Indentured Servitude

Steven Davis reports sketchy details of a seemingly novel anti-(Real Money Trade [RMT]) twist adopted by CCP (Eve-Online)...

The MMO industry typically enforces EULA provisions banning the trade of virtual assets by canceling the violators account.  It seems that CCP instead is now penalizing the player with an in-game ISK charge.  It is unclear from the reporting that I am aware of whether the penalty involves garnishing the transaction amount only or whether there is also a fine.  Either way, the result can be a player finding herself deep in ISK(fn1) debt.  As was colorfully reported here, a 318 million ISK rock is hard to get out from underneath.

In-game penalties for out-of-game actions, oh my.  Old world debt paid with new world toil?

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fn1. In-game currency.   For some perspective on the Eve-Online virtual market wrt ISKs, as of 11pm  EST Oct 13 2006, IGE is selling 50m ISKs for $ 8.76 US

Comments

[Dave Rickey]

1.

$8.76 for 50M works out to 5.7m per dollar. As a comparison, the going rate for a 30-day code is currently around 120-150M. You can buy a 30-day code for $17.95. That comes to 6.6M to 8.3M per dollar. And there is currently a shortage of suppliers, that price is up from 100M (5.6M/$).

--Dave

[Jeff Freeman]

2.

In-game penalties for out-of-game actions, oh my. Old world debt paid with new world toil?

Oh, Nate. I know you know there's really no difference...

[Robear]

3.

If you notice the latest of Gael's comments, it seems he was not fined at all. Several months back, he'd accepted a payment in ISK which was probably bought with a RMT. That would account for the -500M "penalty" when it was removed from the game.

[Steven "PlayNoEvil" Davis]

4.

Actually, my main goal in writing the blog entry was to focus on two issues: the lack of credibility of banning and why fines might be an interesting alternative and the idea of honeypot sales to fight RMT.

[nate_combs]

5.

Jeff>
Oh, Nate. I know you know there's really no difference...
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lol, well Jeff, to try the other shoe, is it really a foregone conclusion?

[Richard Bartle]

6.

Nate>In-game penalties for out-of-game actions, oh my.

I read in TL's book that when an EverQuest banner was appropriated at a Fan Faire, the organisers asked for it back within 30 minutes or they'd look at the hotel's closed-circuit TV pictures, find out who was responsible, and ban them from the game.

I was wondering what terms of the EULA they'd use to justify this.

Richard

[Mr Crick]

7.

Thing is, read the article. He didn't ebay. There is NO mechanism within Eve for rejecting being sent cash other than manually sending it back. There is NO way to tell that ISK has been ebayed. Even a "legitmate" trade might... (at ANY future time, no less)

*sighs*

WTG ruining the economy, GM's! (There are lots of large sums thrown arround for various services on a regular basis, quite a few of them NOT for solid in-game items, but for intelligence, etc.)

Incidentally, IME Ebay view auction seeding as contrary to their TOS - they have the Verified IP Rights program, anything else is a breach of *THEIR* EULA. There was a mess like that with a tiny online "MMO", they ended up giving a legal undertaking to Ebay never to do it again.

[Allen Sligar]

8.

Along with this Blizzard just banned 70,000 accounts with 11m gold if I remember the front page article correctly.

[Axecleaver]

9.

If I understand this right, they aren't fining the suppliers, who are hard to nail down, because their accounts get banned very quickly. They're fining the buyers.

I think that's a great idea. This is like the old "war on drugs" debate, about whether it makes more sense to fund initiatives to reduce supply (ie, our current policy) or reduce demand (ie, abuse outreach).

[Adhar Khorin]

10.

This is interesting timing, as one of my coworkers (who happens to be a corp mate in Eve) reports that his account was banned over the weekend for "hacking".

I consider him credible, so I don't think he was actually trying to hack the game. After talking about it, the only thing we could come up with was a 100 million ISK RMT purchase he made several months ago.

