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The eBay era over?

January 26th, 2007 (Visited 3448 times) Tags:

The rumor has been going around, but now Slashdot seems to have official confirmation.

All this will do, of course, is push more to independent resellers.

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MMO Pub wrote on February 14th, 2007 at 9:52 pm:

Virtual Worlds, Real Profits, which I must add to my blogroll and regular feeds — an entire blog devoted to tracking the RMT industry. So what’s Sparter doing? Well, it’s running a peer-to-peer network to replace the recently shuttered RMT marketplaces on eBay. Interestingly, it’s also backed by some high-powered folks: The company has received venture capital funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and its management includes executives with experience at THQ, Walt Disney, Expedia, Ariba and IGN.

Bloggers | The Cesspit. wrote on January 27th, 2007 at 1:37 am:

[...] Bloggers January 27, 2007 01:18 Made it to the front page I get linked to a lot, from many different gaming sites, which isn’t really news. But this time I got a link from Blizzard themselves, directly on the front page of the European World of Warcraft… Source: Tobold Categories: Bloggers 01:17 The eBay era over? The rumor has been going around, but now Slashdot seems to have official confirmation. All this will do, of course, is push more to independent resellers. Source: Raph's Koster Website Categories: Bloggers 00:02 A few interesting game design theory posts I don’t really have time to comment on these much, except to point them out: Critical Hits asks, What Is A Good game Anyway?, referencing my game grammar material. Yehuda asserts that Wiinning as a Goal is Incompatible with Art; and I disagree, but the reasons why are long and complicated. Source: Raph's Koster Website Categories: Bloggers [...]

Nerfbat » eBay Delists Virtual Goods wrote on January 28th, 2007 at 9:18 am:

[...] There’s more on this story at Slashdot, with comments over at Broken Toys and Raph’s Website. Bookmark to: [...]

Raph’s Website » Sparter: peer to peer RMT network wrote on February 14th, 2007 at 1:53 pm:

[...] what’s Sparter doing? Well, it’s running a peer-to-peer network to replace the recently shuttered eBay marketplaces for RMT trades. It’s a peer-to-peer eBay for selling virtual gold. Most interestingly, [...]

Nerfbat » eBay Delists Virtual Goods wrote on June 27th, 2009 at 1:49 pm:

[...] more on this story at Slashdot, with comments over at Broken Toys and Raph’s Website. This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 11:26 in Industry. You [...]

Reader Comments

Michael Chui said on January 27th, 2007 at 1:34 am:
So Julian finally has a response to his question, eh? Football tickets, yay!
Evangolis said on January 27th, 2007 at 5:55 am:
I have to wonder if this is tied to the restrictions placed on funds transfers to curtail online gambling. The US government has been very aggressive enforcing those, and I could see somebody like eBay not wanting to risk jail for their stockholders over an excessively broad interpretation of RMT exchanges.
Dellaster said on January 27th, 2007 at 9:06 am:
Good point about the gambling, Evangolis. I also wonder if and how much it might be related to the issues described in the article on Second Life as a Ponzi scheme linked by Raph a few days ago. Organized crime, tax evasion, and money laundering. Did eBay get a tip that a government crackdown is certain and decided to get out before the storm hits? Even if not found culpable for facilitating illegal transactions, which I’m sure they wouldn’t, I doubt eBay would want the image of being the prime money-laundering clearinghouse of the net.
Darniaq said on January 27th, 2007 at 2:25 pm:
There seems to be two growing sides of the debate:

1) My side. Which is right.
2) Everyone else. Which are wrong

Just kidding. Seriously, #1 is that this is more relevant in how it brings awareness to the issue than it is in impacting the volume of sales today. The biggest operators are games themselves (Station Exchange, Maplestory, etc) and those who’ve got their own e-commerce engines (IGE and subsidiaries). Only the small-time operators used eBay or spam-sales in /general chat.

But, when you combine the activities of the world’s biggest subscription-based MMO with one of the world’s largest online trade services, you can’t help but drive awareness. Blizzard themself has banned more accounts than most games have in total. While some feel this is a token effort given the ease of starting new accounts, the time it takes to retrain and reequip characters is money lost. Companies have closed over this.

There’s two ways to address RMTing: bring it in house and call it microtransactions, or continually ban people until it goes away.

To me, this effort by eBay is going to drive the former. Already we see a big influx of microtrans games. They may not all work, but when you have companies like MTV/Viacom behind them, and you target audiences that haven’t been here since before the term “RMT” was invented and considered profanity, it’s easy to see the potential.

Penalize the black market to pave the way for new forms of revenue
Allen Sligar said on January 30th, 2007 at 2:48 pm:
I’m going to have to agree with Darniaq. It’s mostly an issue of legitimacy and who’s going to capture that revenue stream.

Also to update I read today that SL is somehow inexplicably exempt from this because of the resident IP ownership. Although I dont think any SL volume for items comes through eBay’s door in any significant amount.

I’m all for banning illegal RMT, it ruins games, but it cant be prevented, I think this is an indicator of an initial trend happening to legitimize RMT, IMO this is a good thing, bringing it in house allows companies to leveredge control and prevent exploitation.

Looks like the old “if you cant beat em co-opt em” strategy…

Strange, it just occured to me that the entire point of SL might be a costly experiment in validating a virtual economy model of exchange for broader adoption…..
Dellaster said on January 30th, 2007 at 5:53 pm:
Boy was I wrong. If Second Life is exempted from the eBay bans, they can’t be because of anticipation of government crackdown on money laundering and tax evasion.

I do note that eBay’s founder is on the board of SL, which, to me, casts doubt on their explanation that SL isn’t a game like WoW and the others. I mean, they didn’t exempt There.com or any of the other SL-like virtual worlds did they?

As for official RMT, I have no problem with it as long as it doesn’t convey gameplay advantage (buying levels, uber weapons, etc.). If you want to buy a personalized slice of pie for hundreds of dollars, as happened in Iron Realms’ Achaea, knock yourself out. Doesn’t affect me. But if it does effect gameplay advantage I believe either the game or the player is broken. Or both.

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