looking forward to next weeks article. Its a issue rather close to me at the moment.
Interesting article. Good food for thought.
Ken
Agree and for this never buyed. I hate goldsellers for what they do to economy. But also paying 5000g for epic flying mount is madness. I'm not saying should be free .. must be some effort involved to get satisfaction ... but what is to much is simply to much! No mater economy and free market ... there should definitively be some max price that one can request. Seeing that 15.000 g for SINGLE piece of purple equipment I can not immagine how can anyone buy that only from gold he got from playing. And some buy nearly all. think some automated system should investigate all purchases above some limit. Or make some max value.
And when they catch some gold seller ... should ban ALL accounts that received any gold from gold seller without transaction with some really good eqiupment. I guess is something wrong if somebody purchased 1 healing potion paying for this 10.000 gold.
I've always thought this was the one and only solution to the whole RMT thing. Make money and items untradeable (except maybe to your own alts). Never get spammed by these slime again. Problem solved.
Simple solution: Pay someone hourly to remain logged into the game with the authority to ban gold spamming inside of the game! How freakin hard is it?! We all see, it only takes 1 person to fix it. Put me in, I'll do this job.
This would heavily curb gold farmers/spammers and force them to rethink their time. They'll find a new loop hole, but it'll take a few years or more.
when i read this article. I thought of ONE game. Silkroad Online. You can't tell me that they're nto getting some sort fo kickback there. AS every sever is full of bots, and they just keep opening up more servers. Now you can't tell me they're nto getting some sort of kickback from this. B/c every server's full of goldbots. Almost all of them have less than 1% of the player population in them. So there's NO WAY they're making enough money to keep all of those servers up considering almost no real players are on any of the servers. Most of the games out there that have bots have them being "rapant" i've yet to see any of them. When i tried PW-MS which is by far one of the biggest failures of all time yet still somehow is still going, i saw 3 bots in game. In WoW during my 45days that i played it, i saw NO bots at all. I saw no one cheating, and everything was nice.
Now of course i've never played any NCSoft game, and that's simply b/c most of their games have never interested me. I'm probably going to try out GW2 since it looks really interesting. Now about aion, i looked at some gameplay videos of the game, and well the animations poorly done, and the graphics just dont' seem to be that high. Tack on this talk about rampant bots and cheaters, i don't think i'll be trying it till it's under control.
It won't work for more then a few hours. Many of the RMT transactions now are provided through in game auction services and similar. Dummy transactions used to mask the actual purpose.
I disagree that "it won't work." The auction houses ARE a type of "direct transfer" between characters. And yes, you are correct in that often gold sellers NOW are using the auction houses to set up dummy transactions. How many times have we all seen that grey item on the broker or auction house selling for 2000g and there are oh, say, 5 of them listed at the exact same price?
Sadly these online criminals have gotten pretty crafty at their crime.
Do I want to give up trading with guild mates and shopping the AH? No. But I do think that could work.
Wall of text batman. But anyway, here is food for thought for both you and Lum if he is reading.
I know that NCWest might have a different attitude toward RMT and gold farming BUT what can you do (what can you could possibly do) if the main corporate in Korea keep having a neutral stance and even leaning toward approving this kind of behavior in the first place?
This might be a cultural different but RMT (meaning buying in-game items, golds with real money) is pretty normal and even standard act in Korea. A lot of people do this and they don't really care much about gold farmer really. They might be annoyed by the bots but farmers in general are approved. It goes so far to even become a bragging right for many players. This is particular true for NCSoft games (Lineage, Lineage 2 and AION). Yes, they pay a lot of money for in-game items and they will made it know publicly.
You see, rich people in America show it off by having shiny expensive cars, rich people in Korea show it off by shiny cars too and a dagger in AION they bought for 2000 USD (you read it right, 2000 us dollar, even more). Yeah, own a ultimate weapon of doom in one of the most popular game in Korea is a bragging right and even the godly amount of real money they pay for it too.
You see, in Korean servers, when you get in a fight with someone 15 levels under you but has solid gold gear, armor and weps - it does not SCREAMS "I cheat", it only screem "I am richer than you, I have more money than I know what to do with you poor bastard".
Why do you think the amount of botting and spamming went off the chart for AION US? Because they were using the Chinese version and the Korean version as development test bed for almost a year. Ever heard of professional made hardware botting devices? Heheh. And you wonder why the botting and spamming in AION US went out of control.
You can say all MMO have bots and farmers but you cannot deny this kind of behavior is particular worse in NCSoft games. It's because the root of the issue is left unchecked and frankly I don't think the effort of just NCWest is enough to resolve anything here.
Unfortunately the people who ARE buying gold....are not reading your dissertation. They're not likely hanging out on a game forum reading about gold buying and selling.
I think it's mildly comical that no MMO company has ever taken a proactive approach at directly prohibiting and fighting RTM. The flaw lies within the industry who cannot capitalize on a 1 billion/yr market they create. Point the fingers all you want, but here we are again... 3months after a major game release... and the game is almost crippled by RTM. Who's fault is it really? The people who buy gold? Time to shore up some responsibility.
That's not going to be at all popular - for this solution to work I can't give an item or a pile of gold to a friend or a guildie (or a random newbie) that I want to help out. You've just cracked down on RMT by banning generosity and altruism from your game. I can't think of anything quite as likely to screw up the social dynamic of your MMO - and in the long run, it's the social side that keeps your subscribers subscribing.
Yes, I realize that. But I would most definitely play a game (that I was interested in) that did this because to me, in the end, it's a game.
It does takeaway the "real world" aspect and makes it so that anything earned in the game is done through the efforts of the player. To get rid of rmt and farmers I would do it in a heart beat. And this is coming from a player who has given away millions of game currency to friends and new players.
It's sort of like monopoly. Yo umight be playing with friends and family but you aren't funnelling money to them.
Admittedly, I haven't wread all of the other comments, I just don't have time, but here's my two cents that I ranted on my guild's forum:
For AION, at least:
"I really don't understand how the farming bots get so out of control though; why not do one of two simple options:
1) If somebody gets a certain number of /autohuntingreports (10? 20? whatever, pick a number): Have the game AUTOMATICALLY ban the account. Normal players don't accumulate autohunting reports, and itd be a really easy way to get rid of players named khjkdsfh. For real players banned by this process, allow them to quickly log in to their account at ncsoft's site and dispute the ban, reinstating the account to normal status until the dispute can be investigated. Bots aren't going to dispute their accounts, and even if the chinese kid running the bot disputes, an admin can look at it and go "Hmm, your character name is fgfd, he has never spoken a word, and has never done a quest. Riiiiighhht..."
or
2) Have us type in a random word once an hour/every other hour, like they are going to do to aether farmers. This method is a little more intrusive to the players, but I sure as hell wouldn't mind typing a word in every hour if it stopped the rampant devaluation of our currency.
Those solutions seem really practical and really easy to implement. Am I a genius or have these been tried before?"
From experience if a game company wants to limit the illegal gold buying and selling they should create an in game store of their own where you can purchase items for money.
An example would be DDO's Store. You can purchase weapons, armor, potions, adventure packs by getting DDO store points that you buy with real money.
This pretty much cuts out any third party gold selling since you can do it legitimately.
In a game like WOW as long as the opportunity is there to buy gold from a third party source people will continue to do so. If WOW were to implement its own store they would probably cut off the illegal third parties entirely. The only reason they haven't in some cases is because I suspect some of the larger gold farmers are probably giving blizzard a percentage. They could've solved this years ago and they haven't and from other peoples opinions are slow to react to obvious examples of gold farmers and sellers. They claim having to deal with illegal gold farmers taxes their resources, BULLSHIT. They claim to have over 11 million subscribers each of them paying 15 bucks a month. Thats an enormous amount of resources so wheres all the money go ?
The only logical reason behind it is that they get paid off to ignore gold farmers.
One person said make it so gold isn't everything. Gold isn't everything but rare/unique items are and in game those are obtained by gold.
Even making gold easy to get doesn't help because it just causes inflation. The only way for that solution to work is for there to not be a single rare/unique item in game and all items are fairly easy to get. But then part of what makes the game fun is lost.
And for the person who said that them buying gold was none of my business, guess what it is. It ends up effecting the game for me and other players that follow the rules. Limitations are put on characters in game to combat something we don't participate in. We have to read spam on gold selling even though we don't buy. We end up fighting against characters who have every top item in the game because they bought it and now the fight will never be fair again.
Your lazy self having to buy gold to feel special affects everyone who plays by the rules, so it is everyone's business.
Well I wish you luck Lum. Seems a bit late for NCSoft to look at this matter. All their games have been plagued by this problem for some time. All of us have been posting about this since Aion was announced, yet they launched the game with very little thought to this problem.
Hopefully you can bring some sort of resolution to this that NCSoft has been unable to fix up to now.
I believe that the PLEX system used in Eve Online its a good alternative, already proven it has discouraged a lot the farming for "gold", where if someone wants to buy "gold" can cash it through the proper channels, some of this was mentioned in this article, basically i would call it "if you cant defeat them, join them", the eve-economy continues as normal, the PLEX system havent affected or trashed the market, it just became an additional option for those that wants money now!
"People who buy gold are no different from people who buy bowling trophies and get their names etched on them, or people who get mail-order diplomas from non-existent schools. They're people who want to claim achievements that they have not earned, and, at the heart of it, the root of all evil is the desire for the unearned."
How is farming gold an achievement to strive for? I guess that's where one of the lines are drawn on people's opinion's of games. To me, the achievement is beating a boss or owning some guy of the opposing faction. You do these things with skill/knowledge of game mechanics. The gold to pay for the gear to do those things is a means to that end and its laughable to claim that it is, in fact, the end unto itself. Every word that came out of your keyboard perfectly sums up my belief that you are jealous. Do you think a man that owns a business and uses his money to get other people to do the work for him thus increasing his profits is cheating? I guess when I pay the neighbor's 12 yo to mow my lawn, I'm also cheating.
Your analogy is flawed in every way. Buying gold to get gear to be competitive would be like paying a guy for better bowling gear, driving me to the lanes in a limo and filling out my score card leaving me more time to concentrate on owning my opponent. You are the guy who rents his two dollar shoes, uses the dinged up house ball and cries no fair when I roll a 276 and make off with the real trophy. If it helps you to sleep better thinking I cheat then so be it.
I think you are the one who is logically flawed.
All of your examples are legal options. Buying gold is against the rules of the game that you agreed to. So all of your examples are wrong.
Great article Scott. So very true about all aspects. As an active Aion player, I hope you are able to make leaps and bounds against all the counterfeit. One thing I'll ask you to look at is the ease of macro creation for certain tasks. From what people call 'macro grinding' or 'afk grinding' is allowing even everyday gamers to implement these methods.
I also made a suggestion on Aionsource.com but it seems that the over anxious moderators deleted my thread. What about taking away kinah from these accounts, as you catch these accounts... storing it legitimately and distributing the kinah to the player base via veteran award system. If NCSoft is giving away their work/product for free you take away their market. The harder they work to keep their stocks open, the bigger chance you will find them, and people won't be as inclined to buy if its coming via 'veteran awards' every month. I"m sure the amount of kinah will decrease over time. I know this is a stretch, but just an idea I had while brainstorming 'what would I do'. It awards the legit player base.
Another thing that is upsetting in Aion is the frequency and population of 'private store' sales for these websites selling kinah and powerleveling. People really feel that there are no GMs on a realm. In Panda alone on this past sunday there were 7 sales ads right outside the broker/bank area... there is usually 2-5 ads in Morheim. They are constantly the same websites. I know the IPs used are not from those websites, but just frustrating.
Good luck to you, I'd love to chat sometime for you to hear more of my thoughts and others I talk to about it.
Reading this thread has brought a scenario to my attention:
Lets say you have one million players in a given game paying a $15/month fee and you were the CEO that had the ability to make any decisions happen. Lets also say 100,000 players were paying accounts to be gold farmers/botters/RMTers. Would you ban 100,000 accounts and lose the dollars?
By banning 100,00 accounts, you would gaurantee yourself a loss of 1.5 million dollars for the month. Do you think as a CEO the positives would outweigh the negatives? Sure, we will have 900,000 players who play fair and normally happy, but the company itself would loses 1.5 million dollars.
What do you all think?
CCP got a nice solution to this
wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/30_days_Concord_Pilot_License_Extension
He's wrong. Game comapnies are in on it, and theres devs that will tell you this. He's just not in the loop so the company line is they're against it.
I think you wouldn't have 900,000 players who play fair and are normally happy for long. I'd also be more worried about losing the players who pay for their accounts with something other than stolen credit cards.
What they do is ban them, and then the farmers buy another account. Thats hows the devs get money out of gold selling. They ban the account after a certain amount of time, letting the farmer guy know before hand. He buys another acount as a fee to farm more. If your not on their list of perfered farmers your just banned outright. This is how a former dev at guild wars said it worked anyway, and is why they made an online store to buy the game. So when the farmers rebought accounts they bought from the game company online not at bestbuy. Im sure other mmo's just sell gold outright, just enough not to braek the game and ban any other farmers because they take away from their gold selling profits. Why wouldnt they?
Sounds like double dipping...not bad for a company I suppose.
I suggest you play DDO and learn a bit about how the 'Favor' system works in that game for example.
There are things that you can only get through having the right amount of favor with certain factions. These things are unique (bound) to your character and cannot be traded. Favor is not something you can brought, sold or traded. It must be earned. It must be earned by playing the game which in many cases involves grouping and being social.
There are other things you can / could do too. You could have bonuses only availale to people based on time in game, time in a guild, explorations made, friends made etc.
To simply think of MMO gaming as simply a series of tasks to earn 'items' is a bit sad.
If what defines your MMO is simply the rare items then the design team have done a poor job.
I suggest you play DDO and learn a bit about how the 'Favor' system works in that game for example.