Coincidence? As my coworker put it (regardless of what the TOS/EULA states), this is a lot like arresting the, er, customer, rather than the nice lady in red spangles on the corner.

All in, I think I'd prefer the fine, since he's now lost complete access to an account that's taken him a solid 7 months of effort to build. Pretty stiff penalty, if you ask me.

[Gabriel]

11.

I'm going to cross-post this from the linked blog entry because I think it's a good response from Hammer, who does content at CCP:

I'm not a GM and I don't work in the customer service department but I do work at CCP as a game designer. I don't know the full details of the "e-bay ISK seller" as its not part of my job to research that sort of stuff but I do have access to things such as wallet logs and market data because that is my job. I looked into the matter because I was curious as things "just didn't add up." I'm not going to guess as to why the person who was caught selling ISK gave some to Richard. Just because Richard recieved the ISK doesn't make him guilty of buying ISK, hence the reason he still has his account. I'm not going to go into the exact details of what I found in the wallet logs because its private.

What I would like you to ponder however is this; if you thought you had $1000 in your bank account and logged into your online banking to find your balance at well over 1 million dollars would you report it to the bank or would you spend it? In the real world if a hacker was to deposit stolen money into your bank account or if the bank makes an error in your favor you are not entitled to profit from it and must return the money.

[illovich]

12.

I think that's a great idea. This is like the old "war on drugs" debate, about whether it makes more sense to fund initiatives to reduce supply (ie, our current policy) or reduce demand (ie, abuse outreach).

Unfortunately, your analogy is pretty apt. The problem with this sort of solution in my view is that is inflates the cost of virtual cash which has the opposite end result from the desired effect: if virtual cash has a higher exchange rate, you create a greater incentive for selling it, which I think is unhealthy for the game long term.

Coincidence? As my coworker put it (regardless of what the TOS/EULA states), this is a lot like arresting the, er, customer, rather than the nice lady in red spangles on the corner.

Technically both have committed a crime, but similar to US drug policy it's much easier to go after the buyer than the seller as they tend to be much more vulnerable.

For me it ultimately gets back to property rights, which I still believe are too easily given up by the consumers of online games in general. In my mind the deletion of virtual assets in any online system should have to be justified to the customer with a clear explanation of why it was done, and should be subject to some form of arbitration.

[Peter Weijnen]

13.

I personally don't see this as being a very shocking or new approach to RMT by CCP. I do however see CCP's stance on the trading of gametime for virtual cash as a very interesting an promising turn of events as far as RMT is concerned.

It allows the facilitation of direct RMT trades between players only, and thus excludes the involvement of groups like IGE.

As seen in an earlier remark, this "market" for gametime works to the exclusion of that serviced on RMT sites. A veryu interesting and quite promising angle on the whole issue in my opinion.

I'm interested to see wether CCP are going to take the next step too.

[Whitesnake]

14.

Well, CCP has been repeatedly offered many, many, MANY suggestions from their userbase to slow down the sales of ISK outside the game, but with direct buy or GTC transfers.

Firstly, make it much more difficult to attain the primary ISK development method: Mining by macro. Eliminating the ability to use certain ships in NPC corporations, increase fitting for mining lasers to eliminate Battleship use, ect.
This was suggested shortly after the mining barges were introduced OVER A YEAR AGO.

Secondly, look at other methods used to accrue huge quantities of game credits in short periods of time... essentially macros used to run missions, and hunt NPC bounty targets in 0-security space. Making static complexes move would also lower their abuse level.
No other good suggestions have been offered for this.

And finally, beyond CCP there are methods that could be approached by lawmakers to lower (but far from eliminate) the prevalence of wasting real-world money on the false existance of digital-only items.

MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO SELL THEM.

eBay and other sites would soon find themselves buried in litigation and they'd pull the auctions seconds after they're placed. Credit card companies would block payments, as would internet pay sites.

[Whitesnake]

15.

Quoted from Peter Weijen:
I'm interested to see wether CCP are going to take the next step too.
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CCP have not taken a first step, what next step would they have to consider?