Showing Posts For Yalon.6812:
To the original poster: If you want to buy gems from a reputable official vendor, go to amazon, put gem cards on your wishlist, register on purse.io, send them your wishlist and deposit enough Bitcoins. Someone will buy it for you and you’ll receive the gem card from amazon by post, and due to the way purse.io works you’ll even get a discount.
I think the reality is if there really isn’t that much people using bitcoin. It is probably problematic to create the service just for the tiny fraction of people that is actually using bitcoin.
Actually, implementing Bitcoin processing using a processor is relatively easy. If you already support more than one processor, as ArenaNet does, it’s even easier.
Beside that, I’m not sure that many people can’t get their credit card or paypal working.
That’s probably because you never left US and never bought anything from abroad. Several countries are entirely cut off from the systems. I always have problems when I move from one EU country to another one.
If there are more people using bitcoin, you’ll have a point. It might one day. I don’t know if that is right now. You probably have like a couple million bitcoin user on earth(i dont’ know if the number is accurate, if it is not let me know). Compare that to 200 million people owning a credit card in the US
Sure, and in the meantime, more nimble entrepreneurs will be chipping off ArenaNet’s profits.
The misunderstanding was partially my fault. I thought the OP’s request was for ANet to accept Bitcoin up front and then ANet could use a Bitcoin service themselves to convert to dollars post transaction. In that case ANet would have had to keep up with the Bitcoin exchange rate so when they then used a service to convert the Bitcoin in their wallet into one of the currencies they can book.
Ok I’m glad that got cleared out.
The question becomes is there an Bitcoin payment service than is “big” enough, “stable” enough, for corporations to use the way they use bank cards and Paypal?
Yes, in a way you are right. However, Bitcoin dramatically decreases both direct costs and the risk of fraud for the merchant, and using Bitpay or Coinbase (or other processors) you also get a faster settlement than when using a credit card. Your risk is thus lower even if these companies go bankrupt. They also take care of legal aspects of the payment.
Both are less than two years old and are barely beyond venture capital financing, which is like one step up from crowdfunded (okay I exaggerated).
Actually, BitPay was founded 3 years ago, in July 2011, but that’s not that important. Even then, due to the features of Bitcoin, the risk a merchant carries is lower than when using a traditional credit card/paypal/etc.
My point with WoW and EVE is if Activision-Blizzard, a much larger company than NCSOFT, doesn’t feel secure enough to accept Bitcoin and EVE, a game that has a similar size income to GW2 but doesn’t have to fear shareholders have yet to accept it, why would NCSOFT?
If they put feelings before profit, that’s not the fault of people who disagree with them.
It’s a chicken/egg problem. No large corporation wants to go first. They don’t want to be the one that could get burned if Bitcoin fraud suddenly rears it’s ugly head or if the payment processor goes belly up before they pay their last payment to the corporation using them or the US or other governments bans it, taxes it or otherwise makes it’s use difficult.
I agree that noone wants to be the first. But the objections you bring up are more based on misunderstandings. For merchants, the fraud risk is actually much lower.
That’s the point, people dont’ want to deal with bitcoin because of the problems and inefficiencies that come from it.
You have it exactly the other way around. It is the credit cards and other older payment methods that are inefficient and problematic. Just because they have a larger user base does not negate the point.
If you think bitcoin is so convenient, just trade it “easily” to real money as you claim and buy gems with it. I certainly dont’ want to deal with it.
Now you recommend people to be inconvenienced, contradicting yourself. You can sell bitcoins for dollars or euros easily, but that does not automatically mean that will allow you to use those euros or dollars to buy gems from ArenaNet if the problem is in the payment system. My wife and I have had tons of problems with using debit cards, pay pal or paysafecard with purchasing from ArenaNet. I have not found any way to purchase the gem cards for cash here. It is actually easier to buy from resellers for Bitcoin.
Denying this only shows how disconnected from reality you are.
ArenaNet will eventually have to accept Bitcoin payments in order to stay profitable and competitive. Until then, they will be losing money to resellers.
You were the one that used the example that you can buy gems now via your bank card in a currency other than Dollars, Euros or Pounds at the current exchange rate into those currencies. Not Yen or Reals or Pesos or Canadian/Australian Dollars or Swiss Francs. I simply followed your example.
You’re yet again switching to another argument. Your argument was originally about quoting prices. This was shown bogus. Now you admit yourself that there is no difference, contradicting yourself.
ANet isn’t accepting your currency, your payment method is handling the currency exchange from yours to one of the ones ANet accepts.
This was precisely my argument from the start. Now you admit I was correct.
If you can point their processing service to an outfit that would convert bitcoin to a currency they accept with the same safeguards that other payment services have then great. Otherwise this is the same argument that can be found on WoW or EVE or likely any number of MMO forums. If the 800lbs Gorilla of MMOs won’t accept it, why do you think our little, in comparison MMO would?
Resellers do not have this problem and will happily sell you WoW or EVE subscriptions for Bitcoin. Also, I mentioned Bigpoint Games which is similar in size with ArenaNet and they have been taking Bitcoin since last year. The largest online merchant so far to accept Bitcoin directly is Dell, dwarfing any of these game companies. Earlier this year, Bitpay and Coinbase alone reported over 30.000 merchants each subscribed to their services.
My argument was actually that there is no need for ArenaNet to accept Bitcoin payments in the first place because resellers do it in their stead. I just pointed out that your objection was bogus and that ArenaNet earns less money when the gem card or the game is purchased via a reseller rather than directly.