There are things that you can only get through having the right amount of favor with certain factions. These things are unique (bound) to your character and cannot be traded. Favor is not something you can brought, sold or traded. It must be earned. It must be earned by playing the game which in many cases involves grouping and being social.
There are other things you can / could do too. You could have bonuses only availale to people based on time in game, time in a guild, explorations made, friends made etc.
To simply think of MMO gaming as simply a series of tasks to earn 'items' is a bit sad.
If what defines your MMO is simply the rare items then the design team have done a poor job.
Out of curiousity and since I haven't played DDO, would it ever be possible to catch up to a veteran player who has high favor? I'm assuming the veteran player has time on his side since he started earlier. I'm guessing the new player through this particular system will never be able to catch up in terms of favor if both the veteran and new beginner is playing the same amount of time?
Yes. Favour is capped. You earn so much favor per quest. The people you can't keep up with are the players who pay for content you haven't payed for. But that's fair because that is their revenue model.
ok so instead of doing something about the gold seller try doing something about the buyer. the gold buyer are the fuel the gold seller needs to keep on running. so instead of banning gold seller who will always come back try banning gold buyer. they buy gold because they want to have the good game equipment to be leet so they will make a big deal if they get ban. once they do they'll learn their lesson
At the rate they go through subs, I highly doubt any of the farmers are buying boxes. They can purchase 50 digital download keys with the CC info they just got from the idiot that bought gold from them in the time it takes to run down the block and buy the three copies (if that many) of the game sitting on a brick and mortar's shelf.
ok if you think buying gold is fine, gonna say this
buying gold in a game, is the same as paying the referee in a game to steal for you, its the same was paying to buy cards during a poker game, or paying a kid to see what the other players cards are, its cheating if you excuse to buy gold or any other "service" the gold farmer do is because you have a life, then I ask, why you play? what motive you have to play if you don't have time to do it?
you mix up services or jobs with cheating, jsut because of that its make your character be duvidous (to say the least) anyone who steal or cheat can't be trusted and if you can't be trusted I don't make deals or help you, and if you think "I don't need help I have money I can pay someone to help me", remember dude someday you will not have money to pay for it because you used all of it to make enemys on that time you will fall
Just goes to show, MMO companies should put a lot more effort going after the buyers and making big examples of those caught. It's these turds who causing this.
I suggest you play DDO and learn a bit about how the 'Favor' system works in that game for example.
There are things that you can only get through having the right amount of favor with certain factions. These things are unique (bound) to your character and cannot be traded. Favor is not something you can brought, sold or traded. It must be earned. It must be earned by playing the game which in many cases involves grouping and being social.
There are other things you can / could do too. You could have bonuses only availale to people based on time in game, time in a guild, explorations made, friends made etc.
To simply think of MMO gaming as simply a series of tasks to earn 'items' is a bit sad.
If what defines your MMO is simply the rare items then the design team have done a poor job.
I've played DDO, never found it that interesting.
Thing is that sure it's fine with having character bonuses that stem from how many quests you've run. But that still doesn't make your character unique because everyone ends up with them. People like making their character unique and special in a world of hundreds of thousands of players if not a game of millions. The only way this can be accomplished is through rare/unique items which is one of the smart moves that WoW has always done, and part of the reason they are so far ahead of every other game subscriber wise.
Games get boring when everyone is the same, and it's a major problem in MMOs. You either have a class system so there's the 20-30 combinations of classes and races that the million players all use so everyone is the same. Or there is a skill tree and it still boils down to a set number of combinations that gets repeated over and over and over. Unique titles/items are the only way in current games to make your character different. And that fuels the gold buying and selling to another level.
The article is honest, and anyone who thinks otherwise is clueless... but I have to say:
I'll never play a game with an item mall or SOEbay... EVER.
Its the same as gold farming, just more legitimate.
Reading your post it is clear that you are really concerned with being 'unique'.
It's also clear that you can only see one way to achieve that - through 'unique gear'.
I would suggest to you perhaps you should concentrate more on the journey than the destination... but that's just me.
I would suggest that (as you say) greater class and skill options would provide that 'uniqueness' too. Since these could be independent of gold and gear they would also be something gold farmers could not service (maybe power leveling services though?).
However, in your case, based on what you have written I would suggest the best MMOs for you are ones with strong Avatar creation routines: Champions Online? Pirates of the Burning Sea? and probably WoW?
Great article.
@ScottJennings
Yes, you are choked full of bias.
Please write an explanation of why Aion is getting ass-kicked by bots and gold-selling spams. Because frankly, not many people care for (“[MMO company] doesn’t do anything about gold farming because they’re in on it. They get kickbacks under the table from gold sellers, so they won’t ever make any serious attempt to stop them.”) nor even really think about it, you just bring it up, because you got defensive.
Anyway, why is Aion full of bots and gold-selling SPAMS? take games like Darkfall, WoW, ect for example, they obviously care enough to prevent those things from happening. Is it false to assume Aion does not care? no, it isn't. Actually, Aion doesn't really have any other explanation for these problems. It's sad, since their Lineage2 had the same problem.
I'll list some excuses Aion has to offer, and these are MUCH less likely than "they just don't care"
- huge player-base, no control.
-......
It is amazing to me how the gold farmers are able to exploit the system so freely. The gold farmers seam to almost get there with no problem and make tons of gold/plat/isk instantly.
However I got also point out another well know thing and its not quite a gold farming thing.
In several games there are certain guilds/kins. They have a website. They loot stuff put it up on their website. Then they promotie this website. You go to their website and use real world cash to buy looted items. Im not sure this is gold farming per say but it is just as bad. I know they got the ban hammer at lotro for this, and lotro tryies to fight this kind of thing buy using the BOA bind on aquire thing. However I see them do this all the time in EQ2 and sony has to know about it, its always comming accross the auction channels. I am sure it happens in other gams as well.
I dont know if anyone wrote about this earlier anyway I'm writing my observation.
“[MMO company] doesn’t do anything about gold farming because they’re in on it. They get kickbacks under the table from gold sellers, so they won’t ever make any serious attempt to stop them.”
Ive seen plenty of these Free to play games co-operating with goldseller/powerlevlers, free2play games that have advertisement on serious gamer homepages and are registered like serious(?) games on your "game list". It saddens me how these chinese free2play crap games tried to milk out as much cash as possible from the industry. Looking at your "Game list" and seeing plenty of those free to play so called games with micro payment and knowing in one way or another they work with goldsellers makes me sick.Makes me wonder why you have advertisment with such games on this page? I bet they pay you good, with money harvested from micro payments, goldselling and other services. I for myself think its double standard and bad honor as goldselling have a bad influence on all serious real games.
Of course serious companies with real games arent "in on it" with goldsellers but as I think most people with common sense and with gaming experience understand and know that Free to play games are working with goldsellers.
have you thought of using players as bounty hunters ie instead of ignoring report of bots actually rewarding people who do it/report (extra time etc) you woulld get a lot of people working together united against the botters
Stolen Credit Cards?
This excuse is getting really tired. I am sure a stolen credit card was used once to scam an MMO account but it is not nearly the problem Scott would have us believe. This kind of stuff is just BS excuse that makes us lose focus of the real problem.
Banks track all charge backs. Most business have less than %1 charge backs. If you go over that limit your business and practices will come under scrutiny. If MMOS were such a problem then Credit Card Companies would have already started limiting our ability to use them to pay for these transactions. This is not a problem.
Wow... you live a sheltered life, eh? Just because people aren't talking about it in the news today doesn't mean identity theft has died down... its been on the rise as a matter of fact.
The bizzareness of this debate is, that, as in any social issue, people call for more control and for more drastic penalities. And ever since USA has death penality, it is known to have no crime. Oh wait, it has? Maybe *something* isn't all correct about this harsh penalities.
About 2200 years ago Lao-Tsu wrote that better locks only lead to more clever thiefs. The only way to prevent diamonds from being stolen is stopping to regard diamonds as something of value. And what was wise and true 2200 years ago is so today.
But sure, we can try better locks, better passwords, more control, more people monitoring our doings.
Who watches the watchmen? Ever REALLY thought about that? I mean, yeah you can place a camera on every damn corner of London, but does it prevent crime? Answer, nope it doesn't. I know it sounds like emo blah blah, but they only real way to prevent crime is to create a society of justice, of mercy, a humanitarian society and not train people into a wolf eats sheep kinda of Darwinism. People learn to exploit people in RL and why should they not do so in games?
I find it fundamentally funny that American, the epitome of Capitalism and Free Market, always is the first to bitch when the very rules of Free Market and Capitalism turn against them. It's always the same. You advocate it when it benefits you, and when America imported Cola and Burgers into every damn corner of the world, hurray to Free Market and woe to those who protect their markets. But when finally someone else (in this case China) applies the same rules of "all has a price" better, then you call for control and to shut them out of your American markets and start to go on a rampage about evil Chinese and evil French, whom you shoved your Cola and Burgers and whatnot for profit and didn't care rat's ass about their culture and their way to doing things.
Either markets ARE free and all legal things ARE free to sell and there IS that invisible hand of free trade to regulate itself OR NOT. Capitalism OR Socialism, you can't have both, you can' t change your preferrence just based on who has the upper hand at any given moment. THAT IS MF HYPPOCRISY! You sowed that free trade idology now you goddamn have to reap and swallow it! Did not the USA went to every damn corner of the world spreading their idea of capitalism and their system wherever they went, thinking it the best of all possible worlds? Well, dammit they did. Now don't look so surprised if the wind you sowed comes back as a storm.
And if you think all this has nada to do with RMT, you didn't even BEGIN to think.
As an act of self-critique, as a German, let me assure you, YOU CAN NOT PREVENT CRIME BY MORE CONTROL. PERIOD.
We had SS in the Nazi regime, we had Stasi in the socialist Germany, and trust me, despite those VERY extensive methods of controlling people's doing, there STILL was crime. Control and punishment JUST DONT WORK. Imbalances are symptoms of something, and while RMT sure is bad, it is a symptom that something with MMORPGs is fundamentally wrong. You all look at the issue of the totally wrong angle. Someone is bad, some control and punish. And we never look damn second what the reasons behind this are. Only in comics people just "are evil". Reality usually has more complex patterns. When people play game and pay money for services, something in those games is apparently not fun enough to just do it. I didn't think it would be so difficult to think about this.
Of course companies have all reason to put the evil of RMT in the foreground. They don't want us to realize something fundamental of their games is actually wrong. Very wrong. And we, all the faithful sheep, just blindly repeat their creeds. Seriously, I can't eat so much as I want to puke these days over the sheer stupidity of people.
The author is so stupid mindless. Some of the GREAT WESTERNERS always think they know everything about others even if they never speak those languages. The entire aritcal is a fallacy. If you are not, plz go talk to them and then take your shyt. The GREAT FIREWALL? Oh yes, if i type fuck you, if it not banned, ok it is great firewall, if it is, then i can call you THE GREAT FUCKERWALL.
No western MMOs can live in China but WOW, the asian games on mmorpg.com, 95% has already died out in asia, but idk why some westerners still playing.
I am a Westerner, but I am with you in this. Critizise USA and you get a ban faster than you can say "Gesundheit".
I am a Westerner, but I am with you in this. Critizise USA and you get a ban faster than you can say "Gesundheit".
It's not "criticizing" the U.S. that will get you banned. It's racism and direct personal insults. Nationalism, in an extreme form, as you, a German, should know....can easily be considered a type of racism.
Now the part of your "argument" that was flawed (in your post BEFORE the one I quoted here) is in your comparing McDonald's (or whatever) having stores overseas, to Chinese (or any other nationality) gold farmers here in games that people in the U.S. might play. The big difference with THAT....is that gold farming is illegal. It doesn't matter HOW you try to twist it. It's against the law, it's against the legal agreements you sign when you log in to a game. Yes, I know....no one seems to care about that fact, but...it IS a fact.
You cannot sell something that doesn't belong to you. You cannot sell (nor buy) game gold LEGALLY, unless you are buying it from the company that makes the game. It is a virtual item, a graphic, coding, that belongs to THEM, not you. So for you to compare LEGALLY selling hamburgers from the U.S. to China and China ILLEGALLY selling gold that doesn't belong to them to SELL......apples and oranges.
But I have a feeling that anything anyone from the U.S. says to you, will just be considered garbage, since your hatred for the U.S. citizens seems to roll out of your pores. And yet you....speak of all this good morality, peace, kindness, goodness, and that's how to change the world....
Okay. How about you can start with your own intolerance? Novel concept, I'm sure.
It's not "criticizing" the U.S. that will get you banned. It's racism and direct personal insults. Nationalism, in an extreme form, as you, a German, should know....can easily be considered a type of racism.
Now the part of your "argument" that was flawed (in your post BEFORE the one I quoted here) is in your comparing McDonald's (or whatever) having stores overseas, to Chinese (or any other nationality) gold farmers here in games that people in the U.S. might play. The big difference with THAT....is that gold farming is illegal. It doesn't matter HOW you try to twist it. It's against the law, it's against the legal agreements you sign when you log in to a game. Yes, I know....no one seems to care about that fact, but...it IS a fact.
You cannot sell something that doesn't belong to you. You cannot sell (nor buy) game gold LEGALLY, unless you are buying it from the company that makes the game. It is a virtual item, a graphic, coding, that belongs to THEM, not you. So for you to compare LEGALLY selling hamburgers from the U.S. to China and China ILLEGALLY selling gold that doesn't belong to them to SELL......apples and oranges.
But I have a feeling that anything anyone from the U.S. says to you, will just be considered garbage, since your hatred for the U.S. citizens seems to roll out of your pores. And yet you....speak of all this good morality, peace, kindness, goodness, and that's how to change the world....
Okay. How about you can start with your own intolerance? Novel concept, I'm sure.
