RMT and gold sinks

RMT (Real Money Transfer) has been a poisoned dagger in the backs of MMORPGs for some time... As soon as someone figured out that others would pay real money to avoid aspects of the game they would care to avoid, it took off.

And it hasn't looked back since.

You could reason that it's no big deal, what's the problem if someone wants to bypass activities they don't enjoy? That would be fine if it stopped there.

But it doesn't. If the RMT is illicit (I.E. Not sanctioned by the game company.) the problems are direct and in your face. You have the threat of hacking, then you have resource denial in cases where "bots" relentlessly gather them for sale. Then there is the price suppression all those botted goods being sold causes. Then there's the intangible effects, people know it's going on, and they hate those "bots" whether they really affect them or not, because that person is "cheating." And let's not forget the increased CS requirements to respond to botting reports and account theft.

If the RMT is sanctioned, then it's just as dicey in my opinion. You could just sell the gold directly to the player... implicitly causing inflation of some kind in the process, or you could concoct a "gold for game time" transfer that looks more legit, but essentially does the same thing. These schemes work by selling you a token in the game's "Item shop" for real currency, typically through your credit card, then allowing you to sell that item to other players in whatever market exchange the game offers. This is inflationary in that it essentially takes gold that was out of circulation and puts it in the hands of players that WANT to spend it.

The inflation is bad enough. But now you have an unregulated transaction that can result in sizable profit for the game company. Perhaps they are far sighted enough to avoid that moral hazard, perhaps not. The players won't find out until it's too late.

Just for the record, I'm in the "RMT is bad, mkay?" Camp. It is bad even to have a valuation of your game currency to real money, as that opens the door to illicit exchanges. Bad as in the "Bernie Madoff Retirement Account" the con man wants to sell you. No good will come of it.

So. Why do people do it? Because they need gold. They either want to avoid an undesired task, or there are things they want to buy but cannot. Conventional wisdom is that you need to balance "gold faucets" (Sources of gold in the game, like killing and looting monsters.) and "gold sinks" (ways for gold to permanently leave the game, like buying Garrison buildings in WoW.)

But the problem is that mechanic does not consider the differential in earning power between individual players. If that Garrison building is priced to be purchasable by the "average" player, playing 2 to 3 hours a day, then the rich one will have lots of extra gold, whereas the player who doesn't engage in gold earning activities will not be able to afford it. At this point, it could be argued that the gold sink of that Garrison building actually CONTRIBUTED to RMT, instead of the exact opposite as intended. If you set up a situation where people think they need gold to advance, they will get that gold. And you might not like their choices. If you offer "vanity" items for sale for real money, you're just throwing gasoline on that fire by increasing the "moral hazard."

You cannot allow a pathway for people to assign a real world value to in game items. Things that seem benign, like trading cards that can be bought anonymously and can be redeemed in game with a code are right up there in that list.

If valuation of gold to real money is impossible (Or at least extremely difficult.) and if you are weak at earning gold, you should still be able to have fun. If you are strong at it, that's your choice, but you will end up with a lot of worthless gold. Gold that should leave the game with you when you eventually quit playing. THAT should be the "biggest gold sink."