Everyone's Doing It: Gold Trading Has 30% Market Share
If there ever was a reason to make real world cash off an in game economy, this is it. Games like Second Life have made quite a chunk of cash off selling virtual currency to it's players, and according to WoW Gold Facts, 30% of users buy gold online. Quite the staggering statistic.
According to the site owner Extreme Gamer, the business of virtual money is infact a lucrative one:
In my opinion, the industry would be better served if publishers would recognise that lots of gamers - I've heard it's 30 per cent of the player base - like the benefits of RMT, and work with credible companies and allow it to happen,I don't see why this is not possible. They could make a condition of involvement in RMT that players give them a complete release of all forms of liability.
My real question is this: Why doesn't Blizzard make an official channel for trading gold? If anyone is going to make money off of the process, it might as well be them.
30 per cent of MMO players buy gold [gamesindustry.biz]
Asterick
Posted to Video Games on 19 March 2009
· Comments (11)
Other stuff like this: 30 percent, gold farmers, virtual economy, wow
Buying gold destabilizes the economy. Instead of working hard at it whenever they have time, players can just buy tons of gold and buy whatever they want from the auction house, thus driving prices up so badly that no one but gold buyers can afford anything any more.
This is already something of a problem in WoW, officially condoning it would destroy the in-game economy with hyper-inflation.
Its much more complicated then blizzard just making it legal to sell gold to the player base. If they tried to do that, the government would be on them about it, wanting to tax it, get their share of the profit I suppose. So then to compensate for that the price of the game would have to go up, and in essence everyone loses.
What they said.
Making gold trading ok would destroy the games ecconomy. Simple as that.
Also, creating a single server for all the gold traders and making it ok just on that particular server would STILL destroy the ecconomy of that server, and because EVERYONE would be a gold trader, that would mean there'd be no point whatsoever for gold trading. The idea is that you gain an advantage over other players. If ALL players are doing it theres no advantage and you're basically just throwing money away.
I've not played WoW, but a good example of this is Runescape. Gold trading got so bad that the best armour (at the time) was being sold at about 20-30 million of the in-game currency.
I played for about 3 years and got to level 90. I think the most gold I had at any one time was about 5 million... and that took a hell of a lot of effort to get. So buying the best armour was out of the question.
But RS banned thousands of users and then upgraded the trading system to not allow unblanaced trades (e.g. 30mil cash for a rock, or some other such cheap item)
As far as I'm aware it made gold trading completely impossible. Thousands of users quit (presumably the gold farmers/buyers) ... but ultimately it made the game better.
Both of the above aren't very accurate. Selling gold is already happening. People are doing it despite it being illegal. This kind of mirrors the legalize maryj argument. You can keep saying "it's wrong don't do it" but they can't (and don't) ban for it so there isn't really a reason not to.
I know a number of games where the publisher sells the in-game currency. The trick is to ensure there are sure fire ways to get that money out of the economy (this is what caused the inflation in FFXI).
Alternatively, a company could just offer things that are usually expensive for cash. Like $10 for your epic flying training and another $15 for an epic mount. This plan would completely remove the need to sell the in-game currency altogether.
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether or not the in-game currency is sold. It just matters whether or not the economy has enough potential drains to keep it from inflation.
Its not just about ruining the economy. Sure, gold farming happens and people buy gold, but quite simply NOT EVERYONE CAN AFFORD TO DO THAT STUFF.
I know, personally, that if I had to PAY MORE THAN MY SUBSCRIPTION FEE to have any sort of decent gear in WoW and not work very hard to EARN it, I would have given WoW the boot a long time ago.
That is the nice thing about WoW, everything I have in the game is a product of the work and effort (and luck) I have in the game.
People who take the "easy" route make things like getting 75 vanity pets a trival thing and demeans the level of difficulty, skill and patience that is required of these things.
But what about the people who play casually, shouldn't they be able to get these things too?
THEY CAN. It just takes more time.
Its not just about ruining the economy. Sure, gold farming happens and people buy gold, but quite simply NOT EVERYONE CAN AFFORD TO DO THAT STUFF.
I know, personally, that if I had to PAY MORE THAN MY SUBSCRIPTION FEE to have any sort of decent gear in WoW and not work very hard to EARN it, I would have given WoW the boot a long time ago.
That is the nice thing about WoW, everything I have in the game is a product of the work and effort (and luck) I have in the game.
People who take the "easy" route make things like getting 75 vanity pets a trival thing and demeans the level of difficulty, skill and patience that is required of these things.
But what about the people who play casually, shouldn't they be able to get these things too?
THEY CAN. It just takes more time. Letting people pay to get the good things in the game (epic flying skill) is an unfair advantage. That is why things in the TCG are just vanity item turn ins. And if they give you something like a mount, you STILL have to pay for it.
"The trick is to ensure there are sure fire ways to get that money out of the economy (this is what caused the inflation in FFXI)."
I suppose that might be possible, and doing so would keep the prices down, but ultimately selling gold will always make scarce items more scarce. If certain players can buy gold making it easier for them to get scarce items, it MUST become harder for certain other players to get those same items.
Unfortunately, draining the economy to keep prices low is effectively no different from inflation. With inflation, the money you have is less valuable. With reductions in the money supply, you simply have less money.
"Alternatively, a company could just offer things that are usually expensive for cash."
This would help prevent inflation, too. But it basically reduces the scarcity (and as a result the value) of the items sold.
Of course, all this assumes an economy where items can be easily traded from person to person. I remember from my short stint in WoW that high caliber items tended to get stuck to your character. With enough restrictions like that, I'd imagine Blizzard could set prices however they wanted.
As far as I know, gold is useless in WoW because all of the good items are bind on pickup drops from raids, and the only thing you actually need it for is to pay for your mount.
uhh, this guy doesnt cite any hard facts. This article cites gamesindustry.biz but that just cites another article in which some random guy says he's heard it's 30%. So we still don't know how many people actually buy this stuff. Though, there are some possibly solid-looking numbers (if you assume this institute is real and reliable) in the original article, such as: "According to Vili Lehdonvirta of the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, the global market for virtual items, characters and currencies already exceeded USD 2.1 billion by 2007"
At the risk of going OT, I'm more interested in where the picture originated.
Not only am I interested in where the picture originated, I want to know how to get there! LAN party wet-dream!