MMO devs warned to accept gold trading

By Oli Welsh Published 21 January, 2009

It can't be stopped, says RedBedlam.

Virtual world developer RedBedlam has warned MMO developers to come to terms with gold farming and real-money trading in their games and applications, since "it's going to happen whether you like it or not".

"If you don't build that into your system then you're not going to be able to compete with the gold farmers and that will ruin your in-game economy, which will in turn ruin your game", said founder Kerry Fraser-Robinson, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz.

"At the very least having the recognition that virtual economics is a discipline and is a very important integral part to being a virtual world" is important, he continued.

Fraser-Robinson held up CCP's space MMO EVE Online as an example of a game that, while not condoning or integrating gold trading, had recognised the importance of a real-world economy and built a system robust enough to withstand real-money transactions.

"Take EVE Online for example, they didn't allow for in game transactions but they did design a very robust economy and they did design that game knowing it's a problem, and designed it with an awareness of virtual economic conditions," he said.

"Trying to stop [gold farming] happening is literally like telling the tide not to come in - you will fail," Fraser-Robinson warned.

As well as developing technology and tools for virtual worlds, RedBedlam operates its own MMO game, Roma Victor, based in Roman Britain. It enjoys 10,000 subscriber accounts despite having received a review score of 8 per cent from UK mag PC Zone.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Benno #1 3 years ago

    it cant, without breaking the game

  • DFawkes #2 3 years ago

    You can still cut down on the overt stuff though. Or don't have Gold in your game at all. Don't know how that could even work, but meh. I'm not a developer.

  • Venkman90 #3 3 years ago

    Blizzard are seen to be clamping down on it now and then but they realise it will always be there, they just can't aknowledge it as it will flood the in game encomomy with gold. I think the idea is that you should not have a game where the rich in rl have an advantage.

    That said, gold and good gear is so easy to get in WoW now compared to before that there is no reason to buy it unless you HAVE to have epic flying NOW rather than in a week

  • Antwandemarco #4 3 years ago

    Sorry, who the fuck is this guy?

  • DFawkes #5 3 years ago

    That's a good point Antwandemarco, who is he? Staff from one of the big MMOs? No, he's some guy. Sure, he develops in the same ballpark, but I'm not sure if his opinion counts any more than ours.

  • Vistrix #6 3 years ago

    Implement a socialist type MMO governing body, get rid of currency.

    Sorted.

  • the_dudefather #7 3 years ago

    Make an MMO that does not require excessive in-game resources for character progress or competitive edge and there will be less demand for gold

  • iokthemonkey #8 3 years ago

    Making cash Bind on Pickup would solve the problem.

    I think people forget that in EQ, for example, it was impossible to twink your own characters unless you had a friend you trusted or you were happy to drop items on the ground, in public, and leave them there for your alt to pick-up. It was only later they introduced the shared bank slots, which was when twinking became more widespread.

    And that's the problem. Buying from a gold seller is simply another form of twinking. Make it impossible to do - by adding BOP to cash or making the "expensive" items require the completion of a quest, have level restrictions or similar - would probably eliminate it.

  • Benno #9 3 years ago

    mmo communism lol

  • Gurgeh #10 3 years ago

    It can't be stopped? Tell that to IGE

    [link url=http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-12/ff_ige?currentPage=1
    ]http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworld...[/link]

    "By mid 2006, Blizzard Entertainment was cracking down harder than ever on gold farmers and sellers, shutting accounts by the thousands. The moves cost IGE as much as $200,000 in inventory every month, to say nothing of the havoc it played with suppliers. By January 2007, the company's RMT operation was losing more than half a million dollars a month...
    ...the few game companies that even admit to having had conversations with IGE deny they ever came close to a deal. "IGE approached us on several occasions," says John Smedley, president of EverQuest's parent, Sony Online Entertainment, "but we flat out turned them down." As for Blizzard, one approach was plenty. David Christensen, then IGE's VP of business development, wrangled a meeting with them, but the company wouldn't even let him on the premises for it. "They took him to a ball game or something, and he got like 10 minutes with them," a former IGE manager recalls. "'They basically hate us' was what he related afterward."

  • Macross #11 3 years ago

    lol gurgeh good for blizzard (and i thought id never say this) sony! :)

  • kangarootoo #12 3 years ago

    "Sure, he develops in the same ballpark, but I'm not sure if his opinion counts any more than ours."

    I think you are approaching this the wrong way. We shouldn't qualify someone's opinion based on their CV, we should listen to what they have to say and then make a judgement on whether what they said makes sense.