I attack Germany just the same. I am not picky in my attacks, hence it may be nasty, but it were only racist if I see America worse, which I don't. Only every nation has a different kind of stupidity. And in the essence, the more powerful a nation is, the more opportunity to do bad arises.
The differences is, Germany has refined the art of self-whipping for every damn thing in 2000 years, while some nations are entirely oblivious to their deeds. Maybe ask some native Americans how they feel about this, ja ne? Just an idea.
I have seen really ugly posts about French, Chinese or whoever here and none of them were ever banned for racism. Go figure. I mean, just go into any international MMO beta and type something in French. Just for the experience.
You really are an odd people. One can call Obama a Nazi or the next Hitler in USA because he wants health care for all, and it's freedom of speech. One can demand gays be castrated or put in Concentration Camps, and its freedom of speech. (Hate radios, you know.) But God forbid I say, maybe some things Americans practice is hypocrise.
As for the argument: if I pay a chinese to sell me gold, I am not paying the gold, because gold in a MMO is nothing. I pay his work time. Thats something different. Its as if I would call my sister, tell her to play my EQ character for 1 week and make some money and XP and then pay her 20 Euro. I pay her time, which is her's to give, not that of a game company. I still find it would be odd or silly. Either you have fun playing a MMO or not, but it's not morally evil. When I am rich and collect train models, I have 2000 train models while you being poor have only 2. Is that fair? No it isn't, but due to Capitalism it isn't evil. I worked for the money and I can spent it as ever I wish. (I am poor, just for the record.)
I could not care less if RMT is legal or not, but it is hyppocrisy to support free market when it suits you and condemn it when it doesn't. I will brand every hyppocrisy no matter from whence it comes.
As I said earlier - if the Merchant follows the authorisation steps set out by the Credit Card Association then they would not be harmed by chargebacks on 'stolen' and fraudulent CC transactions.
What is happening is that the MMO companies are banning the goldfarmer and the goldfarmer is then asking for a chargeback on the (valid) CC on the grounds that the merchant is not providing the service which was payed for. Under those circumstances a chargeback IS JUSTIFIED because the MMO company has done the wrong thing.
Try restricting the chat function and player to player trade function while leaving the account active. That way a charge back is NOT JUSTIFIED and the goldfarmer will have to pay the sub fee which will eat into his / her / their profit.
As I said earlier - if the Merchant follows the authorisation steps set out by the Credit Card Association then they would not be harmed by chargebacks on 'stolen' and fraudulent CC transactions.
What is happening is that the MMO companies are banning the goldfarmer and the goldfarmer is then asking for a chargeback on the (valid) CC on the grounds that the merchant is not providing the service which was payed for. Under those circumstances a chargeback IS JUSTIFIED because the MMO company has done the wrong thing.
Try restricting the chat function and player to player trade function while leaving the account active. That way a charge back is NOT JUSTIFIED and the goldfarmer will have to pay the sub fee which will eat into his / her / their profit.
The use of stolen credit cards is very common in the online gaming industry. It is way above the standard 1%.
There is a very simple reason why banks dont care... they get their money back. The MMO has to eat the cost, not the bank.
As for the MMO causing the chargeback, that isnt true either. Stolen credit cards can be obtained for less than $1, but are only good for ~3-5 days. After that the online company is informed that the card has been reported stolen. Companies that only do monthly charges do not normally catch this until the next re-occuring charge. Dont believe me? Charge a montly fee on a card, then call it in to your bank as stolen. Service will not shut off until the next charge, despite being immediately invalidated.
It's not "criticizing" the U.S. that will get you banned. It's racism and direct personal insults. Nationalism, in an extreme form, as you, a German, should know....can easily be considered a type of racism.
Now the part of your "argument" that was flawed (in your post BEFORE the one I quoted here) is in your comparing McDonald's (or whatever) having stores overseas, to Chinese (or any other nationality) gold farmers here in games that people in the U.S. might play. The big difference with THAT....is that gold farming is illegal. It doesn't matter HOW you try to twist it. It's against the law, it's against the legal agreements you sign when you log in to a game. Yes, I know....no one seems to care about that fact, but...it IS a fact.
You cannot sell something that doesn't belong to you. You cannot sell (nor buy) game gold LEGALLY, unless you are buying it from the company that makes the game. It is a virtual item, a graphic, coding, that belongs to THEM, not you. So for you to compare LEGALLY selling hamburgers from the U.S. to China and China ILLEGALLY selling gold that doesn't belong to them to SELL......apples and oranges.
But I have a feeling that anything anyone from the U.S. says to you, will just be considered garbage, since your hatred for the U.S. citizens seems to roll out of your pores. And yet you....speak of all this good morality, peace, kindness, goodness, and that's how to change the world....
Okay. How about you can start with your own intolerance? Novel concept, I'm sure.
I attack Germany just the same. I am not picky in my attacks, hence it may be nasty, but it were only racist if I see America worse, which I don't. Only every nation has a different kind of stupidity. And in the essence, the more powerful a nation is, the more opportunity to do bad arises.
I have to 100 percent agree with you on this. And even though I may LIVE in the U.S., that certainly does not mean I agree with or approve of what the government does here....at ALL. Unfortunately, the most I can really do about that is talk to my state representatives and make my voice "heard" with my vote. Sadly....that doesn't seem to be enough. Either enough people don't do it, or don't care. I think apathy is the greatest failure of most citizens in most nations.
The differences is, Germany has refined the art of self-whipping for every damn thing in 2000 years, while some nations are entirely oblivious to their deeds. Maybe ask some native Americans how they feel about this, ja ne? Just an idea.
I have seen really ugly posts about French, Chinese or whoever here and none of them were ever banned for racism. Go figure. I mean, just go into any international MMO beta and type something in French. Just for the experience.
You really are an odd people. One can call Obama a Nazi or the next Hitler in USA because he wants health care for all, and it's freedom of speech. One can demand gays be castrated or put in Concentration Camps, and its freedom of speech. (Hate radios, you know.) But God forbid I say, maybe some things Americans practice is hypocrise.
Now you see, you can't legitimately lump the entire citizenship of the U.S. into this category, any more than people can lump all Germans into one category. I, myself, believe that freedom of speech, per se, has a price. It's not hate "speech" that bothers me, it's hate ACTIONS that are often precipitated BY allowing "free" speech. Nonetheless, the price of that "freedom" has to be weighed. Is it more detrimental to have free speech or to restrict people? I don't have the answer to that. By the way....not all U.S. citizens CLAIM to "know everything." I think a lot of us are very comfortable saying we do NOT know the answers.
Hypocrisy is rampant in EVERY nation and....dare I say....every religion. It is, sadly, a human epidemic.
As for the argument: if I pay a chinese to sell me gold, I am not paying the gold, because gold in a MMO is nothing. I pay his work time. Thats something different. Its as if I would call my sister, tell her to play my EQ character for 1 week and make some money and XP and then pay her 20 Euro. I pay her time, which is her's to give, not that of a game company. I still find it would be odd or silly. Either you have fun playing a MMO or not, but it's not morally evil. When I am rich and collect train models, I have 2000 train models while you being poor have only 2. Is that fair? No it isn't, but due to Capitalism it isn't evil. I worked for the money and I can spent it as ever I wish. (I am poor, just for the record.)
I completely understand this train of thought on the matter. However, it doesn't change the legal position that the game developers take. They outline their position on it very well in the ToS and EULA of every game, and in most games, you still sign a contract to not "sell" their intellectual property. Yeah, I know....most people completely ignore, or don't even READ, things they sign, particularly in games.
I could not care less if RMT is legal or not, but it is hyppocrisy to support free market when it suits you and condemn it when it doesn't. I will brand every hyppocrisy no matter from whence it comes.
Well, personally, I don't "support free market when it suits me and condemn it when it doesn't." I support free market when it is LEGAL. That's another thing entirely. If we don't LIKE the laws of our land (regardless of where we live)....if we have the right, as in a democracy, to try to CHANGE the law....then THAT is what we should be doing. Not breaking it, just because we don't "like" it.
I agree with you on a good deal of what you say. You're obviously very bright, which is refreshing. I think our major point of disagreement is on how we perceive gold buying and selling (which is the thread topic). ;) You seem to see it as "free market" and selling ones' time. I see it as breaking the law for ones' own personal benefit. And, to me....if a law seems wrong to me, and I happen to live in a nation that allows me to speak openly and try to bring forth change....then THAT is what I should do....not just BREAK the law because I don't approve of it. Does that make sense?
Anyway....thank you for the discussion. :)
And on the gold buying and selling thing....just as with any OTHER crime, particularly theft....if there is no demand for the "goods" then the "market" will eventually cease to exist. So the buyers are EVERY bit as accountable as the sellers, in my opinion. To ME....the hypocrisy on THIS ISSUE exists where people complain about the gold spammers, but then turn around and use their power leveling services or buy gold from them ANYWAY. THAT....is hypocritical.
Excuse me?
But since when is Goldfarming a crime?
In what countries and under what laws?
Edit: Breaching a contract (EULA / ToS) is not actually a crime - it is a beach of contract.
I don't expect the problem to go away ever. Whenever a developer implements a new way to stop gold-selling, someone will invent a work-around, or loophole and exploit that.
You could have a dedicated GM for every instanced area in your game, but what game developer has the money to employ that many staff 24-hours a day? (Hint: maybe not even Blizzard.)
The only way that people will stop selling gold and other resources like power-levelling, items etc is if players stop buying them. That won't happen as it is human nature to look for an advantage over other players and a proportion of those looking to do so will do so unfairly, or outside of the intended methods.
Back when Blizz Con was going on many accounts got hacked. The guild I was in the GL and one of the officers got hacked as well as the GL's gf's acct. . Bliz was swamped with tickets, emails and phone calls during that time. Most of the stuff for the guild bank and the other toons was restored but they did not ban the gf's acct. instead they monitored it. Getting info that was needed to get to the one that had hacked the accounts. I know the stuff from the guild was taken by diff toons on each of these accounts and then disbursed of. They finally restored the gf's toon returning it to her. But as someone has said yea sometimes they do that.
No one could stop the hacker by changing access to the guild bank as the GL was the only one that could change that and that account was hacked. Only the GL and his toons were allowed total access to all the tabs and the officer that was hacked was allowed access to all but one tab, so not much could be done. Even though there were many reports about others that were hacked Bliz said they could do nothing until the owner of the account reported it. I find this rather stupid because we knew some of the peeps were gone on vacation or to Blizz Con and were not accessing their accounts. When sent a tell the tells were ignored never responding to them. I mean if they had banned the accounts then when the owner got back they could have taken care of things but no they did nothing until the owner contacted them. This has over the years happened many times. I just don't understand why when they get many tickets or calls saying someones account is being hacked they can't at the very least ban it until the owner of the account calls. No they were not monitoring the accounts either since the owner was not available to complain. So by the time the owner returned the dmg was done and the hacker was long gone.
Trust me hackers aren't scared off either as many of us sent tells saying we knew they were hacking the account and had been reported. Why should they be? I mean they know nothing is going to happen until the owner reports it. Does make you wonder though if they maybe knew the owner through playing the game or maybe even msgs posted on a board. I mean when peeps are going to something like Blizz Con they tend to chat/brag freely about it. I don't know but I know that was a really bad weekend with hackers.
I don't know if there is any solid way to stop the farmers. I mean they seem to have more ways to get around things. WoW has put in the thing being able to report them but I really don't know if that is even followed through with or is just something so we can say we are reporting them. When it is a level one and by the time you report and do a /who they have logged. Now there was one not long ago that was on a high lvl char spamming for a good hour but there again like has been mentioned it was prob a hacked account and they didn't care or someone that was really brainless doing it maybe for some gold. Who knows?
I am sure there are things that could be done that would really put a hurting on those farmers, but I am also sure they would find a way around it in time. Maybe the best solution is to just not indulge in their services or buy their gold or items. I have noticed it seems they are spamming items in trade chat now and when you send a tell to find out how much for an item(thinking it is someone besides a farmer selling) you get a reply back sending you to a website to buy gold and items. hmm is there no end to what they will do? When this happens I do a report and gone on my way. I don't want to support them but makes me wonder if I may have purchased something through trade or the AH that was one of the evil ones. Yes to me they are evil.
It's simple supply and demand economics for an "illegal" or black market item; except the "law" in this case is enforced by the game developers, not state or federal government law officials.
Basically, look at marijuana in the United States. It's blatantly obvious that millions of people use marijuana, including many adults with otherwise productive lives who would never in a million years admit to their boss or colleges at work that they use marijuana.
One can argue that marijuana is safe or that it's the devil itself; that's not the point I'm making here. The point is, many people use marijuana in this country even though it is, technically, illegal and you can go to jail or be heavily fined for its use. Enforcement go after the users (think gold buyers, the dude in your guild who just bought 5000 gold online and then got banned) and also the drug cartels and growers themselves; which in our country's case are largely served by very poor people terrorized by drug cartel activity in Mexico.
The average Mexican citizen doesn't benefit from American marijuana use at all, and this is because it is illegal in the US and there are some pretty nasty tactics used by criminals (think kidnapping, murder, rape, intimidation, etc.) who will stop at nothing to gain a profit. The man buying weed isn't thinking about what effect his choice is having on the poor Mexican family south of the border who has to deal with drug cartel related violence; he just knows that he wants something and he knows how to get it.
Again, I'm not judging morality here. I'm just saying that many times I run into people who don't see that any time you make an object illegal or "black market" it will create another market, a sub-market serviced by, essentially, criminals who do NOT care about the law. These criminals are part of the problem, yes, but they couldn't exist without customers. If every marijuana-smoker in the US today stopped purchasing marijuana grown in Mexico (which could be easily accomplished by, say, legalization here - just as how when Prohibition ended alcohol stopped being sold and made by gangs, instead it was sold legally and taxed by the State... or it could be accomplished by millions of Americans just giving up the habit but you tell me which one is more likely... ;) ) - anyway, if there was no market for black-market Mexican drugs by affluent Americans, the Mexican drug cartels would dry up and die out without any means of economic support.
