Korea Bans Commercial Game Item Trades
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
Both bad and good. Bad because it cuts them out of potential profits in new digital markets, good because its common sense to not buy something you can't hold in your own two hands.
Double-edged sword?
Double-edged sword?
Right, because making it illegal for teenagers to play online games after midnight didn't cause a sudden jump in teens breaking the law. It's a very vague phrase for them to say, what type of criminal activity have the seen jump that leads them to believe games are the reason? For all I know they could be referring to the general figure. Which since they've recently passed laws that turn kids into criminal just because they're playing after midnight I imagine that figure has gone up accordingly.WhiteTigerShiro said:
I would point out that in this specific instance your logic breaks down, because no one anywhere ever has bought a copy of a game directly from steam. Millions have licensed a subscription to a copy of a game from steam , but there is a planet wide gap between the two things.WhiteTigerShiro said:
By the looks of it, my post went right over your head. Its not greed, its business. A gaming company wants to stay afloat. And they want to keep supporting their games for a longer time. Do you honestly think Team fortress 2 would continiue to get updates even today if valve didn't earn a cent by doing so? Its very simple, if a game starts costing more to keep alive than it does to stop all support for it, you do the latter. Everyone and their dog is looking for ways to do this, and you just flat out deny the progress and call it greed. I don't know about you, but I enjoy games like team fortress 2, dota 2, diablo 3, and other games like -every mmo ever made in the history of ever-!Dexter111 said:
And those games are entertaining. They wouldn't be if the producers stopped caring for them, and decided to just abandon ship due to no income. You really call that progress? Really?
Just because an item excists of 1s and 0s doesn't mean its 1. isn't real 2. doesn't take time to make, and most importantly 3. doens't have an ownership. As long as you own something, it can be traded. Theres a market for "ideas", why shouldn't there be a market for virtual items?Dexter111 said:
Wrong. They cost man-hours in terms of the amount of grinding players have to put into a game to acquire them. Some players aren't willing to put that much time in, but they want said items, so they pay other players to get said virtual items for them. They are as scarce as the amount of labour put into acquiring them.Dexter111 said:
And by your logic, the internet shouldn't exist, except as a medium for communication and online retail, because as you say, there can't be a market for anything virtual, games or otherwise.
That doesn't follow from the previous statements at all, unless you have more information than was in that Korea Times story. It doesn't say that the developers/publishers themselves will be restricted from selling in-game items, it says that players or third-party distributors selling items is prohibited. Which makes sense, because that's the gambling part. A game's store sells items at a fixed price, while player-to-player trades will lead to speculation. Most MMOs prohibit you from giving an item without receiving something in return, to prevent wholesale theft and people getting ripped off. That's why they're targeting trades. You're not trading with the game maker itself, except in the most basic sense that you're "trading" money for a product (most people call that buying).Grey Carter said:
Korea says, "Oh no, people want to spend money on things they want in games. We can't have people spending their money how they want!"
I never buy digital unless it is the only option.
And if you have a good free to play model game, with a little work, micro-transaction items can be purchased with in game currency that can accumulated through playing the game.
Star Trek Online is a good example of that. Dilithium can be earned in game doing many different missions and tasks, then dilithium can be used to by Cryptic points on the dilithium exchange, and vice-verse(because some in game items can be bought with dilithium), then those Cryptic points can be used to buy items in the STO micro-transaction store. The dilithium exchange fluctuates between 100 minimum dilithium for 1 Cryptic point and 500 max for 1 C point. Right now the market is rather steady around 310 to 315.
Now, dilithium must be refined before it can be used, and the refinement limit is 8,000 dil a day. So with the market the way it is, with an hour and a half or so of gameplay doing various things to get 8,000 dil, it comes to around 25 or so Cryptic points a day. For example, the cheapest ships sold for only Cryptic points is 400. So with the prices the way they are now, it would take 16 days of one and a half hours or so play a day to get the points for the ship. Now I believe the most expensive for points ships are around 2000 points, it would take 80 days to earn the points needed. That means that stuff like that can be done without real money changing hands, but it will take some long and dedicated play.
Or...you can buy something in a store called a video game, that is in a case on disc and can be popped into a CD/DVD drive to play.Frostbite3789 said:
I never buy digital unless it is the only option.
