Curse

FoxBat · Jan 20, 2010, 05:33 PM // 17:33

In Taiwan they went one step further, saying that MMO companies couldn't "punish" (aka ban/restrict) people for gold farming. Don't think that has happened in Korea (yet,) but I'm sure the proposed taxation will give them an incentive to create such legislation if it is needed.

Doesn't matter for GW1 since they don't have any active asian servers anymore (all moved to US) but it's an issue for GW2, other western MMOs with a korean presence, and moreso for NCSoft's continuing Korean MMO development.

Mustache Mayhem · Jan 20, 2010, 05:54 PM // 17:54

this is how ncsoft is handling it XD

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/52...Out-Of-Control

Junato · Jan 20, 2010, 06:58 PM // 18:58

I think all game designers are going to not sell their products to Korea if thats the case.

RorripopRane · Jan 20, 2010, 07:15 PM // 19:15

Fortunately Guild Wars is built in such a way that it is difficult for currency farmers to make a profit, at least compared to WoW or the Lineage series.

I played Lineage II a few years ago and currency farmers/bots were a huge problem, especially in European servers -- they would fight out individual players for hunting spots, grossly inflate the prices of weapons & armor, and dominate the crafting market. More than half the time I went out of town to farm xp I would come across a group of 4-5 silent players with scrambled names who would farm 24/7 to get Adena and later "kill" themselves to reduce their levels again so they could farm in the same spot. L2 GMs also made little effort in stopping them, and in a number of cases they even made it significantly more difficult for real players to combat botters by changing up the aggro-system so that players wouldn't be able to bring 20+ monsters over to bots to overwhelm them. The lack of help from NCSoft was one of the main reasons I switched over to Guild Wars, where Anet actually cares about what the players want.

I hope that Anet will keep GW2 as bot-free as they have managed to keep GW1.

Junato · Jan 20, 2010, 07:47 PM // 19:47

This precedent is totally stupid I find. It just implies a person can own a product from a company and own the packets of cyber money to sell it. Its like saying you own a piece of the internet, no one owns the internet or packets.

Sir Cusfreak · Jan 20, 2010, 07:48 PM // 19:48

I think the solution is pretty simple and quite obvious.

We must add gambling to GW immediately.

Black Metal · Jan 20, 2010, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedDog91

read your own topic title...
"Oh C...: Gold selling is legal in Korea"

Posting anything on a website makes it a global issue. And the global ecnomy is not run by Korea...no matter how much you want to buy that gold, Korea wont care if your account gets banned

for the transaction to be legal both participants must be in Korea (or a Korean territory)
and a simple IP check can easily show that 90% of gold-cash transfers are not done from Korea

You fail to look forward. If this holds up, 90% of gold-cash transfers WILL be done from Korea, plus gold-cash transfers in whole will increase by multitudes. And still, this will give a huge incentive for account stealers to double their efforts, now that they have a clear path to convert them to cash. This ruling has the potential to incentivize all the worst aspects of MMO's, which devs, publishers, and governments have worked so hard to combat.

esthetic · Jan 20, 2010, 08:16 PM // 20:16

The fundamental difference of opinion lies in the ownership of the virtual currency. In this case, ANet or you. The issue is not that its legal or illegal to trade in game currency for real currency but who owns the virtual currency and if its yours to sell.

Coming down on the side of that the virtual goods belong to you can't work. I mean think about if there was a crash and you lose all data and thus all the goods. What do you do then? lol

Sir Cusfreak · Jan 20, 2010, 08:42 PM // 20:42

So, to put this in slightly simpler context:

Let's say...I have a snowcone machine. It creates snowcones out of ingredients that are provided solely by me and it's located on my property. It's MINE, and so are the snowcones it creates. But instead of selling snowcones, I instead sell the enjoyment of their creation. (Selling abstract ideas or fictional items is fun, easier than a physical product, and also creates interesting philosophical debates and apparently international civil conflict - of which I am a HUGE fan.)

In any case, soon you and I make an agreement, that you will come onto my property, and pay me a one-time fee, and in exchange, you can stand before my glorious snowcone machine and press the glowing red button all the live-long day and make as many snowcones as your precious little heart desires, because you like the shiny red button, and the comforting humming noise the machine makes whilst dispensing snowcones makes you all wet *down there*.

But, in our agreement I have included a provision that says you don’t get to OWN the snowcones; nor can you transfer the snowcones to Fred, because I think Fred is a skunk-humping douche. Oddly, Fred also paid me the fee to have the right to come onto the property and press the red button, but Fred can't be bothered to press it himself - he's busy with his skunk, so he will pay you to do it. Now when you take Fred's money you have just broken our agreement, obviously. You’ve also stolen from me.

