Guild Wars 2

Dark.6083:

Hang on, hang on, I have a question!

Somebody mentioned that it’s not illegal for the gold farmers, just against the TOS, and that due to anti-trust laws it would in fact be illegal to prosecute them.

However… isn’t it illegal to profit off of somebody else’s IP?

Someone said that, but that someone was making things up as it happens.

Anti-trust laws have no bearing here for a number of reasons, the most compelling of which is that everything we’re talking about is 100% owned by ArenaNet. Nobody has any innate right to buy, sell, or trade things owned by other people.

That’s not just a theory though; game companies have successfully sued gold farming businesses many times in the past. Zynga’s done so, as has Blizzard, as did the folks who made RuneScape. Here’s an example:

http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/02/01/peons4hire-blizzard-injunction/

Blizzard sued Peons4Hire in 2007. Peons4Hire settled out of court, and Blizzard got an injunction preventing those gold sellers from conducting their business in WoW.

Your question about profiting from someone else’s IP is a copyright/patent issue, so that really isn’t involved here. If e.g. you wrote a book about Tyria, including characters and scenes from the game, then you’d be in violation of ANet’s copyrights. If you used some code they’d patented (I don’t know if they have any such) in your own game, then you’d be in violation of their patents. The whole point is that IP infringement involves taking someone’s ideas and using them in another context; that’s not at stake here.

Dead.7385:

The game your looking for is the sandbox genre, mainly those with good player generated content tools. As it would be impossible for a developer to create endless content before it is “eaten”.

You’re right that such a game would be a sandbox rather than a theme park model; the essential difference being that in a theme park, the player’s whole experience is designed carefully to move from one static attraction to another. In a sandbox game, players are encouraged or even expected to find things to amuse themselves.

I can see two different ways to accomplish this though.

1) Procedurally generated content is promising but still has severe drawbacks. Essentially, the idea is to set up a system to randomly (or pseudo-randomly) generate new content as needed, based on preset procedures. Instead of having someone create terrain by hand, for example, the terrain could be generated based on algorithms that determine how much variation in height should exist, what textures to use, etc. In theory, this can allow for world of infinite size. In practice, random environments aren’t generally as attractive as hand-made ones, while random quests aren’t as engaging. There’s a serious quality barrier to overcome here, but the concept is sound enough. Procedurally generated content is used quite often though, e.g. SpeedTree is a program used in a lot of video games to generate, well, trees; SWTOR for instance uses SpeedTree code. Minecraft uses procedural generation to create the initial world state, and so on.

2) Player generated content can provide high quantities of content, but there’s a massive variation in quality of output from one player to another. This kind of system can work, but there are numerous obstacles to overcome. For instance, player generated content can be used to create low-risk high-reward scenarios, out of balance with the rest of the game; the most rewarding and easiest content will be used VASTLY more than the less rewarding and more challenging content. Then there’s the urge to create something that’s obscene or perverse, and try to sneak it in somehow; to overcome this, all player content needs to be individually approved by content overseers. Then there’s the simple issue of whether the player generated content even fits within the genre, or fits the game’s atmosphere. Can player generated content improve MMOs? Yes, absolutely, but it’s far from a simple matter.

Gideon.2071:

So your job is knowing the laws of more than 8 countries? BS. Even armchair lawyers know that what constitutes private communication is limited. That’s why lawyers send their email with a signature that disclaims any privacy. Also, if you’re such a whiz of a lawyer, why didn’t you bother to read the ToS? Anet OWNS everything you do in that game. Everything you type becomes their property. Whoops. That’s industry standard so you can’t claim a copyright on a section of their game.

Also, them selling gold exclusively does not constitute a monopoly, as the digital goods hold no value and do not exist in a real market. The entire premise of your argument is laughable. Next you’ll say that they can’t have exclusive rights to sell weapons through their weapon vendors, and they have to allow gold farmers to set up NPC’s to compete with them.

Well said.

Anyone can come on an anonymous forum and claim to be a world expert on whatever topics they please. Proving it? That’s clearly another matter entirely.

Account.9832:

Foolsage.3019:

Fair point. I do not however believe that I have any legal right to engage in competition with the casino to sell their chips to their clientele.