And if you have a good free to play model game, with a little work, micro-transaction items can be purchased with in game currency that can accumulated through playing the game.
Star Trek Online is a good example of that. Dilithium can be earned in game doing many different missions and tasks, then dilithium can be used to by Cryptic points on the dilithium exchange, and vice-verse(because some in game items can be bought with dilithium), then those Cryptic points can be used to buy items in the STO micro-transaction store. The dilithium exchange fluctuates between 100 minimum dilithium for 1 Cryptic point and 500 max for 1 C point. Right now the market is rather steady around 310 to 315.
Now, dilithium must be refined before it can be used, and the refinement limit is 8,000 dil a day. So with the market the way it is, with an hour and a half or so of gameplay doing various things to get 8,000 dil, it comes to around 25 or so Cryptic points a day. For example, the cheapest ships sold for only Cryptic points is 400. So with the prices the way they are now, it would take 16 days of one and a half hours or so play a day to get the points for the ship. Now I believe the most expensive for points ships are around 2000 points, it would take 80 days to earn the points needed. That means that stuff like that can be done without real money changing hands, but it will take some long and dedicated play.
On the random item thing, and spending money to get the item.Dexter111 said:
It relates to what is happening to Cryptic Studios', Star Trek Online. You see, Cryptic Studios was bought-out by free to play MMO company Perfect World, which I believe is an Asian company.
Since that happened STO, has gone f2p, and has been filled with micro-transaction items. My example comes from this: They started a thing where every so often, a "lock box" is dropped as loot in game. The only way to unlock the boxes is to get a "master key". Such keys can only be purchased through the Cryptic store and at a price of 100 Cryptic points per key. Said keys only open one box and are gone, so you have to buy a key per lock box. 100 C points is basically around 1 dollar real money.
The catch is that the item that comes from the lock box is random. You could get a relatively worthless time-limited power up, one or to pieces of a special in game currency that can be used to buy items at a special vendor(granted that the best items cost over 100 pieces or more), a special uniform set(I got a special DS9 uniform set, when I used a free key form a one time promotion), or you could get an ultra rare ship requisition that will get you the special ship that is exclusive to that lock box type. Example: The Cardassian lock boxes could have a Galor class cruiser in it. The latest thing is the Ferengi lock boxes which could have a D'Kora class cruiser.
The whole situation is very annoying, since these lock boxes drop so frequently, they add up and take up a lot of space. In two weeks of play, about an hour or two a day, I had accumulated 200 Ferengi lock boxes. Of course I could sell them in the exchange market, but since there are so many being dropped, I could put twenty on the exchange for only 1 credit and get no buyers.
Now with a bit of work, I can take four days to earn the dilitium in game needed to exchange into 100 Cyptic points to buy one key. So technically I can get lock box keys free, but that is free without money, it isn't free when it comes to time spent to get those points to get keys.
while i think its excessive to completely out law real $$ v-items
I do agree laws restricting them need to exist
I do agree laws restricting them need to exist
What? Being able to pay once for a game and enjoy the full experience is suddenly the "Stone Age" and undesirable?Excludos said:
If being nickle-and-dimed to spend an arbitrary, often higher than the game's value, amount of money on a game to fully enjoy all of its content is the future, I'm glad to be living in your "Stone Age"
Paying once for a game to enjoy the full experience is desirably in singleplayer games. The reason this model is stoneage is because, unlike 20 years ago, a lot of games are not singleplayer anymore. That pluss the fact that games are expensive. If you have a fulltime job as a grownup, you might not be able to see this problem. The students does.Scow2 said:
And pleeeease answer with "but video games is a luxury", so I can link you this awesome video from Jimquisition
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/5709-Videogames-Are-A-Luxury
And thats only one part of the problem. The other part is, like I stated above, that games these days needs to last longer. The games need to be updates and servers needs to be payed for. Years after a game have been released, the publishers needs a reason to keep the servers alive, and "but everyone thinks its good" is not good enough for a business that have an end of the year goal to meet. If the game isn't generating income, all support for it will be pulled. So tell me again why you think its bad that you can now pick up a game for free, and other people who can afford costum skins and fancy nametags, helps you and the publishers keep it alive?