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As long as games like this put an EXTREMELY strict rule against exchanging currency and items in-game for real money, they can really thrive without being turne

As long as games like this put an EXTREMELY strict rule against exchanging currency and items in-game for real money, they can really thrive without being turned into minmaxxed dystopias full of bots and people in third world countries grinding in net cafes. Path of Exile is a great example of a game with an available trading API that cracks down on RMT, and it's mostly enthusiasts and cool community projects like Path of Building, PoeDB, Poe Ninja and Filterblade. There's still an underbelly of bots and RMT-ers but nothing on the scale of Axie Infinity.

solardev 2y ago
Well, EVE is quite different from PoE in this regard. PoE is cosmetics-only on paper (they frown upon RMT as you said, but don't really enforce it... and in other countries, like Tencent's Chinese home, you can straight up buy P2W equipment directly from the in-game store). But EVE is pay-to-win by design. Not only do they NOT discourage exchanging real money for in-game currency, it's actually how CCP makes its money. You straight up buy the in-game "ISK" currency with USD or other fiat money: https://store.eveonline.com/#plex https://store.eveonline.com/#plex You cannot, however, sell ISK back for USD (well, you can and people do in third-party marketplaces, but then it becomes a RMT that violates the official terms of service, but it's much cheaper to buy ISK that way than from CCP). If you're going to make an international game subject to real-world conditions, it doesn't matter what your rules are, people in poorer countries WILL go around them to sell services and items to first-world players – and who could blame them? Beats working in a sweatshop. Every MMO has unofficial RMT marketplaces like that. It sounds like EVE just wants to run the marketplace themselves, like Blizzard tried (and failed to do) with Diablo 3... an idea before its time, I guess?
- mos_basik 2y ago
  Since neither the parent of this comment nor its parent mention it explicitly- This article is about EVE Frontier, a different game from EVE Online. One of the main takeaways I had from the article is that CCP is planning for EVE Frontier's "RMT policy" (heavy scare quotes) to be the opposite of what most MMOs' (like POE or EVE Online) use. From the article (emphasis added): "...this is literally cryptocurrency we're talking about, isn't it? CCP is being characteristically libertarian about the whole thing, and says it won't regulate transactions between players inside or outside of the game. Want to buy a new car using your alliance's funbucks? Pétursson won't stop you... 'But we fortunately live in a world where consenting adults can do dangerous things' [says Pétursson]... Dangerous things like, you know, playing a game that's spinning up literal cryptocurrencies for which the devs won't (and perhaps can't) limit out-of-game transactions." (aside- as a currently-winning EVE Online player who enjoyed the spreadsheets more than the pewpew and who writes code to buy food, the new game sounds ambitious and amazing. I'll keep an eye on it.)
  - solardev 2y ago
    Good clarification. Thank you :)

solardev 2y ago

Well, EVE is quite different from PoE in this regard. PoE is cosmetics-only on paper (they frown upon RMT as you said, but don't really enforce it... and in other countries, like Tencent's Chinese home, you can straight up buy P2W equipment directly from the in-game store). But EVE is pay-to-win by design. Not only do they NOT discourage exchanging real money for in-game currency, it's actually how CCP makes its money. You straight up buy the in-game "ISK" currency with USD or other fiat money: https://store.eveonline.com/#plex https://store.eveonline.com/#plex You cannot, however, sell ISK back for USD (well, you can and people do in third-party marketplaces, but then it becomes a RMT that violates the official terms of service, but it's much cheaper to buy ISK that way than from CCP). If you're going to make an international game subject to real-world conditions, it doesn't matter what your rules are, people in poorer countries WILL go around them to sell services and items to first-world players – and who could blame them? Beats working in a sweatshop. Every MMO has unofficial RMT marketplaces like that. It sounds like EVE just wants to run the marketplace themselves, like Blizzard tried (and failed to do) with Diablo 3... an idea before its time, I guess?

mos_basik 2y ago
Since neither the parent of this comment nor its parent mention it explicitly- This article is about EVE Frontier, a different game from EVE Online. One of the main takeaways I had from the article is that CCP is planning for EVE Frontier's "RMT policy" (heavy scare quotes) to be the opposite of what most MMOs' (like POE or EVE Online) use. From the article (emphasis added): "...this is literally cryptocurrency we're talking about, isn't it? CCP is being characteristically libertarian about the whole thing, and says it won't regulate transactions between players inside or outside of the game. Want to buy a new car using your alliance's funbucks? Pétursson won't stop you... 'But we fortunately live in a world where consenting adults can do dangerous things' [says Pétursson]... Dangerous things like, you know, playing a game that's spinning up literal cryptocurrencies for which the devs won't (and perhaps can't) limit out-of-game transactions." (aside- as a currently-winning EVE Online player who enjoyed the spreadsheets more than the pewpew and who writes code to buy food, the new game sounds ambitious and amazing. I'll keep an eye on it.)
- solardev 2y ago
  Good clarification. Thank you :)