I'm not arguing for drug legalization or for allowing gold farming in my games; I personally detest the practice of gold farming and I have never purchased currency in a game since I have been playing for... well, since UO came out way back when.
What I am saying is that game developers are limited just as American law enforcement is limited. There may be a "war on drugs" or a "war on gold farmers" but as long as people want to buy drugs (or gold) it's going to be an arms-race between law enforcement/games development companies and the "criminals" (I use the word to describe people willing to flout the law to make a living, not as a moral judgment) will continue to supply people with access to black market items. The amount of many, many gold sellers in games like Aion can indicate a lack of proper enforcement on the game developers part and it can also indicate a huge demand for gold.
Also - one other small point. Is there honestly anyone out there who doesn't know how to (or who couldn't google it immediately) get gold/currency for basically ANY MMO on the market right now and have that in-game currency sent to them for real-world cash? I don't buy gold but it's pretty easy to figure out where to "score" some from, no matter what game you play.
I have only ever seen one real solution to the in-game gold problem - public accounts of currency. Totally take away a player's privacy concerning his in-game items and gold. Say I logon with a level 10 whatever in game X and the average amount of currency for me at level 10 is 100 gold. Well, my guildmaster notices one day I logon and my gold went from 100 gold to 5000 gold overnight. He might start asking questions at this point; so might by guildmates.
In essense, go after the "users" as hard as we're going after the "farmers" and we'll see a real solution. Enforcement of community by community is historically the only real effective way for social enforcement of morality.
Okay, fair enough. It's a "breach of contract" that they can SUE you for. Just as some companies HAVE sued individuals that made a botting program to run in their game. Same sort of thing. To me....breaching an agreement that YOU MADE, BY CHOICE, at the very LEAST calls your character into question, and at the most....is, as you call it, breach of contract.
Are they going to throw you in jail....no. Are they going to ban your IP? They SHOULD. But...they will handle it however they choose, it's their financial interests they are defending.
I don't care if you disagree with me. You're welcome to do whatever you, with your own conscience (or lack thereof) want to do. But you cannot argue that this is not addressed in an agreement that gamers CHOOSE to "digitally sign" when they choose to play a game.
For me, personally, it would be criminal. My word means something to me. Is it literally a "crime?" I can't, in all honesty, answer if it meets the criteria for being "criminal" in the truest sense of the word...probably not. Nonetheless....it's well within the rights of the developers to protect their intellectual property and financial gain via imposing penalties for breaking that agreement. And....SOME developers will do so. You do whatever you want. If you want to defend cheats and liars....feel free. Personally, I don't think I will.
Okay, fair enough. It's a "breach of contract" that they can SUE you for. Just as some companies HAVE sued individuals that made a botting program to run in their game. Same sort of thing. To me....breaching an agreement that YOU MADE, BY CHOICE, at the very LEAST calls your character into question, and at the most....is, as you call it, breach of contract.
Are they going to throw you in jail....no. Are they going to ban your IP? They SHOULD. But...they will handle it however they choose, it's their financial interests they are defending.
I don't care if you disagree with me. You're welcome to do whatever you, with your own conscience (or lack thereof) want to do. But you cannot argue that this is not addressed in an agreement that gamers CHOOSE to "digitally sign" when they choose to play a game.
Couple of points on what you have said so far:
By the fact you start talking about "sue"ing I assume you are from the USA?
Well, I would love to the the games companies try this outside he US. You do know (I hope) that the EULA is not absolute? That in many countries it may not even be legal at all? Even in the USA parts of it may not be valid from state to state?
In Commonweath Countries the EULA probably falls under a branch of Law called 'ticket case' which is a minefield.
In Australia the whole [I AGREE] button idea is also in doubt with at least one decision finding that clicking this did not equal and agreement a all.
For me, personally, it would be criminal. My word means something to me. Is it literally a "crime?" I can't, in all honesty, answer if it meets the criteria for being "criminal" in the truest sense of the word...probably not. Nonetheless....it's well within the rights of the developers to protect their intellectual property and financial gain via imposing penalties for breaking that agreement. And....SOME developers will do so. You do whatever you want. If you want to defend cheats and liars....feel free. Personally, I don't think I will.
It's got nothing to do with defending cheats and liars (and again, how are goldfarmers 'cheats and liars'? They are honest about what they do) but more to do with finding a sensible approach.
As I say, they are a business, hitting them in the profit margin will be more effective than anything.
Only a clueless poster condones cheating in any shape or form. The only thing I get from your comments is that your mores are warped which unfortunately is quite common in the younger generation. Maybe you should readdress them.
So, your argument comes down to "You're stupid and selfish and too young to comment."?
Well, speaking for myself - my first computer was a ZX81- I am hardly from the younger generation.
Other than that, how does calling people 'stupid' help to address the issue of gold farming?
How does calling gold farmers (and the people who use their services) 'cheaters' and / or 'liars' address the issue?
How does attacking a person based on their generation help?
The fact is none of it does.
And this is where you, and the MMO companies fail. This is why you fail. This is why gold farming continues.
Because rather than look at the actual problem, you get all emotive about it and basically chuck a tantrum based on your personal feelings on the issue. If you think this approach works I encourage you to find a gold farmer in game or even find a gold farming site and email them your personal and moral view of the world and the way it should be.
And that solves exactly - nothing.
If you are serious about actually solving the 'problem' then dump all the emotional stuff and address the issue at hand.
Look at all the options open and consider which ones have been tried and which haven't.
Look at which ones have worked and which haven't.
To me, I see gold farming as a business - so to deal with it look at how to make that business less profitable.
But apparently, people (and MMO companies) would rather just continue on the tired old treadmill of 'banning' them.
I hasn't worked and it doesn't work - but hey - bashing your head against a wall is fun so why try a different approach?
Still no comments on the only thing that would actually make a difference in the gold farming problem - public accounts of what monetary and other valuables players have. Put it all out there for everyone to see. If you suddenly get 5000 gold mailed to you, it's tracked and available for anyone to find out - including your guild members, friends, etc.
The 20% would be knocked into shape by the 80% really, really fast if obvious cheaters and gold purchasers were so easy to find. They could go be pariahs and play in their own little cheater guilds if they wanted, or they could decide to play nice and join the larger community.
See this link and read this page of the long, well thought article for another author's POV on this:
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001493.php?page=15
Anything other than this solution is just simple black market vs. the cops economics, and we see how well that works in the real world. If people who smoked crack suddenly turned blue and everyone could peg them as a crack smoker immediately, it's highly likely there would be many, many fewer people who would ever even try crack.
:)
It could certainly be tried. Personally i think that you would simply split the player base into "Gold Buyers" and "Non-Gold Buyers" (with associated guilds) with the Gold farming continuing as normal but trying harder to recruit from the non buying crowd?
In fact - if the Gold Buying Guilds were to do better then that might accelerate the gold farming activities?
I think the big problem you face is: Is gold buying cheating? Is it Morally wrong?
Elikal addressed this in post # 95
As for the argument: if I pay a chinese to sell me gold, I am not paying the gold, because gold in a MMO is nothing. I pay his work time. Thats something different. Its as if I would call my sister, tell her to play my EQ character for 1 week and make some money and XP and then pay her 20 Euro. I pay her time, which is her's to give, not that of a game company. I still find it would be odd or silly. Either you have fun playing a MMO or not, but it's not morally evil. ... I worked for the money and I can spent it as ever I wish.
I agree with his stance.
Personally I see no point in paying for a game and then using cheat codes and power leveling and gold buying to finish it ASAP.
I play games for entertainment - but that is just me.
If other people want to use these services then that's their call and the only time it concerns me at all is when they interact with me. With many MMOs being so 'solo friendly' and PvE then in those cases it shouldn't matter at all.
As for PvP? There it may matter? Depends on the game design.
But again, attempting to stop gold farming with a moral objection is pointless. The people who use the services and the people who provide the services are simply filling a need.
If players would rather pay someone else to play your game than play it themselves then you need to reconsider your game design. If players 'need' to buy gold from a third party to get the items they need in your game then, again, look at your design.
If it is profitable to be a gold farmer in your game then maybe you should look at why and how to make it less so?
Edit: Which is kind of where we started - isn't it?
I think the entire argument is stupid.
I see nothing wrong with buying gold, other than being scammed by nasty korean thieves or dealing with chinese customer service.
I've bought gold in WoW and EQ2. The result? Nothing really.
It's nothing I couldn't have gotten from an altruistic guildmate who farmed for 1 hour on a level 80. Nothing I couldn't have done by borrowing a friend's lvl 80 account, or leveling up my own lvl 80. But why did I spend $6 for 1000 gold? Because I want to have FUN. Because my time is valuable enough to justify spending $6 in 1 hour rather than 1 month boring grinding just to "play" the game with max enjoyment. I didn't have to beg guildmates- in fact I got to donate 100 gold to my guild which was struggling.
The result? Everyone had more fun.
Did it ruin the economy? No. It never does in games that have been running for years.
What ruins economies are the fact that a level 80 can farm 10000000g in a week, while a level 1 would be able to level 20 characters to 80 by the time it even got 100g.
What ruins the economy is the fact there is no economy. All items are overpriced, because everyone already has a level 80 character with infinite money. For a level 1-20, a single raw material for crafting a crappy piece of gear is often 1000x more expensive than it should but, but still pathetically cheap for a level 80.
In EQ2, I was banned within minutes, which is just stupid. The game caters to people who have max level alts. To even compete in the market, a new player is forced to 1) have a friend, 2) have a giving/crafting guild, 3) buy gold, or 4) solo grind to max level before being able to have fun.
I payed $15 for a month of gameplay. To banned me because of my private business should be illegal. I had no problems contesting the charge, because the company denied me the service I payed for. They don't get my money if they try to cheat me, saying "Sure, $15 for a month of gameplay. " and change their mind. Because guess what? If they change their mind, so does my wallet. When they refuse to give money back, they get a swift letter from my lawyer and I'm refunded even more swiftly. Why? Because they know they cheated me out of my service by denying it and going back on the deal.
I play games to have fun.
I pay $15 a month for that fun.
I pay $6 more a month to have 100x more fun.
After level 20, I stop buying gold bc $6 worth of gold becomes way too little.
I'd argue that Gold Farming, for the most part, is solely for newbies and low levels. It's also justified, since the price of a level 1 item is often the same price as a level 80 item. This gets even more ridiculous with twinking, the fact you can't craft EVERYTHING, and the fact there is no real economy or currency in the game- and an infinite amount of cash can be collected.
In reality, there is only ONE difference between a guild being kind enough to farm for a week to supply new members with 1000g gold, and a group of koreans being smart enough to farm for a week to supply new members with 1000g.
That difference is as simple as Kindness vs a $6 price tag.
It doesn't harm the game, because an infinite amount of currency is made. IT doesn't harm the game, because only a very very FEW amount of players have the money to buy any max level amount of gold. To become rich for a month at lvl 1-20 cost $6. To be rich for a day at lvl 80 cost $160.
When Fallen Earth released, I agreed with the protest against gold farmers. A brand new game has a real economy. There are no max level players farming instances. There is no hording of level 1 items that are reserved only for those with max level alts.
Things are VERY different from a brand new game (which have FAIR markets) and a game that's been around WAY too long.
The nerds can argue all they want- but until they make a game that prevents max levels from monopolizing the economy or provide a REAL economy with a LIMITED amount of currency (which is "taxed" to prevent hoarding, "seized" on account canceling, etc.) then there's no reason to argue against gold farming.
The moment your games stop being so ridiculously biased against new players is the moment I'll join with you to stop the koreans. Until then, I scoff at the idiocy that is the fight against gold farmers. Games are made for fun, not to supply your unrealistic, twisted, life-killing nerd philosophies based on a false claim that it "ruins" an economy which was ruined long before gold farmers ever logged in.
The other thing wrong with the whole "all gold farmers use stolen Cerdit Cards and all fraud is commited by Gold farmers argument is this:
If that's the case - simply close all accounts created with stolen credit cards.
You might say "DUH!"?
But really, think about it if the claims here about how Gold farmers work are true that is all there is too it?
So why do we still have gold farmers?
Is that true?
Well, no. Because just like you and I, Gold farmers have real, long term, accounts they use as 'banks' and to collect high end loot.
Obviously they don't want that account to just vanish on them (when the CC Company notifies the MMO Company the account was created with a 'stolen' card).
So they have legitimate accounts too.
I don't doubt that accounts are created with stolen cards - or even that the rate is high compared to other typoes of merchants - but I do doubt it is as high as many are implying here.
So, in that case what can be done?
Rather than play the victim - the mature business like approach would be to contact the CC Company and discuss solutions.
"We have a 'high' rate of CC fraud in our industry... the online nature of our business is most likely a factor? What can we all do to improve the security of the system here?
Well one sign that you bought money is if you received the sum from a low level character. Gold sellers will typically use a "trash account" to deliver the money. So if that account gets banned they don't care. Spammer Account A farms the gold and mails the money to Spammer Account B, who then in turn gives to Low Life Player C. So the can see if someone's 50 hero/villain gave a lowbie an inf gift or did some lvl 1 named dkdjfjfjk give it instead.
If you see someone spamming in chat, global, general, trade, whatever you kick them immediately and suspend the account. Then they can have a supervisor decided whether or not to ban the account. Legit players aren't going to make a macro and spam the chat with "buygold.com cheap! gold 4 u" endlessly.
