With a swipe of the banhammer, developers can unleash their wrath on a large swath of bots that are out there selling gold, accounts, and various items. The removal of these bots is often necessary to keep MMOs from becoming unbalanced, from having their economies manipulated, and to ensure a (mostly) level playing field. And yet, for decades, we've seen bots and players sidling up to third-party sites to sell their EverQuest items, their World of Warcraft accounts, and even their hard-earned Guild Wars 2 Legendaries.
While this is all frowned upon by the gaming population at large, as it seems like an unfair advantage for those of us who spend our time working hard to earn these items, it feels like people often turn a blind eye to these practices. After all, if you decide to sell your Warframe account after several years, why shouldn't both you and the person buying it benefit—Terms of Service be damned?
This article isn't really about what you do with your accounts. It's not about, nor will I dive into, the sites that facilitate these third-party transactions. Instead, I'm going to point to this weird relationship that players have with selling items for real money, and why it seems to only be acceptable when it's happening secretly, behind the scenes, in gaming's worst-kept secret.
RMT Happens
RMT happens—I don't think any of us who frequent this site are surprised by this. If you've spent more than a minute within a game world with a functioning global chat, you've probably either seen or received spam messages directing you to sites that cater to these questionable kinds of services. Legitimacy aside, it's always amusing to see what's being offered, before I abruptly end the spam messages by blocking and reporting the annoying accounts.
As an MMORPG player, this feels like a fact of life. Sellers just happen, and we've learned to live with it. However, RMT as an official, built-in feature? Now that's where the real uproar begins. We can point to Diablo 3 and how Blizzard's RMT experiment with the real money auction house eventually led to its removal. However, I think a more suitable case study is the growing number of Web3 games that we've seen materialize. Many gamers dislike Web3 games, and there are plenty of reasons for that, but one of the biggest issues that always seems to send a warning shot across my bow is that their primary monetization function revolves around RMT.
Jazz it up with the premise of ownership, imply you'll 'get your beak wet' with investments, and slip a bow around it with a unique minting (I mean, crafting) system, and you've got yourself a monetization model that, on the surface, appears to be player-friendly. There's just one problem. It doesn't matter if it's Web3 or if a developer facilitates Real Money Trading of any kind—players are generally rejecting it based on face value alone.
At least, that's what players are saying publicly. However, even if RMT isn't being officially used in your favorite games, it's still largely happening in those same games. It's just not being done by the developers themselves. We all know it's happening, but what is it about a developer-run real money auction house that is so distasteful?
The Uncomfortable Truth
It can't simply be the perception of trust. When players engage in RMT through unofficial means, they know they're taking on some level of risk. It would be far more trustworthy for a development team to run these transactions, and yet with a wink and nod that acknowledges the shady nature of the exchange, players flock to gray markets looking to score some virtual loot.
We all know the risks If something goes wrong. Maybe an account gets banned, or someone gets scammed, and we have nobody to blame but ourselves for gambling in these 'secretive' backroom deals. This has largely been prevented when developers run the show. Even where Web3 is concerned, the fraud doesn't come from the items you're receiving, but rather from accounts getting stolen or exploits.
Another issue is the "pay-to-win" stigma. Players often argue that RMT creates an uneven playing field, where those with deeper pockets can buy their way to success. When developers integrate RMT into the game, they effectively endorse pay-to-win mechanics, which goes against the core ethos of many MMOs. However, with these third party markets, item buyers get a pass because there's some kind of risk that goes along with the purchase. By keeping RMT underground, there's an illusion that the playing field is somehow even, as the risk of account and fund loss is equal to the potential gain if,the transaction goes through when in reality, it's not.
Why Does The 'Secrecy' Work
The truth behind RMT kind of gets blown back on all of us because there's a subset of us that are nothing but dirty rotten scoundrels. The secrecy of gray market RMT allows players to maintain a double standard. On one hand. we're waving wildly and flamboyantly as we condemn RMT publicly while the hand behind our back is secretly engaging in it. The underground nature of these transactions creates a kind of plausible deniability—"I would never buy a legendary item from a third party." But some of us are, or else there wouldn't be dozens of sites out there with players doing just that.
The checks and balances of a developer run auction house is different. The lack of third party under-the-bridge goblin transactions means that there's a log somewhere showing exactly who is buying those items. Even if that person is a cryptographic hash somewhere, the public nature of a developer facilitated auction might raise a red flag to your guildies who thought you earned your Soulseeker.
So, are real money transactions in MMOs only okay when they're kept secret? As long as it seems to be kept to whispers in the dark, it's easier to ignore, easier to accept, and much easier for we players to forget. Chock it up to just another part of the MMO experience—right?
But shouldn't it be far easier, far less risky, and far more accepted for developers to have systems like this in game instead? Why is it that players are so dead set against RMT if developers are doing it? Whether you're for or against RMT in games, prowl ever so mysteriously into our comments section and voice your opinion.