In a perfect world, I would then be able to approach you and state that “Since the agreement which allowed you onto my property was violated like Fred's poor poor skunk, you're now trespassing.” and then shoot you in your face. However, some OTHER skunk-humping douches, (most likely Democrats) weaseled their way into power and declared that's not nice either. SO instead of that solution, I only get to escort you from my property and instruct you never to return.

Instead, I’m going to press legal charges of the international civil variety, which are almost always the most fun.

First, there was a law in that mysterious foreign homeland of yours stating that it was not ok to sell ANY snowcones. Then, upon seeing a profit margin arise, your courts declared "Wait, you can sell snowcones, after all. But not snowcones you got by gambling." But they never specify if you can only sell your snowcones, or if you can magically sell MY snowcones now. Nor if you can sell MY snowcones you got by gambling. Or my snowcones *I* got by gambling. I don’t think they care as long as it’s taxed heavily: they still won’t listen when I say ‘but I don’t sell snowcones, I sell the enjoyment of…'

And no one will allow a complaint of stolen snowcones, since I can just press a button and make infinite amounts of snowcones anyway, and I’m not in the business of selling snowcones to begin with. It’s going to be seen as a victimless crime, (except where PETA is concerned, Fred.)

Currently, my embassy won’t return my calls demanding that we declare full-scale war over this, but persistence might pay off.

Is that a little more clear?

Aldawg Thanes · Jan 20, 2010, 09:00 PM // 21:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by esthetic

The fundamental difference of opinion lies in the ownership of the virtual currency. In this case, ANet or you. The issue is not that its legal or illegal to trade in game currency for real currency but who owns the virtual currency and if its yours to sell.

Coming down on the side of that the virtual goods belong to you can't work. I mean think about if there was a crash and you lose all data and thus all the goods. What do you do then? lol

Esthetic you are coming onto the real point of why ANET tries as hard as it does to ban gold selling. You ask the question of who owns the gold, and you ask the question of what will happen if the game crashes and you lose all your gold. Well in many countries if you have paid real world money for the online gold, you now have a legal property interest in the gold. So when the game server crashes, ANET has effectively destroyed your property interest and thus they will owe you damages. If ANET allowed the gold selling there would be a huge problem. In order to stop people from gaining a property interest in the gold, ANET has to ban the gold selling and in addition take steps to enforce that ban. (In many countries, simply having a ban and not enforcing it would amount to implicitly allowing the activity which the ban seeks to stop, thus causing ANET to remain liable).

Just think about how much money ANET would owe people, if people could claim a property interest in the online gold and could recover damages from ANET should the servers crash or if ANET one day decides to turn the servers off. This is probably the biggest reason why ANET is trying to stop the gold selling. Of course I understand that there are other reasons, but this is the big reason.

Junato · Jan 20, 2010, 09:37 PM // 21:37

Uh Cusfreak your context is right, but the argument I am making is that of a cell phone. If I can make money from my cell phone by using Verizon's towers (I know this might be impossible) using Verizon's towers in order to make cash. Verizon is providing me the service of the phone would it be illegal? Picture Verizon as Anet and the towers the server mainframe.

Conditions should be met by a law stating:
As a provider of service provides a service in the internet, any client from the service cannot use the service from the provider to generate cash unless stated otherwise by the provider.

Hyperventilate · Jan 20, 2010, 11:09 PM // 23:09

I've read through this thread and I do find this disturbing. I also have spotted quite a few good ideas. I've fully supported a regional IP block since the first mass wave of Chinese IP addresses accessing NCMAs.

After seeing the amount of RMTs, farm bots and just general stupidity from the effects attached to these people, I also agree with Junato. If I were a developer of a game, I simply would not offer my products to Korea or China and just take the hit.

But in the Guild Wars sense, I don't see Korea or China being a significant number in the player unless I am mistaken.

These are dark and scary times to be playing any "Farmable" MMO.

zwei2stein · Jan 21, 2010, 07:19 AM // 07:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Black Metal

yeah and something like this will trigger a massive influx of account stealers, since there's an easy way to convert those to hard cash

this also brings up a looming contradiction: the EULA's generally state that all in-game items and in-game cash belong to the devs, not to the end-user, but in Korea you can sell them as though it belongs to you. Mutually exclusive.

Law trumphs EULA, so items/gold to belong to you as they are result of work.

This kind of opens another can of worms: Does banning account mean that mmo provider seized/denied access to your property? Do they (dev) have that right?

Aussie Boy · Jan 21, 2010, 01:46 PM // 13:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sir Cusfreak

I think the solution is pretty simple and quite obvious.

We must add gambling to GW immediately.

GW already has Gambling in areas already take the 9 rings game that's a gamble if you win or lose tickets
and guess what you need game gold to buy the Tickets in the first place.