How would you be “in competition” ? If you had the chips, then surely you had bought them from the casino in the first place, no? And if you didn’t sell them to other casino clients, you’d simply cash them in, so the casino would be no better off.

It appears my analogy wasn’t clear. What I was proposing was setting up my own business inside the casino, to buy and sell their chips. That’s very much akin to setting up my own business inside a video game, to buy and sell goods within that video game.

How could this work? Easy enough. Imagine for instance that an incredibly wealthy person goes into a casino and asks to buy chips; maybe he or she offers to buy literally all the chips. Then he or she stands right in front of the casino cashier and resells those chips at a markup. This person is just acting as a middleman, conveying a product from one person to another, while taking a profit. Exactly like a gold seller.

I continue to disbelieve that this would be allowed on any level.

Paladine.6082:

@Foolsage – and you are wrong, it is perfectly legal to sell chips you win/buy from a casino.

In the casino? In the same context in which those chips are produced and used? We’re not talking about doing it on eBay or in my home, but rather in the very heart of the casino’s power.

You’re saying that if I tried to do this, the casino wouldn’t throw me out, or attempt to file suit against me?

Somehow I truly doubt it.

Also, you might want to consider the difference between “you are wrong” – which is a value judgment about another individual – and “your argument is wrong” – which is a claim about the logical validity of, or truthful premises of an argument. Just a friendly word of advice; your approach is unnecessarily antagonistic as well as being semantically incorrect.

Account.9832:

Foolsage.3019:

By your logic, I should be able to stand outside casinos and sell people chips to use at their gaming tables.

If you had earned / bought those chips inside the casino, it would probably be legal to do so in several places (although it might have been illegal to walk out of the casino with them).

Gold sellers aren’t “printing money”. They cannot create any of the game’s currencies. Unlike Arena Net.

Fair point. I do not however believe that I have any legal right to engage in competition with the casino to sell their chips to their clientele. That’s directly comparable to a gold seller having some sort of inalienable right to compete with the game’s devs to sell gold for cash. The currency is created by the owners of the system, and the currency is only applicable within the system.

Then there’s the broader issue of whether antitrust legislation applies in virtual environments, and if so, what the prevailing laws would be.

Several people have pointed this out, but it bears repeating. There’s a causal chain here.

1) ANet sells the Digital Deluxe Upgrade (DDU) for GW2 via the online store, for gems. That means that gems have a fixed price in real-world currency.

2) Since ANet has an exchange between gems and gold, and gems are tied to real-world currency, this means that gold is too. Therefore ANet can’t just sell gold for less than they currently do, without devaluing their own product, as per #1 above.

3) The amount of income in game needs to be tightly controlled, because of #2 above. Remember, income in gold is convertible to income in gems, which is convertible to income in real world currencies. Letting us earn or keep more gold in game isn’t a good idea, again as per #1 above.

4) Since money is so tight, players will be tempted to buy gold from goldsellers. That temptation is unavoidable here, due to that kittykitkittykitteny DDU from #1 above. ANet can’t lower their prices to undercut the gold sellers.

OK. So having the DDU available for gems is a problem. My first thought would be to remove that option, and replace it with something else, like Karma. I know, I know, we have other things to spend Karma on. The point though is, by removing the ability to purchase the DDU with gems, we remove any need ANet has to keep the price of gold where it is now. That, in turn, would free them up to lower the price of gold to the point where gold sellers wouldn’t make much profit. Believe me when I say these gold sellers are businesses, and they do what makes them money. Remove the profit, and the gold sellers will go elsewhere.

Paladine.6082:

No company by law has the right to prevent other entities from doing business by abusing their market position (or give themselves an unfair market advantage). The fact that ANet sell gems for real world currency and allow players to convert those gems into gold is a direct real to virtual exchange – they profit from this, it is a legal business. By banning other entities that try to do the same, they are giving themselves an unfair market advantage and preventing other companies from doing business – it is the very definition of anti-trust.

As I said I have worked directly with the FTC and EU Commission and know them very well – I also know one of the lawyers who worked on the Microsoft vs DoJ anti-trust case so I will have a chat with him about this, I am sure he will find it interesting.

