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The Daily Grind: Have you ever bought gold?
Practically every MMO ever made has some kind of currency-based trade system, and if that currency takes time or effort to acquire, you can bet someone somewhere will pay hard cash to shortcut the process. Although most game EULAs forbid the practice of buying currency for cash, players are often unaware that they could be banned if caught. Websites selling virtual currency are often linked to shady dealings such as harvesting credit card details, key-logging buyers' computers or even just not delivering purchased goods. The effects are often felt in-game too, as methods used to generate currency for sale often include abuse of exploits, farming limited resources using bots, and hacking accounts. Developers of subscription MMOs have fought against the RMT (real money trade) business using a variety of strategies. In late 2009, CCP Games banned 6,200 accounts linked to botting and RMT in one day as part of operation Unholy Rage. RuneScape developer Jagex took an even tougher stance, putting severe restrictions on the movement of gold between players. This week, we heard the news that a leaked client database from an EVE ISK-selling organisation had named hundreds of EVE Online characters as buyers. While many of the characters named were temporary accounts created to receive ISK anonymously, life has been made very hard for all characters named in the leak. So have you ever bought gold, ISK or any other MMO currency? If so, what were your reasons for buying it, and what would you do if your character were suddenly exposed as a buyer or banned? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
EVE Online devblog discusses account security
Every MMO suffers the horrors of gold spammers and EVE Online is no different. The RMT (Real Money Trading) industry is massive and EVE's developers CCP have waged a constant war against it in recent years. The PLEX initiative gave players a way to safely buy ISK for cash while at the same time helping players who couldn't afford their subscriptions pay with ISK. The result was a dramatic hit to the RMT market, who had to drop their prices to compete with a legitimate service replacing their own. As part of Operation Unholy Rage in August of last year, EVE GMs also banned over 6200 accounts belonging to farmers known to be supplying the RMT industry. The effect on the market was instant, with the population in farmed mission systems like Ingunn disappearing overnight. Almost immediately, the farmers reacted with a spate of account hackings to claw back some ISK.
EVE Online player loses USD 19,000 in shady virtual currency deal
The sci-fi game EVE Online is set apart from many other massively multiplayer online games by its economy. While there are currently problems with the game's market due to a serious exploit, the economy isn't getting reset anytime soon. The currency of EVE's virtual economy is the Inter Stellar Kredit (ISK). As in the real world, money can be power in EVE's 'New Eden' galaxy. Most online games built around a virtual economy will ultimately need to deal with the real money trading (RMT) issue -- either make it a bannable offense or support and regulate it in some way. CCP Games figured if RMT is happening whether they want it to or not, they may as well have some way to regulate it. EVE Online has a few legitimate ways to bring real world money into the game. Game Time Cards (EVE Time Codes) can be converted to ISK without risk of getting your teeth banhammered in by CCP Games. They offer a secure way to sell game time to players where neither party can be scammed, and more recently a way to turn game time into an item (PLEX) that can be sold on the open market in-game. When a player buys that item, he or she extends their account subscription. The upside for some players is that they can actually pay their subscription fees in the ISK they've earned in-game, for others it enables them to buy a faction battleship or a number of other virtual items.But... some people just go too far with all this, and buy ISK in huge amounts. Even worse is doing so outside of the EULA-safe methods. This was the case with an EVE player in Denmark, who paid 100,000 Danish Krones (the rough equivalent of 13,500 Euros or USD 19,000) for currency from a shady ISK seller outside of the secure system, and was ultimately left with empty pockets, even after the case ended up in court.
EVE Online currency sellers rip off players (shocker)
Well, here we are again... certain people among EVE Online's player base who buy their isk from shady sites are the focus of another dev announcement. GM Grimmi just posted the following: "We have had a number of cases recently with hacked accounts and similar issues and we have found that a lot of them are directly connected with a certain website. This website sells ISK and supposedly EVE Time Codes (ETC), though the ETCs always turn out to be faulty or already used. Players that go to this website and do business with them are running a very high risk of getting keyloggers placed on their system and subsequently having their EVE accounts hacked, and ISK and assets removed. Customer Support cannot correct damages that result from problems with the security of username and passwords. We strongly urge everyone to keep their virus protection up to date and stay away from dodgy ISK seller websites."Here's another novel idea. Admittedly it's a radical concept and some people might not be ready for it: Play the game and stop trying to buy your way to the top. That said, the ability to legitimately buy and sell ETC is supported by CCP Games, but only from the official ETC resellers, paired with a secure system of buying/selling ETC at the EVE website. The incidents that GM Grimmi describes, as have numerous other dev blogs in the past, stem from players shelling out cash for their isk, presumably from those spam bot sites that turn up in popular channels from time to time. Standard practice with the GMs is to give the isk buyer a negative wallet balance and force him or her to claw their way back up to a positive balance; CCP bans sellers but not buyers. But perhaps this is too lenient. Do you think these players should get banned for buying isk? How does your MMO of choice handle players who try to buy their currency and gear?
