Comments on: Economist: Online Games’ Virtual Economies Provide Big Money to the Developing World

By: roflcopter game

roflcopter game — Sun, 01 May 2011 21:58:03 +0000

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By: Mark Van Diggelen

Mark Van Diggelen — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 08:11:52 +0000

The virtual economy is both a powerful and fickle one. As Seagullquest and DinoBoy said it is very possible that the developers get in on the action themselves. Loads for them to make from this. Those who buy the virtual goods wouldn’t really care if they buy it from a 3rd party company or directly from the developers. I think it might even make it even more successful. We will just need to wait it out and see what direction greed pushes the respective parties involved…

By: DinoBoy

DinoBoy — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:53:07 +0000

Seagullsquest hit the nail on the head. Companies like Blizzard could easily kill the black markets by selling gold themselves. And making professions and farming more profitable. By doing those two things they would level the playing field, so that the black marketeers have no advantage, and they can make more $$$ off their own product. Seems like a win win to me.

By: seagullsquest

seagullsquest — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:10:41 +0000

Speaking from a players view point the selling of gold has good pts and bad. I dont like the spamming or the hacking and stealing of accounts, but Blizzard could go a long ways in controlling the prices of items in the Auction Houses. People with extra gold go in and buy up all of a certain product at low prices and turn around and sell it a ungodly prices. It makes it so that if you want something you have to pay the ungodly prices or spend hours and hours doing one thing like farming leather. Thats not what ppl bought the game to do. Most ppl when they only have one or two of an item sell it to a vendor. if Blizzard could make it so the vendors collect them and then sell them in stacks of 5 or 10 then ppl wouldnt be forced to pay the ungodly prices. There are ways of taking the unoffical gold sellers out of the the game. 1. control prices. 2. have a way to buy gold sraight from Blizzard. Other games do it. 3. have vendors collect and sell certain items like leather , ore and raw fish and meats.

By: varcher

varcher — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:03:07 +0000

The whole virtual economy thing is now well oiled. A brand new game (like the recently launched Rift) had on-line “gold sellers” about 2 days after the game started, before the pre-orders advance launch period ended and the game was officially on the shelves.

By: Solitha

Solitha — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 07:57:03 +0000

Yippee for them. Like most parasites, they’re leeching off the host and degrading it in the process.

Those gold-sellers depend on spam advertisement in-game as well as out, and an extensive amount of phishing and cheating of customers. The spam is invasive and damages game immersion. The phishing/cheating is to “hack” accounts to strip for more gold to sell.

Overall it makes for a bit of a hostile play environment. It’s also depressing to realize that a lot of the money I spend on gaming is being used to combat these things instead of improving the quality of the game.

This news just makes it more depressing. There’s so much money involved, stamping it out for good will be all but impossible. Meanwhile, legit users have to jump through more and more hoops designed to block the gold-sellers/hackers.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:24:01 +0000

Reminds me of Cory Doctorow’s For the Win.

By: Amos Zeeberg (Discover Web Editor)

Amos Zeeberg (Discover Web Editor) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:17:48 +0000

Funny (yet predictable) that the enforcement reduced the supply, which drove up the price. Further evidence of virtual economics following laws of real economics.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:44:18 +0000

Square Enix chased the gold sellers off Final Fantasy XI and cracks down hard on third party tool usage for both of its MMORPGs. The players are grateful that we can go about our business enjoying the game without dealing with shouted or whispered advertisements for gold (gil in the FF universe) or competing with Chinese farmers. There are still a few companies that provide gil for sale, but they are few and their virtual coin is very expensive. Square Enix said they eliminated 90% of RMT activity off XI during 2010.