I am just interested as someone who works in law and plays this game and as I said, I think it is only a matter of time before the gold buying companies pool their resources and file suit.

Hmm. By your logic, I should be able to stand outside casinos and sell people chips to use at their gaming tables. After all, what right does the casino have to control the only source of exchange into and out of the currency people use in the casino? Shouldn’t the free market allow everyone to compete to sell that currency?

This does not, of course, make sense.

Casinos, like video games, use virtual currencies that are only valuable – only meaningful – within the context of the closed systems run by these groups. So casino chips have no value outside the specific casino, and GW2 gems have no value outside GW2. Since these currencies are’t publikittenraded in any sense, there’s no need for the owners (the casinos and game devs) to worry about anti-trust issues.

Put another way, I can’t mint my own arcade tokens for an arcade like Dave & Buster’s and sell them outside the door. I might have the minting apparatus and all the metal I need, but it’s still not going to work. D&B would likely bring suit against me, and anyhow they have no obligation to accept my forged tokens. And yet the same anti-trust issues should apply there, that you’re suggesting would apply in GW2.

Grammarye.3064:

I applaud the theme behind the post. I genuinely do not grasp the logic behind players desiring more Pavlovian conditioning to get one more carrot. I think what appalls me the most is when people don’t even see it occurring to them.

Gear treadmills are a common MMO staple for ongoing character progression. Unfortunately, they have a LOT of downsides, which considerably outweigh their advantages. Since I made that claim, here are a few:

• Gear treadmills require grinding as an intrinsic mechanic. This means they involve repeating content over and over, generally seeking a rare drop, or farming some sort of tokens used to trade for gear. Grinding is not inherently enjoyable; that’s why we call it “grinding” in fact. If I want to put my nose to the grindstone, metaphorically speaking, I do so at work, not at play.

• Gear treadmills inevitably create a barrier to entry for newer players. This barrier rises continually, making it harder and harder for new players to join in. On the same topic, games with gear treadmills are designed such that optimal play involves a large group of people willing to schedule their time regularly; this presents another barrier to entry.

• Gear treadmills are strictly about numerical progression; you’re seeking a weapon or piece of armor or jewelry with better numbers on it than the one you have. Generally speaking, there’s no narrative to pursue, no new game mechanics to unlock, and nothing “new” to the gear progression; merely bigger numbers. This can be dreadfully boring.

All of which is to say, as carrots go, gear treadmills are highly overrated.

Now, if people want to have a conversation about how to make the game provide more of the ‘wow we did it’ self-reward (yes, ok, it could be classed as a carrot, but it is at least a healthy carrot), or the ‘cool, I really had to engage my brain & think about my skills there’, ideally promoting self-worth rather than comparison-worth, then I’m up for that.

The word you seek is “fiero”; that’s Italian for “pride derived from an achievement”. And yeah, I think there are a lot of ways to provide that without needing a gear treadmill. Since I posted a bulleted list above, I suppose I ought to here as well. Sigh. I’m becoming a creature of habit.

• The best way to achieve fiero is arguably to defeat some very challenging content. If we do something that we didn’t know for certain we could do, if we overcome a meaningful obstacle, that feels good. The difficulty here is that MMOs, in general, are designed to be pretty easy, and so significant challenges are honestly pretty rare. Some games allow players to control the difficulty of encounters; this isn’t a bad idea in general since it allows a greater opportunity to find challenge. It’s worth mentioning that shared fiero seems to be stronger than individual fiero in many cases; if you do something challenging with a group and succeed, it can really be a great feeling.

• Rewards do also provide fiero, so you can e.g. spread random loot around. In GW2 item appearances are also valuable to players, as are fripperies like dyes and mini pets. Chasing loot doesn’t need to mean chasing slightly higher numbers on otherwise identical items.

• One of the best kinds of rewards isn’t an object your character uses, but rather an opportunity; which is to say that unlocking content can be a type of reward, and this can provide fiero. It can be a great feeling to finally be able to access something different and interesting… provided the reward is different and interesting of course!