Blizzard appeals to PayPal to hobble MMO gold-sellers

We did exactly the same few weeks ago. Paypal was reluctant as the beginning but later sent the notices to the gold farmers. 1/2 stopped to sales our game's items, 1/3 switch to an other PSP and the last ones make no or few changes. Obviously, the websites with our registered trademark in their domain names belongs to the 2nd category.

Blizzard will soon discover Paypal is a sort of white knight compare to other PSP (no kidding).
Some try to lie or minor their responsability. Some have no shame to tell you face to face "we don't care about you're business as we make more money with Gold Farmer and Private Server". I don't know what is worst.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Thomas Bahon on 31st January 2011 1:02pm

Posted:2 years ago

@Thomas

Guess this is better than doing nothing. Sounds bad but a strategy of fear is the best option; attack the gold-sellers via the legal stuff and with the threat of fees and jail so none will try to make a new business out of it in the future.

That's my point at least.

Posted:2 years ago

We don't want to fear them. We just want them to respect their own TOS.

"11.1. It is strictly forbidden to send or receive payments as consideration for the sale or supply of:
[...]* Goods or services that infringe the intellectual property rights of a third party."

When you read this in a PSP Terms & Conditions you would expect more concern about this issue.

Posted:2 years ago

i hope paypal changes. i have heard really tragic stories of paypal scams.

one incident involved paypal informing the seller (after 2months of the transaction) that the payment had bounced and the seller ended up in quite a bit of debt.
i wonder how Blizzard has to handle these type of transactions...

Posted:2 years ago

How much enemies blizzard wanna have?

Posted:2 years ago

The whole legal approach will absolutely not work on the gold sellers. In order to send a legal notice to someone you need to know who they are and where they operate. These guys can switch their IP, company registration, website domains, Paypal account - everything they need to operate in 1-3 days. This is by no means an exaggeration. So even if you were to take action against them they will flip their identity and deny any relation to the company you're sueing. Oh right and by the way this is all happening within Chinese legal jurisdiction - good bloody luck there.

IMO there are two surefire ways to tackle the problem.

A huge portion of customer service tickets related to "Help me! My account got hacked!" is the result of a users' involvement with a gold seller site. Surprisingly a bunch of kids do not know that inputting their account details into a shady gold seller site just opened the door to massive credit card fraud and item stealing. However, just informing them that such actions might be dangerous isn't enough; people who have a ton of cash but little patience/time want their gold. So offer a secondary market in the game using your own billing and take a transaction fee from every trade. Chances are the gold sellers will try to undercut your gold pricing but you can make the user decide if they want to give their account details to a trusted publisher in a secure system or save a few dollars and assuming the risk of a gold seller.

The other way is much more complex and requires a huge commitment from developers. Chinese gold seller accumulate their inventory through the use of bots. Developing features that require human interaction will slow down a gold seller far more effectively than a legal notice. But these features need to be constantly updated in order to force a gold seller to change their processes again and again.

Posted:2 years ago

Eddie, part of the issue is that gold selling tends to upset the game balance that developers are striving for. So having the developer simply do the selling doesn't fix the problem.

Posted:2 years ago

But of course if you accept the factthat there are gold sellers already then you realise that the game balance is already skewed. It is better to skew it yourself so it is measurable and can be compensated for elsewhere. The problem is striking a balance between members that buy gold and members that work for it, and the latter still need to be able to compete without being at a disadvantage.

Posted:2 years ago

Well, actually the endless possibility of creating money/gold and items is by itself a very flawed economical system, causing constant inflation, which needs to be ongoingly fixed by the developers anyhow.

I think the "gold farming and peddling is upsetting the balance" argument against gold farmers is flawed, because even regular players farming for gold just to buy some stuff is "upsetting the balance", too.

An innovative MMO economical system might tackle the issue of unwanted gold farming the best, I surmise.

One could also point to other MMOs which embrace gold selling, the developers have better control of the game's economical climate and gets some additional revenue. Also, South Korea should be shown as an example of a progressive country, where it recently allowed gold farming in the law and actually taxed it.

The reason they did that, because as stated here in the article - when Blizzard appealing to PayPal with saying that PayPal had their IP, WoW's currency ("You were reported to PayPal as an Intellectual Properties violation by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. for the sale of World of Warcraft Merchandise.") - would carry no legal weight in Korean and perhaps international law. Because in at least South Korea's law that in-game currency IS NOT Blizzard's IP. Therefore users can do whatever they want with it if they have it. Selling - as well.

Edited 3 times. Last edit by Almantas Sukelis on 8th February 2011 3:02pm

Posted:2 years ago

I think it is GREAT to have a free market economy withing a gaming realm. However the value of Gold should be fixed at a rate more reasonable that what it is now. Perhaps value the gold against the US dollar at par. Just think of the opportunities. Rather than cracking down, Blizzard could introduce apps to allow users to create their own weapons and sell them online. Not dissimilar to the FSX or X-Plane aircraft designers. They could even put in expiry dates for the weapons, even sell power ups etc. The whole idea is to keep people busy buying virtual bullets so that they don't buy the REAL ones, remember??

However, that being said. Not all Chinese use Bots, for Gold making is the new SWEAT SHOP LABOUR. It is reprehensible to think that some poor fellow in Gandon province is working 150 hours to get 50 bucks, and it may influence the minimum wages in those regions, most notably because those with money again, consider gaming to be non sequitur. I have seen it happening here in Canada as well, with people on Social Assistance. Fortunately we have a health care system here, that currently supports all the back problems and RSI generated from non stop gaming. It is bizarre to say the least, that these people are marginalized by others who state that they are 'having fun'.

This latter attitude has got to STOP!

Posted:2 years ago