The global block would help out the players a lot. We all know that ignoring gjkkdkdk does nothing as after spamming for 5 mins they simply delete that char, make another gibberish one and log back on. By globally ignoring them I'd never see any of their spams for as long as they use that account. NCSoft could check how many accounts get globally ignored to help see which ones are spammer accounts. If one got a lot of hits for global ignores, they can then check the logs and see why. If they find "buy inf cheap.com" ads, then POOF the account goes bye bye.
Well one sign that you bought money is if you received the sum from a low level character. Gold sellers will typically use a "trash account" to deliver the money. So if that account gets banned they don't care. Spammer Account A farms the gold and mails the money to Spammer Account B, who then in turn gives to Low Life Player C. So the can see if someone's 50 hero/villain gave a lowbie an inf gift or did some lvl 1 named dkdjfjfjk give it instead.
If you see someone spamming in chat, global, general, trade, whatever you kick them immediately and suspend the account. Then they can have a supervisor decided whether or not to ban the account. Legit players aren't going to make a macro and spam the chat with "buygold.com cheap! gold 4 u" endlessly.
The global block would help out the players a lot. We all know that ignoring gjkkdkdk does nothing as after spamming for 5 mins they simply delete that char, make another gibberish one and log back on. By globally ignoring them I'd never see any of their spams for as long as they use that account. NCSoft could check how many accounts get globally ignored to help see which ones are spammer accounts. If one got a lot of hits for global ignores, they can then check the logs and see why. If they find "buy inf cheap.com" ads, then POOF the account goes bye bye.
I agree they could do some stuff with filtering, looking for websites and stuff. They could also put a temp ban on those giving out websites as most of those are either selling gold or giving out bad websites with virus info. Helpfull websites could be posted in the forums. Also I am sure they could put some kind of tracking on cash. Like say you got a pig payout of gold is a dead givaway. They check your account against what you sold on the ah and eanred via questing/looting/vender junk. I think that banning folks who buy the gold as well as well it and I mean perma ban them not not of this temp ban stuff like lotro does.
So, your argument comes down to "You're stupid and selfish and too young to comment."?
Well, speaking for myself - my first computer was a ZX81- I am hardly from the younger generation.
Other than that, how does calling people 'stupid' help to address the issue of gold farming?
How does calling gold farmers (and the people who use their services) 'cheaters' and / or 'liars' address the issue?
How does attacking a person based on their generation help?
The fact is none of it does.
And this is where you, and the MMO companies fail. This is why you fail. This is why gold farming continues.
Because rather than look at the actual problem, you get all emotive about it and basically chuck a tantrum based on your personal feelings on the issue. If you think this approach works I encourage you to find a gold farmer in game or even find a gold farming site and email them your personal and moral view of the world and the way it should be.
And that solves exactly - nothing.
If you are serious about actually solving the 'problem' then dump all the emotional stuff and address the issue at hand.
Look at all the options open and consider which ones have been tried and which haven't.
Look at which ones have worked and which haven't.
To me, I see gold farming as a business - so to deal with it look at how to make that business less profitable.
But apparently, people (and MMO companies) would rather just continue on the tired old treadmill of 'banning' them.
I hasn't worked and it doesn't work - but hey - bashing your head against a wall is fun so why try a different approach?
You just don't get it do you? The rules of the game are stated up front, violating them is cheating. Advocates that say buying gold is ok are just saying is cheating is ok. It is clearly ok to call a cheater's mores warped. Cheating is NEVER OK. There is nothing real world about a game, it is just a game played for fun to challenge your skills verses others. I don't care how old you are, cheating is cheating. Why play a game when you think the rules don't apply? What is the point of having rules then?
No you don't get it.
I suggest you re-read the original article.
Here are the bits you should pay careful attention to:
"I’ve been hired (again) by NCsoft this week, to work as a developer and data analyst for their new Game Surveillance Unit. This CSI-sounding department is responsible for quashing botting and gold selling in their titles, some of which has been a bit of a problem of late.
...
This is a very brief summary of a fairly large problem, and one with few value judgments on the relative morality of gold buying, powerlevelling, or what have you. However you feel about these subjects, the wreckage from the current state of “the game” between developers and farmers is plain to see, and dealing with this is a challenge that every developer has to tackle if they want to deliver a successful, fun, and profitable product.
And much like any other vice, enforcement only goes so far, as long as there is a demand."
Do you see it now?
Scott Jennings's new job is to try to stop gold farming activities. NOT to make moral judgements on it. Because all the moral judgements in the world don't help.
Suppose Mr Jennings goes into his bosses office today and says "I've got it! Gold Farming / Gold Buying / Power Leveling and Botting is CHEATING!!!!!"?
Do you think they will all sit back - breath a big sigh of relief - and say "Well, lucky we hired you then... wow... you just paid for yourself! We should immediately tell all the players...that ought to stop it!"
Your moral outrage achieves nothing.
So your next solution is to say: "The rules of the game are stated up front, violating them is cheating." at which point you no doubt wish to fall back on the good old 'BAN THE ACCOUNT!' solution?
Well, that has actually been tried - and it does not appear to be working.
In fact - I would suggest to you that banning the account in many cases actually helps the gold farmer and harms the MMO company still more.
Why?
Because as I said - at that point the gold farmer calls his credit card company (assuming he was using a valid card - which I am sure they do at least some of the time for reasons I stated earlier) and says "That evil MMO company is refusing to allow me to play the game I payed for... I want my money back!"
And you know what? He will almost certainly get it.
And the MMO company may also get hit with fees for being so evil to their customer and making the CC company do extra work.
So I say - try a different way.
Meanwhile - I suggest you go tell a few of the bots in Aion that "Cheating is NEVER OK."
Let me know how that works out for you?
No you don't get it.
I suggest you re-read the original article.
Here are the bits you should pay careful attention to:
"I’ve been hired (again) by NCsoft this week, to work as a developer and data analyst for their new Game Surveillance Unit. This CSI-sounding department is responsible for quashing botting and gold selling in their titles, some of which has been a bit of a problem of late.
...
This is a very brief summary of a fairly large problem, and one with few value judgments on the relative morality of gold buying, powerlevelling, or what have you. However you feel about these subjects, the wreckage from the current state of “the game” between developers and farmers is plain to see, and dealing with this is a challenge that every developer has to tackle if they want to deliver a successful, fun, and profitable product.
And much like any other vice, enforcement only goes so far, as long as there is a demand."
Do you see it now?
Scott Jennings's new job is to try to stop gold farming activities. NOT to make moral judgements on it. Because all the moral judgements in the world don't help.
Suppose Mr Jennings goes into his bosses office today and says "I've got it! Gold Farming / Gold Buying / Power Leveling and Botting is CHEATING!!!!!"?
Do you think they will all sit back - breath a big sigh of relief - and say "Well, lucky we hired you then... wow... you just paid for yourself! We should immediately tell all the players...that ought to stop it!"
Your moral outrage achieves nothing.
So your next solution is to say: "The rules of the game are stated up front, violating them is cheating." at which point you no doubt wish to fall back on the good old 'BAN THE ACCOUNT!' solution?
Well, that has actually been tried - and it does not appear to be working.
In fact - I would suggest to you that banning the account in many cases actually helps the gold farmer and harms the MMO company still more.
Why?
Because as I said - at that point the gold farmer calls his credit card company (assuming he was using a valid card - which I am sure they do at least some of the time for reasons I stated earlier) and says "That evil MMO company is refusing to allow me to play the game I payed for... I want my money back!"
And you know what? He will almost certainly get it.
And the MMO company may also get hit with fees for being so evil to their customer and making the CC company do extra work.
So I say - try a different way.
Meanwhile - I suggest you go tell a few of the bots in Aion that "Cheating is NEVER OK."
Let me know how that works out for you?
Well he's not telling BOTS, now is he? He was responding to another human being, that unless he's programmed a bot to type up his posts on MMORPG.com, is as present and reading as you are right now.
I think anyone that wants to argue how the game developers feel about this, is pretty foolish. Obviously, game developers do NOT like gold farming, botting, and....call it what you may....cheating. I don't really see how "cheating" is a "moral judgement."
Main Entry: 1cheat
Pronunciation: \?ch?t\
Function: verb
Etymology: 2cheat
Date: 1590
transitive verb
1 : to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2 : to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3 : to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting <cheat death>intransitive verb 1 a : to practice fraud or trickery b : to violate rules dishonestly <cheat at cards> <cheating on a test>
2 : to be sexually unfaithful —usually used with on <was cheating on his wife>
3 : to position oneself defensively near a particular area in anticipation of a play in that area <the shortstop was cheating toward second base>
If you sign an agreement NOT to do something, and then go back on your word....how "moral" is that. Actually....screw the word "moral".....how much INTEGRITY does that show you have? You have "violated the RULES dishonestly." Call it that...if you hate the word "cheating" so much. Oh wait....they're the same thing. Never mind. /rolls eyes
Furthermore, they MAY get a CC refund for the game time, HOWEVER.....no CC company can force the game developers to let you back into the game or UNban your account or IP (if they choose to ban that too). And....you would have no one to blame but yourself. You made an agreement with the game company to go by their rules, they made an agreement to let you continue playing in their world as long as you do so. Once you break the agreement, they are no longer bound to give you anything, other than possibly refunding your 15 bucks from that month....MAYBE.
Here's another thread of interest on how game developers "feel" about botting:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/260327
"Your account has been suspended because you BREACHED THE GAME SERVICE AGREEMENT....." I think that's fairly plain. And they're not at ALL the first to do that, and there are companies that have even sued in civil court for individuals who made a botting program for their game. I'm not sure what ELSE developers would have to do to make it pretty damn effing CLEAR what THEY think of botting, gold selling, buying, gold spamming, etc.
Just because people want to JUSTIFY DOING it....doesn't make it a legitimate endeavor.
When people engage in a game activity of any kind, they engage with the expectation that other players will follow the same rules that they agreed to follow before they started to play.
Whether those rules are "arguable" or not is not the point here. If you don't like the rules...you are not obligated to play.
So if you understand the rules clearly --- and anyone posting here must --- and chose to break the rules, its not just that you are a cheater, by definition.
Its that you are degrading the game experience for everyone else who have the colossally weird idea that they should follow the rules.
Like a friend of mine who commented recently after an experience in Wintergrasp (WOW) that an opposing toon had wiped them flat in no time. You don't think it might just make a difference to someone that the other toon bought their superiority?
Sounds like it might just crush the life out of one's game experience. What's the point.
But then anyone rationalizing breaking an agreement is only thinking about themselves. They don't care about any body else, so cheating doesn't matter.
It could certainly be tried. Personally i think that you would simply split the player base into "Gold Buyers" and "Non-Gold Buyers" (with associated guilds) with the Gold farming continuing as normal but trying harder to recruit from the non buying crowd?
In fact - if the Gold Buying Guilds were to do better then that might accelerate the gold farming activities?
I think the big problem you face is: Is gold buying cheating? Is it Morally wrong?
Elikal addressed this in post # 95
As for the argument: if I pay a chinese to sell me gold, I am not paying the gold, because gold in a MMO is nothing. I pay his work time. Thats something different. Its as if I would call my sister, tell her to play my EQ character for 1 week and make some money and XP and then pay her 20 Euro. I pay her time, which is her's to give, not that of a game company. I still find it would be odd or silly. Either you have fun playing a MMO or not, but it's not morally evil. ... I worked for the money and I can spent it as ever I wish.
I agree with his stance.
Personally I see no point in paying for a game and then using cheat codes and power leveling and gold buying to finish it ASAP.
I play games for entertainment - but that is just me.
If other people want to use these services then that's their call and the only time it concerns me at all is when they interact with me. With many MMOs being so 'solo friendly' and PvE then in those cases it shouldn't matter at all.
As for PvP? There it may matter? Depends on the game design.
But again, attempting to stop gold farming with a moral objection is pointless. The people who use the services and the people who provide the services are simply filling a need.
If players would rather pay someone else to play your game than play it themselves then you need to reconsider your game design. If players 'need' to buy gold from a third party to get the items they need in your game then, again, look at your design.
If it is profitable to be a gold farmer in your game then maybe you should look at why and how to make it less so?
Edit: Which is kind of where we started - isn't it?
Is Gold Farming cheating? Is it wrong?
I won't answer that except to say that if the information was made public we could all as players and guilds easily see the information and decide who we wanted to play with based on that info.
And if the information WAS made public and the community decided it was cheating and wrong (like most developers do now) - then making everything public would make the cheaters THAT much easier to identify and eliminate.
I still don't see how people don't get this no brainer. Make everything public. Problem solved - you don't want gold farmers in your game? Make funds public and let players report each other. If I know GoldBuyer XX has 4000 gold on Tuesday and 50,000 on Wednesday, I might send a GM a note to "investigate."
Every social study every done shows that when people are forced to act with transparency, when misdoings are made public, everyone wins because everyone behaves better - it's the policing effect of the herd community.
Thank you for saying everything I was thinking, and MUCH more eloquently.
Thank you for saying everything I was thinking, and MUCH more eloquently.
What is wrong with you people?
Seriously?
FACT: GOLD FARMING EXISTS.
Can any of you deny it? barndorf? girlgeek? Ozmodan?
Now for all your WORDS do you have any solution on how to stop it?
Tell them they are "cheating"?
Might have been done already I think?
Gold farming still exists.
Tell them they are "not obligated to play"?
I'm pretty sure they know that. But they are making money.
Gold farming still exists.
Ban the account.?
Not only does this allow them to get their money back it also results in charges for the MMO company.
The Goldfarmer meanwhile creates a new account through an IP anonymiser and is straight back in the game.
Seriously... if the solution was that easy gold farming would have ceased to exist.
Gold farming still exists.
So, for all your words, your moral outrage, your definitions and your fairy dust coated dreams on how the world should be...
GOLD FARMING STILL EXISTS.
Only Justarius1 has offered any solution. Personally, I don't think it would work because again it relies on a moral judgement from the players. However, his solution also offers a solution based on social interaction - which is an interesting approach.
