RMT and Tax

[Lexxuk]

Old timers with a long memory will remember MJS stating that for NC he wouldn't go out of his way to discourage RMT (real money trading), in fact the subject interested him!

Ok so now RMT in NC would be kind of useless, everyone has a gazillion credits on each of their chars n stuff.

But if NC had been a runaway sucess and companies like IGE had set up shop selling credits and MC5 chips and hookers, would anyone have bought their "services". Sure we may buy the services of a hooker in PP (but not in real life, cause thats wrong) but if we purchase credits, don't we then attribute a real value to the items. Lets say 1m credits was worth £10, and you went out and purchased 5m credits for an MC5 chip. You have now given that MC5 chip a value of £50, so when you decide to sell it on for 5mil, or make a profit and sell it for 7mil, would you be prepared to accept that you have to pay *real* tax to the taxman on that item?

Its a really interesting subject, in games where RMT happens lots (FFXI) the company tries to come down hard on RMT which in itself *should* exempt the person buying ingame currency from taxation, possibly, or it may not do. But in the EU not just gambling sites are considered err gambling sites, if I read correctly it would appear that MMO's could also be considered gambling of a sort (maybe the definition between gambling and gaming is so loose as to give cause for the distinction to not exist).

So, would you be in favour of a tax on RMT, do you see RMT as the scum of the earth who should be castrated and made to watch "I'm a celebrity" and "big brother" at the same time, or do you think they offer a valued service, your time = money, and if you can earn £10 an hour, why spend five hours farming 5 mil creds when you can get it done instantly, saving you £40 of your time! Or is that part of the problem, when you put a real monetary value of time/items in a virtual game, you open yourself up for taxation on *all* transactions you make in game (poke someone? You bought creds so thats actually income!)

[jonnyboy21]

RMT has no place in Neocron.

/thread

[Lexxuk]

RMT has never had a place in neocron, the pure financial logistics prohibit it, without a large enough client base to purchase RMT based items then RMT won't come to a game, but you seem to have missed the point of the thread, I'm sure if you read it again then, well, you'll see that.

Shouldn't it be thread / though? I don't seem to be able to see a <thread> so there cannot be a </thread> ergo, just as <br> is now <br /> then </thread> should be <thread />

[Biglines]

depends on the system. assurances must be given that under most conditions the ownership of those items could be assured. I'd say player to player trading would be hard though.

dunno how "games" like second life do it though? they even have user created content that can be "played" or "bought" from players to other players, would that also be tax/income tax/whatever?

[Mr_Snow]

Gold selling sites and such are going to have a harder time of it purely because they thrive in an economy when people have more money then time now the world is starting to shift to a more time then money attitude.

Personally I have never been a fan of being able to buy ingame items or money, p2p is fine but giving those with more money then sense extra advantages is game breaking for me and I wont play a game that endorses it.

As for taxing it, somewhere between 95 and 100% would suit me fine.

[nobby]

It is pointless...

There's a SMALL playerbase.

Everyone appears in my opinion to have everything they need, especially after the compensation period giving out all the WoC discs that were hard to get hold of.

Economy - fucked?

Money - use any more?

I believe everyone has EVERYTHING they need already so there's no need to buy weapons/implants etc.

However

The only way I believe it would work, would be for character customisation, that's it.

No advantage, just different character looks, maybe a swift cigar, or bottle of alky in your apartment, little niche differences in apartment looks or character is the only way this will work.

If people would even bother paying for it...


There just is not a sizeable playerbase for this to be a success.

[StevenJ]

I wont play a game that endorses it.
That's kind of how I feel, really. I enjoy working hard in a game for what I get, not just throwing money away to get it.

I appreciate I put that in a kind of a polarising way; I wouldn't mind paying a sub to get access to end game / full content, but cash for guns/armour... just is a massive turn off for me. I'd pay to spend time playing a great game, but not to just buy the best equipment. I really, really dislike that premise. It seems lazy.

Getting levels, getting the best equipment is part and parcel of a game, and it should be done in such a way that provides entertainment so people have a good time. If people are prepared to pay money to skip parts of a game (more, if a company has particular parts of a game they think people would pay to skip and tries to capitalise on this no-fun part of the game)... then it's not a game or company I'm interested in.

[Biglines]

I wont play a game that endorses it. nc allows selling of ingame credits and techs, it's just that not many people buy it...

(i've been approached once by someone who wanted to sell me techs for real money, asking GM's about it and checking the terms of use there are no rules against it, but din't wanna pay for it, know of at least one person who bought credits that way although he disguised it as a big "tradeskill job for a clan")

and the thread is not just for nc, but mostly on whether or in which way tax would apply on those sales in general

[Mr_Snow]

NC doesnt have the population or have the difficulty of getting items to be really worth anybody selling or buying items for real cash, and its terms of use were written before it became a big issue in the MMO business.

I know with EVE they had to rewrite the EULA about a year into the game to change the terms to make eBaying against the rules, but then allowed the selling/buying of game time cards for ingame items which basically made buying ingame items for real money "legal".

The selling of ingame money and items in MMOs has become big business so some game developers/publishers most notably SOE have expressed interest or have started experimenting with "legal" selling of ingame money and items. This still has the same disadvantages of the non-legit gold reselling but does have the advantage that atleast the money being spent on items goes back into the game.

