Blizzard recently announced that it would be allowing players to buy and sell items in Diablo 3 to each other for real money. If we categories D3 it’s basically a Free2Play online RPG and as with the hundreds of other F2P online games, it will have an item shop, the only difference is that the items are being sold by the player themselves and not the game company.
Now as I stated yesterday, I have to problem with Blizzard entering into the RMT market, I’m actually all for it, but my problem is that these companies like Blizzard and Sony are hypocrites. For years Blizzard has been stating how RMT (real-money-transaction) is evil and ruins the gameplay experience for everyone else, when what they really meant to say was, we don’t give a shit about RMT, we just don’t want other people making money off our games.
Sony jumped on the RMT ship years ago with their Exchange program (different from the Station Store), which goes further than Blizzard’s D3 program, allowing both items and entire accounts to be sold. However Sony’s listing and closing fees are so high that blackmarkets for their games still remain. Sony also picks an chooses which games have player Exchanges, currently only EQ2, FreeRealms and Vanguard have one.
So does this mean Blizzard no longer thinks RMTs ruin games? If not, then what does this mean for World of Warcraft? RMT is ok for D3, but not ok for WoW? Should players even care what Blizzard thinks about RMT at this point?
Here’s a secret, I sold two of my Diablo 2 accounts about 8-9 years ago on Ebay when they allowed virtual items. One account when I quit the first time, then a second account when I quit again. I’ve never bought any virtual items or accounts and haven’t sold anything since, but I made about $150 bucks at that time and felt my hours upon hours of game time weren’t wasted. I obviously don’t play games to make a profit, but if I can after I quit, why not?
By introducing RMT to Diabo 3, Blizzard is in fact stating that it’s not RMT they are against, only if they’re not the ones profiting. Of course from the initial fees laid out by Blizzard it looks like their system is going to be extremely expensive as Rusty pointed out to me in his comment. If Blizzard can learn anything from Sony it’s that you’re not going to kill the RMT blackmarket by price gouging your customers.
You and people like you are the problem. You did play to profit, you sold the accounts.
You’re part of the problem that is the profitability of hacking accounts, spamming chat and credit card fraud.
The game time isn’t “wasted” if you had a good time, not because you sold it.
August 2nd, 2011 at 11:27 amQuote
Just because a few people hack, spam or steal, doesn’t mean legit players who quit and decide to sell their account or itmes are the problem.
The problems are the hackers and spammers themselves. Why blanket everyone into the same group when the real problem, which Blizzard is obviously admitting to isn’t RMT, is the spammers and hackers.
You’re punishing everyone because of a few groups of people. My question to you is, if you make this a perfect world and figure out a way to stop spammers/scammers, what negativity does RMT have in the actual game? None. So what if one player buys a rare item from another player? How is that any difference if he traded it for something else? The only problem I see is that people get jealous.
August 2nd, 2011 at 12:38 pmQuote
Seriously you are shocked that a developer / publisher looks to secure a higher profit margin?
Are gamers just economic idiots or are they really just this ignorant to the world around them? The economy is shit so all companies are getting very creative with revenue streams. I suppose you would prefer they just up the asking price for the game?
Gamers need to get it out of their head that making money is evil. Nothing wrong with selling a valuable service for a profit. Is the developer gouging their audience? That will be judged by those who pick up the game, but I am not going to call a Business a Hypocrite for trying to make money even if they did come out against a type of revenue stream in the past.
Sure principles are great when you have a free flowing economy. Its easy to say I will never and we as a company will never when all the bills are being paid.
At the end of the day would you prefer these entities say, well since we were against RMT in the past we are now never allowed to consider it and thus we shall shut our doors next week.
Don’t be so naive people, businesses are there to make money and if they do so and you are still happy, why do you care how much they make?
August 2nd, 2011 at 3:53 pmQuote
@Bob
“You and people like you are the problem. You did play to profit, you sold the accounts.
You’re part of the problem that is the profitability of hacking accounts, spamming chat and credit card fraud.
The game time isn’t “wasted” if you had a good time, not because you sold it.”
Wow way to be over dramatic BOB. How does a person selling a character they created contribute to “hacking”.
You are a loon, wanting to blame good people for other people’s lack of integrity.
Give yourself a round of applause Bob, that was spoken like a true asshole.
August 2nd, 2011 at 3:56 pmQuote
@darthdiggler, I fully support Blizzards move to RMT. The article is to point out the fact that they are hipocrites for railing against RMT for years only to partake in it now.
August 2nd, 2011 at 6:04 pmQuote
While I don’t beleive a word of it, Blizzard said something along the lines that since they are doing it opfficially, it is now ‘safe’ and people are not going to get scammed, etc.
So, while its bullshit, their official stance is that they did not like RMT before so as to protect us from the scams of other shady websites.
Yea, right.
August 2nd, 2011 at 9:08 pmQuote
the problem with Rusty’s comments is that chinese farmers wont be allowed on us servers, am i wrong?
August 3rd, 2011 at 1:09 pmQuote
I cant wait for this feature in Diablo 3. Finally i have a chance to do what ive dreamed of all my life: get paid to play video games.
August 6th, 2011 at 4:44 pmQuote
its going to be so much fun once we ar playing the game
say im going to kill a boss and i get a good item.
and i can sell it on the ah but im not for selling stuff in diablo 3 so i guess ill just sell it for gold in the game? wtf hell no im going to sell it for $$ and all of you well no bs and you know it lol
September 15th, 2011 at 2:38 amQuote