If nothing else I would like to see his method trial just as a social experiment.
Edit: Look at it like this. YOU have to walk into the NC Soft CEOs office tomorrow and offer a solution. What do you have to offer?
Walking in and saying "Cheating in wrong and against the rules!" is not going to keep you employed is it?
What is wrong with you people?
Seriously?
FACT: GOLD FARMING EXISTS.
Can any of you deny it? barndorf? girlgeek? Ozmodan?
Now for all your WORDS do you have any solution on how to stop it?
Tell them they are "cheating"?
Might have been done already I think?
Gold farming still exists.
Tell them they are "not obligated to play"?
I'm pretty sure they know that. But they are making money.
Gold farming still exists.
Ban the account.?
Not only does this allow them to get their money back it also results in charges for the MMO company.
The Goldfarmer meanwhile creates a new account through an IP anonymiser and is straight back in the game.
Seriously... if the solution was that easy gold farming would have ceased to exist.
Gold farming still exists.
So, for all your words, your moral outrage, your definitions and your fairy dust coated dreams on how the world should be...
GOLD FARMING STILL EXISTS.
Only Justarius1 has offered any solution. Personally, I don't think it would work because again it relies on a moral judgement from the players. However, his solution also offers a solution based on social interaction - which is an interesting approach.
If nothing else I would like to see his method trial just as a social experiment.
Edit: Look at it like this. YOU have to walk into the NC Soft CEOs office tomorrow and offer a solution. What do you have to offer?
Walking in and saying "Cheating in wrong and against the rules!" is not going to keep you employed is it?
MAKE THE ECONOMY PUBLIC.
I believe I have offered a workable solution, several times, even posted a link to it -
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001493.php?page=15
And for those people who just refuse to leave the thread to click the link, here:
"Currently, MMOs do not allow players to police and govern themselves in a practical way regarding gold farming, but imagine if this were possible. If it is true that most players are against the practice, then by giving them a practical means to detect these transactions, self-regulation might emerge. For example, if a character’s financial transaction history is made public, then it becomes possible for that character’s friends or guildmates to detect gold buying behavior. Very few characters would have good reason to get a sudden 300 gold increase from the mail. The problem right now is that gold buying is invisible and thus these players have no accountability. But once that behavior is made public, then accountability emerges. Other players will question that sudden windfall in the mail. Guild members and friends will exert a social pressure where it was impossible to exert before."
Anything else is just basically choosing between which kind of enforcement you want - heavy on the ban-stick and a heavily policed game; or light on the ban stick and an economy where everyone can "cheat" and buy as much gold from a Chinese farmer working 12 hours days in some internet cafe to pay the rent - it all depends on the kind of game you want to play and the kind of people you like to play with.
Me, personally, I like my knowledge public so I can pick who I play with based on similar morals, play style, etc.
Well, this has certainly been an active discussion, and very little of what I could add has not already been addressed. So a few minor points:
Re: chargebacks: they do happen. They are a huge problem (they make customer support even more of a cost than it already is) and yes, they should be handled better. And yes, CC providers have expressed displeasure with MMO companies over their relative frequency compared to other services.
Re: just making an economy public: very few people would be OK with this, I suspect. There's some privacy implications there. It's also sort of a burning down the village to find the crook sort of solution... it may work but the collateral damage would be pretty painful.
Re: RMT as a vice where the demand drives the suppy - this is a point I make frequently, and the demand must be addressed (whether through enforcement, or changing the design that drives that market) much like any other vice that is suppressed.
And finally, as is probably obvious given my new job, I absolutely can't comment about anything specific re: NCsoft, Aion or any huge ban wave that may or may not have taken place this morning. :)
By now, I wonder how many of those account holders have contacted their CC provider and asked for a chargeback?
Have the phones started ringing in accounts department yet?
How much money will this cost NC Soft?
Was it worth it? Are all the goldfarmers in Aion out of business?
Well, a google of "gold aion" says no.
I am disappointed that the best NC Soft can come up with is still more of the same (tried before and failed) 'banzor them!'.
What is wrong with you people?
Seriously?
FACT: GOLD FARMING EXISTS.
Can any of you deny it? barndorf? girlgeek? Ozmodan?
Now for all your WORDS do you have any solution on how to stop it? Did the OP ask us for solutions? If anyone had any that would WORK....don't you think the major companies would have tried them already? I don't see you offering any solutions either. So what is YOUR big solution?
OH....and rape still exists too. And I'm "morally" outraged at THAT too. Like WTF? Now for all of YOUR words....have you done anything to help the situation yourself? We've all at least been trying to explain to a few people WHY it's wrong. That is how this train of conversation got started. Several people wanted to argue whether it was even "wrong," so a few of us obliged them. What have YOU done to contribute to this thread?
The closest thing they've come up with as a solution for rape is a female "condom" that has sharp barbs on the inside part of it. You can't tell someone is wearing one, so when you're STUPID enough to put your dick into someone that isn't willingly allowing it....when you try to pull it out....it will shred your Mr. Winky.
I think this is a good idea. Perhaps we can come up with some similar plan for gold farmers? I like them ALMOST that much. This is a good example of how STUPID people need PAIN, or at least the fear of pain, to LEARN what is acceptable and what is not. Pitiful that some people are so ignorant that they require such drastic measures.
And in case you hadn't guessed it....this is all really just a tongue in cheek comment, because....there's not a damn THING "wrong" with any of the people who are irritated about the gold farming and find it to show a lack of integrity that people DO it. I think that's a pretty normal response for DECENT people who understand there are REASONS for "rules". What's "wrong" is the people who don't. There must be a few generations that were raised with no rules, no enforcement of rules, and no discipline for breaking rules. That would go a long way toward explaining a lot of other problems in society today too, let alone gold farming, botting, CHEATING, etc.
Tell them they are "cheating"?
Might have been done already I think?
Gold farming still exists.
Tell them they are "not obligated to play"?
I'm pretty sure they know that. But they are making money.
Gold farming still exists.
Ban the account.?
Not only does this allow them to get their money back it also results in charges for the MMO company.
The Goldfarmer meanwhile creates a new account through an IP anonymiser and is straight back in the game.
Seriously... if the solution was that easy gold farming would have ceased to exist.
Gold farming still exists.
So, for all your words, your moral outrage, your definitions and your fairy dust coated dreams on how the world should be...
GOLD FARMING STILL EXISTS.
You do realize that MOST changes START with "moral outrage," right? You should consider that. If people aren't outraged, it's very easy to just be apathetic. A quick review of world history will show you this. Generally people don't take action against things wrongly perpetrated on them UNTIL they become outraged.
Only Justarius1 has offered any solution. Personally, I don't think it would work because again it relies on a moral judgement from the players. However, his solution also offers a solution based on social interaction - which is an interesting approach.
If nothing else I would like to see his method trial just as a social experiment.
Edit: Look at it like this. YOU have to walk into the NC Soft CEOs office tomorrow and offer a solution. What do you have to offer?
IP bans to anyone that can be proven to be a gold BUYER or seller, PERIOD. And I don't CARE that you don't "like" that idea. By the way....I think I already mentioned that in a previous post. As far as "IP Anonymizers" go....I would imagine that there's technology to determine if someone is using that way to skate around things. If not....I'm sure there soon will be.
Incidentally....I'm not sure why you think a bunch of GAMERS can come up with something that will WORK, when OBVIOUSLY the MMO devs haven't been able to do so.
Therefore, some of us would rather focus on helping OTHER PEOPLE to become "outraged," as you put it, so that maybe.....just maybe.....a few more people will see WHY it's wrong to bot, buy, and sell gold. If we can decrease the DEMAND, then the suppliers will eventually go away.
Walking in and saying "Cheating in wrong and against the rules!" is not going to keep you employed is it?
Actually....understanding that cheating and stealing are wrong has kept me employed all my life. Employers expect you to have a pretty good grasp of that, but I can see....that a lot of people certainly don't.
What is wrong with you people?
Seriously?
FACT: GOLD FARMING EXISTS.
Can any of you deny it? barndorf? girlgeek? Ozmodan?
Now for all your WORDS do you have any solution on how to stop it? Did the OP ask us for solutions? If anyone had any that would WORK....don't you think the major companies would have tried them already? I don't see you offering any solutions either. So what is YOUR big solution?
Then you need to read back. You didn't see it because you were / are blinded by rage I think?
My solution (or part of my solution anyway) is NOT to ban their accounts - but rather to restrict them.
1/ Disable their player to player trades.
2/ Disable their chat - restrict it to Guild only chat.
That way, if they call their CC Company and say "I want a charge back - that evil MMO company has stopped me playing!"
The MMO Company can honestly say "No. We haven't. That account is still perfectly playable."
And for the gold farmer that is the worst thing that can happen - because they have done the 'work' but now cannot share the spoils.
They can still trade with NPCs - but the beauty of that is the MMO company can set up the NPCs to buy at fair (but low) prices and yet not sell back everything they buy (it becomes a sink).
Guild only chat allows the player to group and play (not much help for goldfarmers) but gold spam can be delt with by guild leaders (kicking the gold spammer).
The net result is the goldfarmers not only effectively 'lose' the account - but they still have to pay for it (assuming a valid card was used - which at least some of the time will be the case)
So, this all eats into their expenses and lowers their profits. And without profit - why bother?
The other great advantage of this is that if a company chooses to do a mass 'ban' (like NC soft did today) then any innocents caught are not inconvienced too much. They can still log in and play while customer service issues are delt with ( to fully reinstate their account )
.....As for the rest of your rant...
Well, let's just say it's clear you have rage issues and other issues too deep for anyone here to help you with.
Why exactly would people have a problem with a public economy if they have nothing to hide? I know I wouldn't. Heck, I'll tell you what my Aion and Fallen Earth characters have RIGHT NOW. ;)
I don't think many people would have a problem with that kind of system at all. What exactly are the "privacy concerns" being violated here? You agree to play the game, you agree to make your funds and fund-transfers public.
I know a LOT of people that would sign up for a system like this in a heartbeat - especially PvP players with nothing to hide, like myself. Anything I have on any of my characters you can rest assured I quested, looted, or crafted myself. If I want to help out a guild (or vice versa) - fine, make those transactions public too. I don't think anyone has ever complained that Guild XYZ gave member ZYX 500 gold or 50 crafting widgets or whatever. It's part of being in a guild and it doesn't violate the TOS as gold-buying offline does.
I see a public setting like that as a Utopian mmo, almost, in terms of economy. Maybe some game designer like NCSoft will get tired of the commonly used approaches to dealing with gold farmers and bots and they will try this someday.
I really don't know a single person who would stop playing, say, World of Warcraft if the economy were to go public tomorrow - except, perhaps, for the biggest offline buyers to begin with.
Which is kind of the point - we WANT them to go.
By now, I wonder how many of those account holders have contacted their CC provider and asked for a chargeback?
Have the phones started ringing in accounts department yet?
How much money will this cost NC Soft?
Was it worth it? Are all the goldfarmers in Aion out of business?
Well, a google of "gold aion" says no.
I am disappointed that the best NC Soft can come up with is still more of the same (tried before and failed) 'banzor them!'.
I know, man. Just today the police picked up a murderer in my city. I think this is ridiculous, I mean, just because they apprehended a murderer doesn't mean people won't still murder people. There are still THOUSANDS of murders happening EVERY day - just google "recent murder cases in the US" to see what I mean! Guess the whole "lock up the criminal" thing isn't working very well for us, since we still have criminals.
Since arresting murderers and putting them in prison isn't getting to the ROOT cause of murder in this country, I say we stop arresting murderers and try to change the social system that CREATES murderers in the first place.
I'm so disappointed that the United States Government like so many other World Governments just locks up murderers and criminals and BANZORZ them to prison. How much does this cost the government or us as taxpayers?
Anyone except me see where this line of thought leads?
Sure, it's all very Utopian and "progressive" of you but in the meantime until we have this perfect economy and perfect system where nobody has an incentive to cheat, a lot of players - myself included - are quite happy with the recent bans and removal of bots in Aion. It's obvious to me because I logon now and I see that the game world is changing, and things are getting better.
I know, man. Just today the police picked up a murderer in my city. I think this is ridiculous, I mean, just because they apprehended a murderer doesn't mean people won't still murder people. There are still THOUSANDS of murders happening EVERY day - just google "recent murder cases in the US" to see what I mean! Guess the whole "lock up the criminal" thing isn't working very well for us, since we still have criminals.
Since arresting murderers and putting them in prison isn't getting to the ROOT cause of murder in this country, I say we stop arresting murderers and try to change the social system that CREATES murderers in the first place.
I'm so disappointed that the United States Government like so many other World Governments just locks up murderers and criminals and BANZORZ them to prison. How much does this cost the government or us as taxpayers?
Anyone except me see where this line of thought leads?
Sure, it's all very Utopian and "progressive" of you but in the meantime until we have this perfect economy and perfect system where nobody has an incentive to cheat, a lot of players - myself included - are quite happy with the recent bans and removal of bots in Aion. It's obvious to me because I logon now and I see that the game world is changing, and things are getting better.
Apparently, you and I are the only people that understand this.
You have to love the "why bother" attitude some people have. It's not working PERFECTLY....so let's not do it. Stupidity abounds.
Oh, and by the way, you'll likely now be told you have "issues," since you used an analogy about murder. (zomg)
There are more idiots on these forums than there are in any other community. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of self-righteous CRAP I have to read on here. And the egos....amazing. Some how some of these gamers think they can solve the problems of the "world" (the world of gaming) ...even though the PROFESSIONALS have been trying for years and years. But of course....some "genius" on these forums SURELY knows more than all of "those guys." /rolls eyes
YOU have some good ideas, by the way. Some of the other posters do as well. What I want to know....is how talking about it on the forums here is going to accomplish much of anything. You presented good ideas with a fair amount of humility. Have you posted ideas like this on the suggestion forums of the game or games you play? Perhaps you should. :)
Thanks. I appreciate the feedback.
