Wave of giving reaches UO

At times it almost seems like there is a bidding war over which country can given the most to support relief work in Asia following the recent tsunami. Well, now Britannia has joined the race. That is, the good people of Ultima Online can now make donations of UO gold to vendors set up by ‘Crazy Joe’.  According to his site the gold will be eBay’ed and the cash donated to the Red Cross.

05/01/04 Update: Thanks to Cory for pointing out a news item which states that eBay have pulled the UO Gold auctions on the basis that they do not allow individuals to hold auctions on behalf of charities. Hmm – so will the Red Cross get a UO account, will EA exchange the Gold and pony up the cash,,,

So far the story has been picked up by Slashdot and while I have not seen any independent verification of the veracity of this scheme I also have no reason to doubt it.

Certainly charitable giving using virtual currency already has a track record. Vertu has been going since the early days of Second Life and even IGE, often seen as the nemesis of online gaming has a charity donations page.

Do you know of other virtual world related tsunami relief efforts?

Comments

[Jeff Freeman]

1.

I'm curious if he'd be breaking any laws if just kept the gold for himself.

Or how would anyone know one way or the other?

Are these donations tax deductible?

:)

[Jamie Hale]

2.

Ren, you were kind enough to mention IGE but not nasty enough to point out that since they launched their charity page last August, they've raised a whopping $351.94.

In comparison, Shokra Patel in Second Life raised over $2500.00 for Toys For Tots before Christmas in a massive distributed single night event.

And a few other numbers too - since I'm proud of what VERTU has accomplished:

Raised for EFF: $1768.22
Raised for Heifer Ranch: $1966.26
Raised for the Red Cross for hurricane relief in Florida: $3238.68

[Jamie Hale]

3.

And by "nasty" of course I mean "competitive". :)

[Abalieno]

4.

If you are reporting that you need to report this too:
http://www.eve-i.com/home/dancer/page/page_fullnews.php?id=2152

We here at CCP are stricken by the loss of lives resulting from the South Asia earthquake and tsunamis on December 26.

Therefore we are contemplating the idea of offering EVE players a way through the account management pages to make donations directly to the Icelandic Red Cross.

We realize that there already exist many ways to donate and many have probably donated already. Regardless of that we thought this to be a good idea to offer this method to show the sentiments of the EVE community as a whole.

We have been developing a medal system in the game which allows a character to gain medals for actions in the game. We are thinking of using the opportunity to attach a little medal to each character that donates (you would select one of your characters when you donate). The medal would be a temporary thing and would only be displayed through out January 2005. Each character can only receive one medal, of identical type to everyone else's, irrespective of the amount donated.

Minimum donation would be $5 but we would allow freeform donations also. The total number of donations and total amount would be displayed. Unfortunately you would only be able to donate with a credit card, PayByCash and ETC could not be used.

As we would be doing this on behalf of the EVE community, and the medals blur the boundaries of reality and gameplay, we would be _very_ interested to hear your take on this idea.

The original link I think can be only accessed with a valid subscription.

[Abalieno]

5.

Stats printed on the official website:

686 players have donated the total sum of: 18769 USD

[Tim Edwards]

6.

A question. Is auctioning the currency on this kind of scale likely to cause a real world crash of exchange rate? Could CrazyJoe dent the market?

[ren]

7.

Jeff >I'm curious if he'd be breaking any laws if just kept the gold for himself.
>Or how would anyone know one way or the other?
>Are these donations tax deductible?

I can’t remember where the discussion ended on the fraud issue, I imagine that one can defraud someone out of all kinds of things and even thought they might not have a direct monetary value there is still deception, but may be one has to show actual loss and as the EULA says that one does not own this stuff,,,

In any case of charities or similar whether one knows what they are actually up to depends on how auditable the organisation is and how much one trusts the Auditors, this guy seems to be trying to be transparent. But hey if you want to take anyone to task look at the discrepancy between governmental and organisation pledges and how much actually turns up.

On the tax front, I guess we need to as Julian about how his Tax return went, if his UO stuff was taxable then one might assume that, in the US, it falls under the same kind of tax laws that charitable donations do – erm, well if Joe was a registered charity that is.

Abalieno >We here at CCP are stricken by the loss of lives resulting from the South Asia earthquake and tsunamis on December 26,,,

Thanks for the link, I was sure that other VWs must be doing something similar and sometimes the TN hive mind is better than Google for this sort of info.

Jamie >Ren, you were kind enough to mention IGE but not nasty enough to point out that since they launched their charity page last August, they've raised a whopping $351.94.

Me, nice, yeh, let the conspiracy theories start here [g]
Thanks for the figures.
Hey is GOM going to have a donations page too ?

Tim > A question. Is auctioning the currency on this kind of scale likely to cause a real world crash of exchange rate? Could CrazyJoe dent the market?

I’d say – not a chance, but DrC is the numbers dude.

[John Smith]

8.

Tim > A question. Is auctioning the currency on this kind of scale likely to cause a real world crash of exchange rate? Could CrazyJoe dent the market?

Not a chance. The market is controlled by demand, not by supply.

[Cory Ondrejka]

9.

So much for the auctions:

http://articles.filefront.com/Virtual_Gold_Charity_Drive_Hits_Snag/;297;;;/article.html

[Elle Pollack]

10.

There have been several groups/individuals holding benifit events in Second Life over the past week or so (links to the SL forums require an account to view):

Ace Cassidy wants people to "take a toke (joint) for tsunami relief" (http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=31859&highlight=tsunami)

Jinny Fonzerelli has held a series of 24-hour events (different events/sponsors each hour) and raised over L$270,000 for DEC (report in his personal blog @ http://jinny.squinny.net)

SLExchange.com, a shopping site, has posted donation links sponsored by Stroker Serpintine and a coupple clubs/malls (who are also hosting in-world fundraising).

Probably others that have gone in under the radar.

[Cory Ondrejka]

11.

Note that the eBay auctions are back up, just slightly renamed.

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQgotopageZ1QQsassZjQ2dhardenQQsorecordsperpageZ50QQsosortpropertyZ1

[CrazyJoe]

12.

Hey folks!

I heard about Eve Online, and that's great how they are doing that! Kudos to them.

I'm happy to see the players of UO pull together, and we are sitting on roughly 637 Million Gold, and I'm trying to get it cashed as fast as I can - it's roughly $4,500 or so after ebay (no consideration for Paypal and Ebay Fees).

Every little bit helps, and in this case - this donation would have never seen the light as it comes from the Virtual World.

[Angel]

13.

Crazy Joe has been Ebaying "virtual gold" for charity to send to the Red Cross. Ebay has closed him down once before,and now they are at it again!!

http://www.crazyjoe.us/forums/index.php?showtopic=717

EBAY did it AGAIN!!!!! they pulled the plug on Joe!!