But my other argument still holds true, you can have more than one reason they don’t. ANet has not adjusted there exchange rate for gems relative to Dollars, Euros or Pounds. It is still $10€ or £8.50 per 800 gems regardless how those currencies fluctuated against each other. I saw the original request was to add Bitcoin to the currencies they directly accept and since they don’t adjust their rates with those, why would they do it for a currency as volatile as Bitcoin in terms of exchange rate. As I’ve said, Bitcoin is now worth 100x more than it was when the game was launched.
The request is for the payment system, not for quoting. Just like when you ask a merchant whether he accepts credit cards, rather than whether he quotes in a particular currency.
But that’s not ANet’s doing, that’s your bank card’s doing. They are the ones converting your currency into either Dollars, Euros or Pounds not ANet. ANet only accepts Dollars, Euros or Pounds.
Just like when using a Bitcoin payment processor you may choose to accept Dollars, Euros or Pounds. They arrive to your bank account just like they do when you receive a payment with a credit/debit card.
Now if you have a bank card that ANet accepts that will convert Bitcoins into the currency that ANet accepts, you’re all set.
Which misses the whole point (lower fees and fraud, faster settlement and less restrictions on the user’s country of residence and so on). That’s like saying that in order to pay to a US merchant I should take my Euro-denomianted card to an ATM, withdraw cash and pay with cash.
Furthermore, you switched your argument in the middle. Originally, you claimed that the problem is with quoting prices, now you argue that the problem is with the API compatibility. These are two entirely different arguments.
If I go to England and buy some fish and chips and pay with my American Visa card, I will see the charge in Dollars not Pounds. If I go to Tokyo and buy some sweet replica of a Silver Horn Trident, I will pay in Yen but the charge will show me dollars. It’s not the merchant accepting Dollars, he’s accepting Yen. Visa is doing the foreign exchange.
On newer POS systems, the merchant may allow you to choose whether you want his acquirer or VISA to do the conversion, but he does not quote himself, the POS machine does the quote. On older POS systems, you get charged in the local currency. Same with ATMs. And same with Bitcoin.
Your arguments make no sense. With respect to price quoting, for a merchant there is no difference between Bitcoin and a credit card, as both can be, if so desired, provided by a payment processor.
NCSOFT runs a business, not a non-profit dedicated to changing the social order by promoting a potentially desirable alternative to government-backed currencies. There are almost no financial benefits to them to add bitcoin (over e.g. Yen or even Canadian dollars) and all sorts of downsides.
You got it exactly the opposite way. A decision to not accept Bitcoin is costing ArenaNet money.
I’m going to sound like an echo here but.
ANet doesn’t dynamically adjust the price of Gems for Euros or the British Pound.
Maybe instead of writing you should be reading. You can still (at least theoretically) buy gems even if your own debit/credit card is denominated in a unit that ArenaNet does not support, because forex settlement occurs in the background. Just like when I travel to the US, the merchants there do not need to quote their prices in Euros in order for me to pay with my debit card. I assume you’re a US citizen who never went abroad and never bought anything abroad to bring up such nonsense.
ArenaNet already lost money on me and my wife, because for one reason or another the payment with the methods that they officially support didn’t work (card’s issuing bank in a country different from my residence, paysafecard and my bank not cooperating due to high level of fraud, …). Instead we ended up buying either the game or gems from a reseller which didn’t suffer from these problems. And this loss is valid irrespective of Bitcoin, it merely is exacerbated by Bitcoin, because if the resellers didn’t take Bitcoin, ArenaNet would have lost even more money as we couldn’t have purchased anything at all.
Bigpoint Games is a company of a size similar to ArenaNet (but with more users) and they don’t have a problem with taking Bitcoin payments. They also do not have to re-quote anything because they use a payment processor, just like you use a payment processor when accepting credit card payments.
To exacerbate the problem even further, my original post was deleted by a moderator, with the reasoning that “Discussions of gold/gem selling, in-game abuse, hacking, exploiting, and the like are not allowed on the forums.” It looks like ArenaNet does not actually want their users to pay them.
How is that possible since you can’t trade gems? Buying gem card serial codes would be the only way I would think this is possible.
They buy the gem cards and when you buy it from them, you’re provided with a scan of the code.
Again, ANet and possibly NCSOFT, does not float the value of their proxy currency against real currencies. They set an exchange rate and stick with it regardless how unbalanced it becomes between them.
As I wrote above, they don’t set it for all the existing currencies, only for a bunch of them. For others, the bank settlement systems take care of the conversion on the background. You can do the same thing with Bitcoin if you want and it is cheaper.
Even completely outside of guild wars I occasionally buy stuff from US or China with a debit card or pay pal, and it works even though the seller denominates their prices in US dollars and my card/paypal is in Euros. It’s no different with Bitcoin.
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Also, some of the arguments against Bitcoin in this thread are silly. You don’t need to adjust the price in order to accept Bitcoin, just like you don’t have to adjust price in Euros when the credit card issuer is in, say, Czech Republic. The payer gets debited Czech Crowns and the payee receives Euros. You can have the same thing with Bitcoin.
Last year, when I wanted to buy GW2, ArenaNet did not want to process my debit card because I live in a different country than the issuing bank. I opened a ticket with them and they said it’s not possible. I had to buy GW2 from a reseller. If ArenaNet did accept Bitcoin directly, they would have made more money (as the reseller wouldn’t have got their cut).
(edited by Yalon.6812)
My wife is a hardcore GW2 player and I bought gems for her with Bitcoin several times already. There are gem resellers on the web that accept Bitcoin.
(edited by Moderator)