I haven't suggested this on Aion or FE forums yet; that's a decent idea. I figured starting to talk about it here, on a site devoted to MMORPGs, on a thread started about this very issue, might be a good way to get some feedback from others about the idea.
I never will get the mentality that since we can't catch all wrongdoers, we shouldn't bother with enforcement at all. We have drug enforcement, and yet we still have plenty of crack heads. We have law enforcement of all types, and yet crime still abounds. We punish rape, murder, battery and assault, and a WIDE range of crimes that probably have their root causes in social ills, yes, but since we don't live in a perfect world we kind of have to do what we can to contain the damage caused by crime WHILE we work on making a better world for everyone.
I think the comparison applies equally to MMORPGs.
As for arrogant people thinking they have the answers to world problems, all I can say is - look into a job as a US politician instead of hanging around these forums all day. The gov't has some serious issues here right now and since ya'll have the answers, I wanted to let you know there is an election coming up. Start your nomination petitions now! ;)
Well, I actually took your suggestion. Have the idea up on Fallen Earth's paid/red forum Suggestion area and on Aion's public suggestion forum. We'll see where it goes.
The problem I usually run into are people that can't wrap their brain around anything different, they basically fall into the "ban them all" camp and the "gold farming isn't an issue" camp - with very little ability to look beyond what is currently being done.
As one of my favorite authors says, when they give you lined paper, write sideways. ;) (Think outside the box!)
Apparently, you and I are the only people that understand this.
You have to love the "why bother" attitude some people have. It's not working PERFECTLY....so let's not do it. Stupidity abounds.
Oh, and by the way, you'll likely now be told you have "issues," since you used an analogy about murder. (zomg)
There are more idiots on these forums than there are in any other community. ...
You both know I am not suggesting "do nothing" (well maybe you don't since there seem to be comprehension issues here)
Justarius1 your murder analogy is flawed (if you don't see that then let me know because further discussion is pointless).
I will try to fit in with your thinking however:
Banning a gold farmer (the way NC Soft just did) is sort of equivalent to arresting a murderer, then releasing them on bail and giving them their gun back as they leave the remand centre...and maybe telling them where the witnesses can be found... and then wondering why they shoot someone else?
My suggestion, if you actually read it, is to try something different.
To try to fit in with your analogy (once again) it would be equivalent to setting higher bail and restricting movement for those out on bail.
But, lets forget dumb analogies:
Banning gold farmers is a tried (and failed) strategy.
There are MMOs out there that invested vast amounts of time and resources on this approach.
They failed.
In some cases they no longer have gold farmers in those games... because they have no players either.
As I say, the gold farmers left when their business was no longer profitable.
I must admit the above quote made me laugh.
Made by the same person who said this
"And if the information WAS made public and the community decided it was cheating and wrong (like most developers do now) - then making everything public would make the cheaters THAT much easier to identify and eliminate.
I still don't see how people don't get this no brainer. Make everything public. Problem solved..."
I believe that's called irony?
I must admit the above quote made me laugh.
Made by the same person who said this
"And if the information WAS made public and the community decided it was cheating and wrong (like most developers do now) - then making everything public would make the cheaters THAT much easier to identify and eliminate.
I still don't see how people don't get this no brainer. Make everything public. Problem solved..."
I believe that's called irony?
Oh, no. That's not solving a large world problem. That's solving a very small-scale MMO problem. ;)
Apparently, you and I are the only people that understand this.
You have to love the "why bother" attitude some people have. It's not working PERFECTLY....so let's not do it. Stupidity abounds.
Oh, and by the way, you'll likely now be told you have "issues," since you used an analogy about murder. (zomg)
There are more idiots on these forums than there are in any other community. ...
You both know I am not suggesting "do nothing" (well maybe you don't since there seem to be comprehension issues here)
Justarius1 your murder analogy is flawed (if you don't see that then let me know because further discussion is pointless).
I will try to fit in with your thinking however:
Banning a gold farmer (the way NC Soft just did) is sort of equivalent to arresting a murderer, then releasing them on bail and giving them their gun back as they leave the remand centre...and maybe telling them where the witnesses can be found... and then wondering why they shoot someone else?
My suggestion, if you actually read it, is to try something different.
To try to fit in with your analogy (once again) it would be equivalent to setting higher bail and restricting movement for those out on bail.
But, lets forget dumb analogies:
Banning gold farmers is a tried (and failed) strategy.
There are MMOs out there that invested vast amounts of time and resources on this approach.
They failed.
In some cases they no longer have gold farmers in those games... because they have no players either.
As I say, the gold farmers left when their business was no longer profitable.
Your suggestion seems to be to simply regulate the RMT, or somehow magically make it "not necessary" - if I didn't catch that right, enlighten me.
I'm not here to trade insults with you, I think I made my points quite clear. WoW bans gold farmers (there is a type of enforcement there) and they seem to be doing just fine, somehow. They manage to keep players and a TOS policy banning gold sales. So your whole logical line of thought that any game companies who ban gold farmers and buyers have no players left is... well, more flawed that I can get into here. I know a lot of people going back to Aion, for example, now that they have the perception that NCSoft has *done* something.
I notice that you didn't seem to attack my idea of a public economy at all, so I take it you support that?
I've been accused of many things in my life, but reading comprehension issues aren't one of them. Several people on the threads I have started on the FE boards had some great feedback, positive and negative, about my idea. Your conclusion that MMO companies who ban gold farmers fail is simply false. Yes, they ban them - and yes, they come back. And sometimes when we release people from prison, they go back out and continue to commit crime.
And yet we keep doing it. Why? A detriment effect; people are frightened (mainly the gold BUYERS) of getting caught and they don't want their account banned, so they stop doing it. If you don't understand THIS, there's really no point in continuing the conversation. You seem to have a rather black and white view on things. You see a method as flawed, and damn the other professionals who disagree with you.
Apparently these game developers and designers must know nothing about running a game, since nearly every successful MMO I know of has it in the TOS that you aren't to engage in buying gold or items, etc., from offline sites. They don't WANT an RMT economy widget in their games - they WANT to charge a flat fee, period, and let the in-game economy exist from there. Without influence from the out-of-game economy. And if you can't see that, or the reasons for that, there is little point in continuing the discussion on that point.
That having been said, if you have ideas as to why my public economy idea wouldn't work - I'm all ears. I'm actually interested. Somebody brought up a valid point to me about it and it made me think even further down that pipeline.
Well, your main point still seems to be that right now the banning "isn't working" because you can still buy gold in WoW and other games. I agree, but how much more widespread would the problem be if, say, Blizzard had no regulation, no banning? If it were simply against the ToS but it was never enforced?
I, for one, have a feeling the problem would be a lot worse. And you state that Blizzard has "vast resources" to throw at the problem; which means that for them, at least, they seem to have done what we in the states have done with drug use - forced it underground. Yes, there are still drugs. Yes, there are still drug users. However, if you get caught buying or selling, you may go to prison.
I won't debate the morality of the War on Drugs with you, my point is simply that if tomorrow the gov't came out and said, "OK, drugs are still illegal, but we're not going to punish drug use anymore."
Do you have any doubt in your mind that drug use wouldn't skyrocket? All those people who were afraid to experiment because they might get caught (read: banned) now can try it out! With no fear of punishment!
It's not a bad analogy; it's a perfect analogy. The point of banning players from a game isn't to stop gold farming entirely; it's to drive it underground and make it difficult to engage in. It's to put the threat out there that if you get caught; you might get banned.
Your last comment interested me most, however, since it was the only comment really directed at anything I said of substance...
The author of this article never personally spoke to me about that idea, so I'm not sure what you mean when you say that Jennings told me my idea wouldn't work - but that aside, your last comment about social engineering experiments... that's exactly what this would be. A social engineering experiment. And it's something that I think could be properly and intelligently implemented. I'd love to see it tried. That was my point. I don't think I'm giving players too much credit. I have a feeling that the 80% of people not buying gold or who have never bought gold would keep the other 20% in line.
Plus, let's say that transactions were public. People might wonder why you had 50 mails of 9 gold each from an account named 'isjkffh' - how this might work is thus:
Other players or your guild notice the illegal transactions. They ask you how you got the cash. If you have a reasonable reason for it, fine. In most cases though this might alert the community, sending out a red flag to get a GM to investigate.
GM investigates the account and finds it's from a bad credit card, etc. Gold is simply REMOVED from the player's account before a ban - let the player know hey, we found this out, this is our economy and per the TOS we're removing that gold you bought. 2nd offense, we may ban you.
The system would have to be very, very transparent for it to work. However, even some corporations are increasingly acting like this, with more transparency. I won't get into my "professional" credentials - they have nothing to do with MMOs, but they do have a lot to do with both economics and the psychology of economic-driven behaviors.
The "social engineering" experiment would only work with total transparency and little if no ways to "cheat the system" ...
There you go.
LumTheMad = Jennings
I'm surprised no one really commented on my positive alignment to Buying Gold from Chinese Farmers.
There was only one comment, which went from "You're entitled to your opinion, that's fine." to a needless and lengthy yawn trying to poke holes in my logic, attacking self-created assumptions while ignoring the actual fact:
Arguably, gold farmers don't ruin a game that has already been running for a few years, as the economy is already ruined by the fact 90% of players have multiple max-level characters, and tier 1 gear sells for prices that no newbie could ever afford.
The fact remains... it's easier now-a-days to just grind to max level than to try to make enough money to buy your own tier's worth of gear or raw mats.
Most MMO's don't really have an economy to ruin. The "economy" consists of level 80's farming drops to sell at a level 80 price to other level 80's so they can twink their level 1-79's.
Gold Farming actually brings BALANCE to these long-lived games in the fact that for $6 a level 1-20 can compete with everyone else (who have been playing for years, owning multiple max-level characters in several powerful guilds) until they reach level 20, in which the price for gear/mats becomes so high that only 1% of players (rich people) can afford to buy gold to maintain a balance. In that end, it would be cheaper to buy a lvl 80 account off of ebay.
But when it's only $6 to have double the fun at low levels, it's a good thing for the newbies because it's fun.
I argued very intelligently that Gold Farmers do not ruin a game's economy, primarily because the economy is non-existent or sucks and secondly because a mass of other problems ruin the "economy" significantly more than Gold Farmers ever could.
It's like trying to pick on a specific small-time gang in a localized district and blaming them for ruining the entire Country. They neither have the power to ruin the entire country, nor are they a big reason for the "ruining". Blame the REAL problems, like lack of education, media violence, or whatever magical "experts" can come up with.
In MMO words... blame the level system (lvl 1 copper vs lvl 80 platinum), the fact there is infinite currency in the world, and the fact players are allowed to sell products at ridiculous prices because there are no NPC's to bring (ridiculously high/low) a cap to buy/sell prices.
Getting rid of Gold Farmers would do nothing to all but the oddest of MMO's.
Punishing players for trying to compete with other players who have been playing for YEARS is simply silly.
Fix the broken system before you ever try to fix the people who exploit it.
There you go.
LumTheMad = Jennings
Thanks. To answer that - I'd have to say that at first glance it might look like many people might not be up for such a thing. Certainly it would be better to go into a game working with such an economy in the first place as opposed to having it imposed upon you if you were used to something else.
Some marketing research would be done and the idea would have to be "sold" to the public as a positive thing. I think it's a radical idea and it hasn't been done. There may indeed be "collateral damage" to the economy if it was imposed and it changed an existing economy but - if the game world started this way, it would be a very interesting experiment.
I've never, ever seen transparency cause problems in my life; while I've seen the opposite (obfuscation of the facts and issues) cause a lot of problems.
I find "privacy implications" interesting in an online world. What privacy do we have? We're using another server, and all text we type could very easily be recorded, stored, etc. Records of every transaction we make could be easily made public. And who/what type of people would really care that much about privacy if they don't have anything to hide?
It's interesting to think about these things. I have a feeling something like this will be tried, someday.
The titel sums it up real well. I don't want money to have a say in my hobby. At least as little as possible. It is bad enough the gap between rich and poor widens in RL societies, it should stay out of MMORPGs, I say.
The thing is, that it is impossible to stop the farming inside currency-centric economies.
You have to remove the cause, not the effect, if you take away the economy's reliance upon currency and implement a trade for trade system, you can eventually reach a point where the gold farmers are really more like players than farmers.
Sure, they will have gear to sell for real worl money, but what can you do with that gear other than wear it if it's soulbound? I don't think it's a dirty profit and I don't think that people will be put out any if a system deliberately designed to not accomodate such a means of generating profit is ever implemented in an MMO.
I don't think I've seen any people trying to sell gold in Monster Hunter Frontier. Because it's an exchange based transaction style system.
Part of the problem is the companies are so reluctant to ban and then don't tell anyone anything specific.
I mean, it's really nice that Blizzard said they banned X accounts last week. What server? How many per server? How much gold was recovered? That's like saying "cops caught 100 criminals last week", doesn't tell you anything, doesn't make you feel better and doesn't help with crime.
This is probably why so many companies refuse to refund subscriptions paid. If they ban a spammer account, the spammer can't just get his money back by whining to Visa. Since it clearly states in the EULA or TOS that if you do this you get banned, and you clicked "I Agree", Visa legally wouldn't be obligated to refund your money. It's like if you buy a car that is sold "AS IS" and it breaks down a week later, try telling me the bank would just forgive your loan. Riiiiight.
Another problem is MMO's are international. The way the Chinese internet is set up there is a lot of proxy use so you usually can't ban by IP address. The farmers use that to their advantage to avoid detection.
You really need to clamp down hard on gold farmers or else they'll spread like a virus and then you have 10X the work to do to try and get rid of them. Ban the account once, if Joe Spammer makes another account and spams again, ban that credit card. Continue until the spammer has no more recourse and goes under.