    It shouldn't matter WHO says something, only WHAT they say counts for anything. Assuming we have the mental capacity to evaluate their opinion that is.

  • jonthepymm #13 3 years ago

    I reckon the best solution is for the publisher to undercut the price of gold farmers - i.e. offer a legal in-game system to buy gold using real world cash. BUT they should embed a downside into it such as skill training or experience gaining take 1.2x as long. That way, the rich CAN buy lots of items (which they could do anyway from gold farmers) BUT are disadvantaged on experience compared with those who don't spend additional cash.

    Then the publisher wins (more money), the rich win (cheaper gold and simpler to purchase) and the 'poor' win (more experience points, comparatively). Maybe some modifications required but that's my first thought.

  • Kelduum #14 3 years ago

    Well, within Eve everything ends up in their database, including money and item transfers, going back a long way, and they now have an official way of effectively "buying" money in-game by selling Game Time Cards, and them being able to be turned into in-game items you can sell on the market.

    That way, people can legally "buy" in-game money, and the developers keep the cash in the loop, rather than in the pockets of the gold spammers and so on.

    Plus, the full history means that they can go all the way back, and identify what money went where, and undo the transactions - there is more than one horror story around where people bought money in-game, and not long later ended up with a negative balance, preventing them from doing a great deal.

  • bigbadbeasty #15 3 years ago

    They could just simply make gold non-transferable

  • iokthemonkey #16 3 years ago

    They could just simply make gold non-transferable

    ----

    But then any form of crafting becomes obsolete. Unless there's some kind of middle-man/auctioneer NPC to oversee trades...

  • bigbadbeasty #17 3 years ago

    @iokthemonkey

    No I know as you say it could effect crafting. They would have to have a auction house or similar to make thsi possible.

  • hula hoops #18 3 years ago

    Making gold un-transferrable or Bind on Pick-up generates more problems than it solves.

    Tbh, just keep shutting down those gold-sellers accounts. It may not solve the problems entirely but at least they try.

  • Transcendent #19 3 years ago

    An MMO doesn't need currency. A MMO doesn't even need the "RPG".

    I hope the "gold sellers" win, and that developers start making MMOothergenres too.

  • FortysixterUK #20 3 years ago

    Simple solution, allow players to buy gold legally from the MMO provider, from within each players account management page.
    And of course, totally undercut the gold sellers. The gold sellers would be forced to go out of business within a few days.
    I think a fair rate and one that would "stick it" to the vendors is a penny a gold. £10.00 = 1000 in game gold.
    Job Done

  • DrRobotnik #21 3 years ago

    RuneScape all but stamped it out, and they're the biggest browser based MMO in the world... 150 million+ accounts. Over a million subscribers. Seems fine to me.

    I think this guy should go back to making... what's that? He doesn't make AAA MMOs? Oh. Who is he again?

  • kangarootoo #22 3 years ago

    @Transcendent

    How will we know if the gold sellers "win"?

  • AphoticCosmos #23 3 years ago

    Just what are they holding CCP up as an example of?

    1. CCP sells time to people for real money and permits the trading of these time codes for ISK. CCP is the only party that makes real money, everything else is virtual. This is acceptable, doesn't inflate the economy ridiculously [people buy stuff from other players, meaning that everything is earned legitimately without any real money transactions] and makes CCP a nice bit of monies.

    2. Buying ISK in EVE has been HUGELY cracked down on - CCP has eliminated a huge portion of macrobots from the game, has a dedicated team of GMs to deal with macro petitions by players and has a zero-tolerance of Real-money Trading activity for ISK or in-game items. If anything, CCP is a paragon to other companies of how to crack down on buying in-game items and money - their staff genuinely care and actually try and eradicate it.

    Stupid man from unknown developer knows nothing, TBFH.

  • 4thVariety #24 3 years ago

    The problem are not the goldsellers, the problem are the companies who create mechanisms in their games that allow people to do one thing over and over for hundreds of hours in the pursuit of an reward.

    While it might be a cheap way to create time consuming content in order to keep people retaining the subscription, the highly repetitive way of achieving things will lead to outsourcing. Bots and Chinese people are the prime suspects for such an activity.

    Really to blame are the players who think of an item as special, even if its unlocking process is just time consuming and could be done by a trained monkey. They waste a colossal amount of time desperately trying to be recognized as special in the game. They have fallen into a psychological trap and now the creator of that trap is complaining that people try outsmart the trap which is so bluntly before their eyes.

    Are the developers really that stupid and think that people would not try to get around their silly schemes aimed at artificially stretching content?