Selling in game items: Why do some companies hate it? news
The Epic Space Game - MMO
By TheAlphaCompany | Released Oct 15, 2012
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Selling in game items: Why do some companies hate it?
A lot of companies such as Blizzard, even CCP really hate the idea of selling in game items and property for real dollars. I'd like to add it to my game. What do you think?
Posted by TheAlphaCompany on Sep 15th, 2012
If you're anything like me, you really liked the idea of Diablo III's Real Money Auction House.
But long before that, players were selling in game items on Ebay. And the only game that seems to have really supported the idea (with great success I might add) is Second Life.
"According to eBay Second Life is not considered a game, and thus the sale of Second Life virtual items is not prohibited." ( Link )
But a lot of companies such as Blizzard, even CCP really hate the idea of selling in game items and property for real dollars. There are a number of explanations offered such as, "It ruins the in game economy" and "There is a high probability of exploitation".
But you can't state the above -- and offer a Real Money Auction House or dismiss the success of Second Life.
I've been toying with the idea in the Alpha Release of Epic Space Game. Here's what I've come up with:
- 1. The idea of selling in game items must be as simple as possible.
- 2. We (as in the development team) don't necessarily have to be apart of the sales process at all.
- 3. Due to the nature of the game, players will want to sell Stations, Sectors, Ships and more on their own -- despite any rules or regulations I put in place.
Basically, if players want to do it, they're going to do it. You can't stop or police something like that.
What do you think?
Should selling in game items be something games(even mine) should support?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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I think that selling in-game items is gonna happen no matter what, so games should support it. At the very least, it shouldn't be banned.
Some games are going broken when you let people buy and sell stuff.
Some people want to get in game, enjoy its inner world, plot, conditions that effects their choices, without any influence from real world, like some lads buying all the good stuff (which was made to people buy it and screw everyone) and mowing areas down.
Some games, that made big hit (like Blizzard's), just cant afford letting people trade freely for real money, without ******* some addicts lifes up.
Second Life is not a game where you can "beat everyone in anything and win the game". It is just a sandbox where you can do anything, without challenging, achievments and goals. In games where you have condition that the man with bigger_anything will always "win", people will search easy ways to get there. And you will have all sorts of cheating, putting excessive amounts of money and time in pursuit of leveling up.
The reason is simple enough why companies (but mostly people) HATE selling or having to buy in-game items for real money... Most of the time, a game has things you can buy with virtual currency, duh. But, to make more money, companies implement real-money items. But, why would players use real money to get items when they can get items for virtual currency ?
That's why developers often overpower items bought with money to give players an actual reason to buy things.
And that's what ruin everything.
ie. "Hahaha I have now played 50 hours of that game and acquired most of the best items!"
"I'm 12 and you're noob, I bought stuff with my mom's credit card and it's better than all your stuff"
also, it's a downer most of the time. If people paid one time for the game, why would they pay again to get stuff that could have been implemented free of charge ?
I understand developers gotta live but that is definitely not the good way to go.
It's not as easy as saying 'Yea, We'll start selling items for real money'. This isn't grandmas online cake shop, this is an ingame marketplace dealing with 100's to 1000's of transactions per day using real money and credit cards.
As soon as you get into having real money transactions inside (or outside) your game, you have to adhere to a lot of laws, rules and regulations. This is all additional expenditure for you to start with.
PCI compliant, secure databases and servers that will handle and store your daily transaction details. Then you need the actual software to work in your games market place. I know people doing this for a living (a few of those jobs included major global banks and one of the very companies you mentioned above, for their own marketplace); they charge individually a minimum of £100+ per hour for doing this. It's not a cheap task.
You'll probably want to hire a lawyer aswell to ensure you're adhereing to all the International trading and financial laws that will dictate exactly how you do business. For example, if you're dealing with credit cards then there are even more regulations you have to abide by than if you were just accepting debit cards and you have to recieve licenses to do so, if you don't, you're breaking the law. You can hire online merchants to do some of this for you, but it's a big expenditure and a large outgoing. So I hope you're a proper business, and have a proper accountant, because then you'll start having to account for all of this for tax purposes.
Hackers, farming bots, that's the problems. I get my Wow account hack 2 time, they take all my gold and items to sell it for reel money. Buying gold and items is encouraging the hackers.
I'm with you on this one. Granted, I understand a lot of people believe that Diablo 3's loot system has been altered to make the RMAH more profitable, though I personally don't share that belief, but that's my opinion on it as well: Black market sales were going to happen anyway, why not offer a safe place for people to do it? If you don't like the auction house, you don't have to use it.