SOE Licenses 3rd Party RMT Company for In Game Virtual Property Sales - Page 44

Gori · 12-22-2007, 11:17 PM

Welcome to Flames, and great to see you posting. Thank you very very much for clarifying the issue for everyone. It certainly put my mind to ease. I had chuckle though seeing "Lil Newbie" under Smed. :-)

Shackleton1 · 12-22-2007, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smed

Hi Kyrsten. I can see your point. We specifically allow the cards themselves to be traded in-game (in the card portion of the game) because card games like Magic: The Gathering wouldn't be the same without the trading economy that goes on. It's just a part of what makes them work.

Do I see your point? Yes I do. Do I agree with it? Yes I do, but dis-allowing this trading would hurt the in-game economy which is so vital to card games, so I'd say it's the lesser of two evils.

The simple fact is that we could make it so no items are tradeable. That would put a stop to RMT in a jiffy, but destroy the in-game economy of EQ II (or any other MMO IMO) - but people would still be able to sell accounts (obviously not something we condone).

So in short - yes I see it, no I don't like it.

With all of that being said, I think we've done a great job at ensuring that none of the in-game loot items are so awesome that they become "must haves". We've been careful about that issue. Therefore I think I can say with a straight face this just isn't a big deal.

Hope I've answered your question

Smed

You're a brave man!

So LoN... what do you make of this?

Quote:

The latest indication of this has come with the new LoN expansion, Forsworn. As most players know, you buy boosters at $3 a piece, as soon as you open them the contents depreciate in value to the ridiculous extent that you can trade the contents of over a dozen packs for one unopened pack. Theres over a hundred rare cards, at one per pack, but you can trade less than 10 packs for a full set.

Does this not suggest that you've missed the mark? That the loot cards are far too desirable? That the unofficial micropayments / plat trade dominates, and the genuine LoN trading is dwarfed?

*edit* Honestly, I wouldn't mind about LoN if the perks were really minor.

Let me give a good example and a bad example of LoN loot cards.

Good example: Rhino with slightly different graphic. Slightly desirable, perhaps to an EQ2 collector, but any EQ2 players can pick up a rhino in RoK without difficulty.

Bad example: Crate illusion. Despite being fluff, it is absolutely unique. LoN is the only method of obtaining this, or indeed anything like it.

LFG · 12-23-2007, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smed

I've been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that's just plain not true - I don't have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it's me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I'll happily reply.

We aren't going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now. The truth of the matter is it's very difficult to combat them, but we have people at SOE who fight the good fight each and every day. In the near future you're going to see us becoming a lot more public about this then we ever have been. I think we've done a bad job at communicating just how seriously we take this fight.

We're interested in working with LiveGamer because they are unique in the RMT world due to the fact that they are pledging (and are putting technology behind it) to not buy from farmers. Farmers are the bane of our existence at SOE. They cause us endless amounts of grief and do real financial damage in a meaningful way.

What do I mean by that?

Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card #'s to purchase in-game gold. I'm not saying all of the RMT shops out there use stolen credit cards, but a LOT of them do. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands.

In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account.. use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say "I never paid for this". Over time, as the # of these incidents rise we get fined by the credit card companies. And it's not just us, other large MMO companies are seeing exactly the same problem.

In any event, I wanted to stop in and at least set the record straight - you aren't going to be seeing RMT allowed on the non-exchange enabled servers.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

Thanks a ton for this very powerful and definite statement against RMT on the regular servers.

I'm very satisfied with this statement.

Thank you again.

Savanja · 12-23-2007, 12:52 AM

Thank you Smed for clearing this up for everyone!

aduros · 12-23-2007, 01:05 AM

Smed, you have my respect for posting here. I'm glad you took the time to clear up what goes on with non-sanctioned RMT.

However, I'll be taking your statement about never allowing SE RMT on other servers, with a grain of salt. As I've seen before, Things Change™. So personally, I'll be keeping a cautious eye on future changes implemented in EQ2.