If a company bans me after I payed $15 for a month of service, then I am legally obligated to get my money back because they're liars.
A EULA or TOS in no way states nor has any legal power to state that they can keep your money AND ban you.
It merely states that they CAN ban you. But if they do, they owe you because they broke THEIR agreement that is bound by money, not powerless "agreements" that have no real legal power.
Besides, any lawsuit that happens will immeditely result in a refund of money, because it's cheaper to spend $15 than it is for even one second of a lawyer, to see a judge, or even forward an email to someone that actually matters..
Totally wrong.
Visa do not care about ToS / EULA.
Do you seriously think Visa are going to employ several teams of lawyers (possibly in several countries) to check the EULA / ToS legality in both countries and check if the ban was valid?
No.
Besides the EULA / ToS is between the customer and merchant - nothing to do with the CC Association.
The CC Assoc has a contract with the merchant and another with the CC holder.
They will ask one question "Is the customer getting what they paid for?"
If the answer is "No." then it's "Give the money back.
If the MMO company then wants to take the Player to court (to recover costs of the backcharge) then that is up to them. Nothing to do with the CC Assoc.
Lets not forget, that ALOT of people woould not be playing MMO's if they cant buy "ingame currency". Therefor there is a NEED for gold farmers, they keep alot of people from quitting there MMO!!!
Totally wrong.
Visa do not care about ToS / EULA.
Do you seriously think Visa are going to employ several teams of lawyers (possibly in several countries) to check the EULA / ToS legality in both countries and check if the ban was valid?
No.
Besides the EULA / ToS is between the customer and merchant - nothing to do with the CC Association.
The CC Assoc has a contract with the merchant and another with the CC holder.
They will ask one question "Is the customer getting what they paid for?"
If the answer is "No." then it's "Give the money back.
If the MMO company then wants to take the Player to court (to recover costs of the backcharge) then that is up to them. Nothing to do with the CC Assoc.
Actually, it's Totally Correct.
Mythic Entertainment, well before they got bought out by EA, went to court over the legality of their TOS/EULA and how enforceable it is. Mythic won the suit as the other party settled out of court. Now, if they felt they had a legal leg to stand on they wouldn't of caved in to Mythic's suit. So the TOS is legally enforceable. This isn't just for MMO's either, many software companies have electronic contracts that you "sign" by clicking "I Agree" to before installation.
A TOS is basically a contract, you agreed to the contract therefore both you and the company have to abide by the terms of the contract. This is why sometimes after patches, the TOS pops up again and you have to click "I Agree". Something changed so the company has to make you aware of it and give you the option to opt out. However, subscription fees are non-refundable as always and are clearly stated that they are so. Basically, you bought the time and it's spent.
Visa would care about a TOS/EULA to the point that when you dispute a charge, they do an investigation. They will contact the company that charged you and inquire about the validity of the charge. Since you basically "signed" a contract with the company agreeing that fees are non-refundable and if you violate policy you could lose the account, Visa wouldn't be under obligation to refund you anything. Think of it this way, you bought a car marked AS IS and then it breaks down a week later, the bank isn't going to forgive your loan just because you can't use the car anymore.
Actually, after talking to a few people from old guilds that actually tried to get refunds from Mythic, WoW/Blizzard, and Sony/EQ... they had VERY different experiences.
All three were gamers in America.
2 of the 3 used Visa and they were NOT refunded; their CC company said that they had broken their contract with the merchant. They were given the choice to sue the CC company and/or the merchant if they didn't like it. (Good luck!)
1 was refunded, no questions asked.
I have a feeling that the major thing that mattered in the question of American consumers, at least, was what your credit rating and how good of a customer were you? If you have a $10,000 credit limit and are never late, your CC company is going to try and treat you a little better. If you have a secured $500 credit card, good luck on that customer support...
Again, anecdotal evidence at best but I thought it was interesting.
I agree. I am fascinated to see one of these cases go to court in a US court. I think it's a matter of time; we already have one guy trying to sue WoW/Blizzard for "deceptive and addiction-causing practices" - the US justice system can be very wacky, but one thing is true - it tends to favor the rich, and the corporation over the individual. The more resources you have to pay for legal help the better off you are.
I know for me, personally, the few times I've needed it; paying for the best legal counsel definitely made a huge difference in the outcome and handling of my cases. I needed an estate lawyer once to deal with some family issues; they aren't cheap and unless I had the capital to pay for one, I would be SOL.
I think the gaming companies know this in many cases. Sure, it's all well and good to sue Mythic but that can cost a lot of money. Money the average consumer just doesn't have.
Fair? No. Reality? Yeah.
It seems some missed the point I was trying to make above. I'll try to clear it up.
Yes, I know Mythic is not a Credit Card Company. I was trying to point out that TOS/EULA are legally enforceable if push comes to shove (meaning, people go to court).
Whether or not the money is refunded is pretty much up to the credit company themselves. If they find that you broke the terms of the TOS and lost your account due to that, they aren't required to refund your money. However, if you have a good credit standing the credit company may take the loss and refund the money to keep you as a customer. Captial One has such measures in place called their "No Hassle" policy. An example of this is once per year I can make a phone call and ask that Captial One makes my minimum payment this month. They take a small loss, but keep me happy as their credit customer.
Subscription fees are different products than say a defective TV. Once you are charged the sub the product is delivered to you. You can't "return" the game time, hence the no refund clause.
I doubt that the gold spammers would join forces and file a class-action lawsuit against an MMO company. If you think about it, you'd have a bunch of people that would basically say "we knowingly violated the terms of a contract with <insert MMO Company> but regardless want our money back". Don't think they'd get a good reception with that .
Yes you are correct US Law is not the same as international law. However if the company is based in the US, the TOS will be bound by US Law for purposes of litigation or interpretation. Sometimes it will even get specific as to say bound by the laws of <insert state name>.
As I stated above, the contract you electronically sign (by clicking I Agree) will be bound by US law typically or a specific US state. Whichever is the case is listed in the TOS/EULA. Obviously if you play an asian game, then the it will be bound by the laws of Korea (or where ever) in that case.
Not sure why you keep repeating "where I live" as if it's important somehow? If the TOS is bound by the laws of the US and I live in the US, then I guess it is "where I live". Credit Card companies handle business intertnationaly, but when it comes to disputes with the claims they will abide by the laws of the contract of the company's country of origin typically. Again, as I said above, they have the option to refund you regardless depending on your credit score and how often you request refunds.
The no refund may be illegal in some countries, I can't dispute that. However in US it isn't illegal. So if you were a citizen of That Country , the MMO company wouldn't have to refund your money unless they themselves were based in That Country. So it would then be up to the Credit Company to determine if they want to take the loss and refund your money regardless. This particular case would have nothing to do with the MMO company at all, since its about your Credit Company and their opinion of you.
Finally, yes they did violate the contract. It clearly states, in plain simple terms, that you can't buy/sell igname virtual items for your own personal proft. Both SOE and Mythic have taken people and companies to court winning judgements on this basis. This is why you see people saying "I'm not selling you my 1000 gold, I'm charging you a fee to compensate me for my time in farming 1000 gold." This is a legalese re-wording to try and get around the language of the contracts. This is why the TOS is so dern long as the MMO company has to basically cover all the bases. That would be like saying "I didn't shoot that person I just happened to fire a gun in a paritcular direction and someone happened to be standing there". Changing the phrase doesn't change what happened.
No. Wrong again.
It depends on how I buy the game.
If I buy a box in a retail store 'where I live' (Australia) then I am under Australian law all the way. In that case the law says that the importer is considered to be the manufacturer for most purposes unless the actual manufacturer has a place of business here.
(This is done to prevent companies attempting to avoid statutory warranties.)
The EULA / ToS then comes under the law as a 'ticket case'. Covered that above.
If I buy the same game over the internet then yes, I am bound by the (consumer) laws of the country I buy the game from.
So, if I mail order a box from Germany then things can be different than if I bought the game over the internet as a download which is different again than if I buy from my local EB games store.
The thing is that EULAs can say what they like in terms of which country or state the contract operates under - that in itself is not legal in some countries.
US Contacts might work under US Law - but outside US borders it's a whole new ball game.
Oh, and show me those SOE and Mythic Court Cases (post links and / or case numbers) interested to see those.
No. Wrong again.
It depends on how I buy the game.
If I buy a box in a retail store 'where I live' (Australia) then I am under Australian law all the way. In that case the law says that the importer is considered to be the manufacturer for most purposes unless the actual manufacturer has a place of business here.
(This is done to prevent companies attempting to avoid statutory warranties.)
The EULA / ToS then comes under the law as a 'ticket case'. Covered that above.
If I buy the same game over the internet then yes, I am bound by the (consumer) laws of the country I buy the game from.
So, if I mail order a box from Germany then things can be different than if I bought the game over the internet as a download which is different again than if I buy from my local EB games store.
The thing is that EULAs can say what they like in terms of which country or state the contract operates under - that in itself is not legal in some countries.
US Contacts might work under US Law - but outside US borders it's a whole new ball game.
Oh, and show me those SOE and Mythic Court Cases (post links and / or case numbers) interested to see those.
Ok last chance here as apparently you don't understand it at all.
Sorry, but you are wrong again. If the game is made in Korea, the TOS will be worded to be under Korean Software Laws. When you click "I Agree" you are basically digitally signing a document saying you will be bound by the laws of Korea in relation to this virtiual contract. Will clearly state in the TOS where the document is legally bound to. An example I gave was if it states "this document bound by the laws of <insert state name>" or whatever. So even if you live in Australia, that will not matter as you signed a contract agreeing to be bound by the rules set therein. Now if Australia somehow says that the TOS is null and void in the sovereignty of Australia, then the software can't be legally sold in Australia unless the TOS is changed to abide by Australian law. If it does this, it will clearly state in the text "bound by the laws of Australia" or whatever particular province.
Even if you buy the game via digital download it still has a TOS you have to sign before you can download and/or install.
Even if you live outside the US, if you sign a contract most countries will still consider it legally binding. If they didn't then there would be no trade between countries, no contractors, no international sports, and any other numerous contracts that are done internationally.
The SOE suit was filed against ebay. This came about when Everquest items and accounts were being auctioned off on ebay. SOE argued that their TOS stated that items/chars in Everquest were SOE's property and not owned by the player. Ebay tried to counter by saying the account was the property of the player, therefore they could sell whatever they wanted. Originally Verant Interactive had filed the suit (original developer of EQ1). Ebay essentially blew off VI until SOE as the publisher (who bought out VI) came in and added their own 2 cents to the mix. SOE dropped the suit when EBay agreed to stop. Not sure if any monetary damages were awarded as that information is usually kept closed to the general public.
Mythic's suit was similar to SOE's. They asserted that their TOS was a legally binding contract that speicifically forbid the sale of ingame items as said items weren't the property of the player but Mythic.
Both suits are rather old, about 8 years for SOE and I think 6 for Mythic.
http://gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=2001021
http://gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20010213
Couldn't find the links to the news reports on the suits, but I did remember that there were some webcomics made about them. the above links are to the comics that were made about the SOE suits. I know it's not much but all I could find in a few minutes. :)
Ok last chance here as apparently you don't understand it at all.
Sorry, but you are wrong again. If the game is made in Korea, the TOS will be worded to be under Korean Software Laws. When you click "I Agree" you are basically digitally signing a document saying you will be bound by the laws of Korea in relation to this virtiual contract. Will clearly state in the TOS where the document is legally bound to.
As I say, you can say what you like in a contract, that does NOT make it legally binding.
You have to consider what is legal based on local law.
I could say in a contract that if you violate the ToS I can come to your house and kill you. That would of course be disregarded. It may not invalidate the entire contract but that clause certainly be void.
An example I gave was if it states "this document bound by the laws of <insert state name>" or whatever. So even if you live in Australia, that will not matter as you signed a contract agreeing to be bound by the rules set therein.
No. In Australia, certain things are statutory. Many countries have similar provisions in their laws (Some EU countries do). There are rights you CANNOT sign away. There are terms you CANNOT agree to.
For example - in employment contracts you CANNOT sign away your right to Workers' Insurance (we call this Workcover). US companies down here routinely try to have workers 'opt out' of this and use alternate methods of insurance (as per US rules). However, if these contracts ever go before a court those clauses are simply regarded as void - that is simply not legal here (and the companies concerned get heavily fined and have to make full payments anyway)
When you sell / buy a product in Australia you are bound by the Australian Trade Practices Act.
An EULA/ToS within that becomes a 'ticket case'. An Australian court will then decide what parts are 'fair and valid' and what parts should be disregarded if it comes to that.
You CANNOT agree to be bound by the rules of another state if you retail a product here or buy a product here.
Now if Australia somehow says that the TOS is null and void in the sovereignty of Australia, then the software can't be legally sold in Australia unless the TOS is changed to abide by Australian law. If it does this, it will clearly state in the text "bound by the laws of Australia" or whatever particular province.
Not at all. But any conditions that violate our laws are disregarded (such as 'no refunds')
Think about it... when a game is retailed in Europe (with many different countries all with slightly different rules) do you think a new ToS / EULA is written for each country? No. Some parts of the contract will be valid and the bits that aren't just aren't.
Even if you buy the game via digital download it still has a TOS you have to sign before you can download and/or install.
Different laws apply in that case. If you buy over the internet you are bound by the laws of the place you do business - however in some cases (scams) you can get some consumer protection depending on which countries are involved.
Even if you live outside the US, if you sign a contract most countries will still consider it legally binding. If they didn't then there would be no trade between countries, no contractors, no international sports, and any other numerous contracts that are done internationally.
The missing word is 'parts'. No contract is ever 100% legally binding in all situations.
...In the event of a dispute a court (or courts) will decide what parts of the contract are valid and binding.