[Kalonji Faya]

what is really nice in NC is that you can have everything you need once you are a bit kind with people and have patience ...

When I first tried NC I was so tired to get money on my apu to get a hoverbike It took me 3 weeks, but then I entered a clan, and with my mates I worked hard and had all the money and items I needed !!

all you need is mates you can trust and ask them to help you for a mission
no need to exploit or buy items over internet, just mates and time ^^

Kalonji

[Kanedax]

Who says buying the services of hookers is wrong?

[Biglines]

dunno bout uk, but here being a hooker is considered being an enterpreneur, legal and all that... (they don't like it, now they have to keep records and pay taxes ;))

[Lexxuk]

In the UK there is an advertising campaign against err, renting... hookers "go in a punter, come out a rapist", many (probably) girls (maybe guys) are forced into becoming hookers, be they illegal immigrants or people with debts and the threat of death so people who rent services from a hooker, run the chance that the person they are using are doing it against their will, and having sex with a person against their will is rape.

Anyhow, RMT can damage a games economy. Not so long ago in FFXI we had a winter of mega inflation, items which were worth 2k going for 1mil, items which are now worth about 300k (but around 1m at the time) were heading towards 18m due to RMT exploits. Sure, normal people who thought "hey, I should sell" (like me - only I was too lazy to sell all my stuff) made millions, and once SE removed billions from the economy, prices went downwards so people who sold could rebuy the +1 (better) versions cheaper than they sold their normal versions.

Games like Second Life are already taxable, I'd guess project entropia or whatever that game where you get PED's which are 10=$1 are also taxable, at least in the EU where there is no distinction between gambling software and games software. But if people use RMT services, they are giving something a real value to them, so shouldn't they be taxed on all their virtual assets as they have given it a real value?

I mean, they themselves buy currency, so they are giving their virtual currency an exchange rate with their home currency (£/€/$), because of this, shouldn't all their virtual assets now be classed as non-virtual assets and taxed accordingly? We're in a nice recession now, 0% inflation (heading towards deflation), 0.5% interest rates, and governments owing as much money as they owed at the end of Global Civil War 3 (anyone get the reference there?), so governments will look for things they can tax, and RMT is big business ($800m+ a year or more I think)

Big makes a good point though, with belts being tightened, people will be less inclined to trade real money for virtual money. But the inverse may also be true. People will want to keep their jobs so will work longer hours, taking a pay cut and stuff, so when they do get some time off and decide to play, they may have less hours to go out and farm up stuff, which would make them more likely to purchase currency so they can enjoy the game rather than spend what little time they have on mind numbingly repetative farming tasks.

[Biglines]

tbh, legalizing has made a lot of the illegal stuff more difficult because there's now a divide between legal and illegal, making the "imported" women less common and more difficult

and ye, pvp trading is very much influenced by ingame economics, and there's simply not enough ways to guarantee some sort of economic stability in a game (hell, the current economic mess proves that even our world goverments/banks can't handle it correctly)

[ReefSmoker]

I think RMT is the way to go for new games, if you take any of the far east MMOs with hundreds of thousands and in a few select cases millions of accounts it becomes clear that the RMT model is very successful and is preferred by those players instead of a monthly subscription.

Games which already have a subscription model are difficult to convert to an RMT model. Take Vanguard:SoH as an example, Sony are introducing an RMT market place for players and they're doing it for all existing servers, hardly a surprise that a lot of people disliked the decision. At least with EQII Sony set up a new server for the RMT and left the existing servers as-is.

Personally my own MMO development has led me to adopt a compromise between subscriptions and micro-transactions. Basically a sub will include a number of perks each month that would cost a helluva lot more if those perks were bought individually as micro-transactions. Things like character slots, consignment space and similar features are what I'm considering including with a subscription, free accounts would be limited in those regards but both free and subscribing players would have the option of buying extra character slots and related features if they require them. Taking this approach also allows me to create a number of subscription 'packs' that have varying quantities of perks, thereby increasing the options available to subscribers.

I think RMT is already here and will become more apparent over the next year. Backlash from traditional subscribers is expected (I definitely prefer a fixed monthly fee instead of lots of small payments that add up) so it is important for game developers to consider how to proceed.

So far I've focused on RMT in the form of micro-transactions for game features that do not directly impact upon the 'build' of a character in the game. The other side of RMT is the payment for game items such as weaponry, potions, experience scrolls, etc. I personally do not like the idea of a wealthy person flooding a game with hard-to-obtain items, or being more powerful than other players simply because they have a large bank balance in real life. On the other hand I think it is perfectly acceptable for a player to be able to sell items they've obtained in the game to other players, and for the game developer to take a fee for each transaction.

Basically the instant creation of game items through RMT is not acceptable to me, but the ability to sell an item sourced in the game to another player for real cash is something that I am willing to accept. It has been going on for years across a number of games, I still see the occasional game character or hard-to-obtain item ending up on eBay. It's about time that the developers accepted the reality and used it to their cash-flow advantage. Since I am effectively an indie developer it is important for me to recognise avenues of income and to embrace them if they are morally sound.