Rinion · 12-23-2007, 01:12 AM

so the sky isnt falling!?

amazing.

see! over reacting.

Dankshasta · 12-23-2007, 01:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smed

I've been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that's just plain not true - I don't have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it's me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I'll happily reply.

We aren't going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now. The truth of the matter is it's very difficult to combat them, but we have people at SOE who fight the good fight each and every day. In the near future you're going to see us becoming a lot more public about this then we ever have been. I think we've done a bad job at communicating just how seriously we take this fight.

We're interested in working with LiveGamer because they are unique in the RMT world due to the fact that they are pledging (and are putting technology behind it) to not buy from farmers. Farmers are the bane of our existence at SOE. They cause us endless amounts of grief and do real financial damage in a meaningful way.

What do I mean by that?

Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card #'s to purchase in-game gold. I'm not saying all of the RMT shops out there use stolen credit cards, but a LOT of them do. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands.

In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account.. use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say "I never paid for this". Over time, as the # of these incidents rise we get fined by the credit card companies. And it's not just us, other large MMO companies are seeing exactly the same problem.

In any event, I wanted to stop in and at least set the record straight - you aren't going to be seeing RMT allowed on the non-exchange enabled servers.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

THanks for the post dude!! Rock on and get a good replacement for Gallenite, that's not gonna be easy!

Balbasur · 12-23-2007, 01:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smed

I've been a regular lurker on this site for a while but I wanted to step in here and dispel something that's just plain not true - I don't have my name highlighted here, but anyone that doubts it's me can email me at jsmedley@soe.sony.com and I'll happily reply.

We aren't going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now. The truth of the matter is it's very difficult to combat them, but we have people at SOE who fight the good fight each and every day. In the near future you're going to see us becoming a lot more public about this then we ever have been. I think we've done a bad job at communicating just how seriously we take this fight.

We're interested in working with LiveGamer because they are unique in the RMT world due to the fact that they are pledging (and are putting technology behind it) to not buy from farmers. Farmers are the bane of our existence at SOE. They cause us endless amounts of grief and do real financial damage in a meaningful way.

What do I mean by that?

Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card #'s to purchase in-game gold. I'm not saying all of the RMT shops out there use stolen credit cards, but a LOT of them do. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands.

In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account.. use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say "I never paid for this". Over time, as the # of these incidents rise we get fined by the credit card companies. And it's not just us, other large MMO companies are seeing exactly the same problem.

In any event, I wanted to stop in and at least set the record straight - you aren't going to be seeing RMT allowed on the non-exchange enabled servers.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

thx for getting my account unbanned mate :P

mania · 12-23-2007, 01:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rinion

so the sky isnt falling!?

amazing.

see! over reacting.

Amazing indeed isn't it.

Naar · 12-23-2007, 03:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smed

In addition we recieve large scale (over $500k so far) fines for chargebacks that these scumbag farmers routinely do. They purchase a new account.. use it for a month and then call the credit card company to say "I never paid for this". Over time, as the # of these incidents rise we get fined by the credit card companies. And it's not just us, other large MMO companies are seeing exactly the same problem.

I'm not surprised at the scale of the problem. I personally work in the UK gambling industry, when a customer gets a run of bad luck the temptation is for them to turn to the credit card company and claim they don't know about the payments they made to us. The onus is on us to prove that the customer knowingly chose to bet with us, often this can involve an (email) paper-trail and even having to dig out recordings of when the customer called us on the phone.

When it comes to non-physical purchases (a catagory that both gambling and electronic purchases of EQ2 fall in to) you need to prove that you have taken every possible step to prove that the person who made the transaction was the real card holder. This is great protection for the consumer (as they only need to introduce possible doubt) but can often leave companies with big bills.

I don't know if the US works the same way as the UK, but too many chargebacks can result in some card providers refusing to do business with you. So we have a very real possibility that RMT companies using the chargeback tactic could cripple SoE's ability to do business with legitimate customers.