http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040122/225503_1.html


Few unsubstantiated details from another board...

http://www.waterthread.org/news/107474916112769.html

Yep...thats TEN MILLION DOLLARS...if the numbers are true.

Wow.... just wow.

10 million?

That is twice what Sony gave Verant to actually build EQ.

Seems really really high.

$400 million in revenue annually? I never realized there were that many losers out there willing to pay people to play a game for them.

I can see this as really embarrassing for SoE as well: look at the revenue they could have had by just manufacturing items and selling them to customers (e.g., want a PREMIUM level 50 account? $50 extra). Now Yantis is mocking SoE's terms of service and raking in the money.

I have often wondered why SOE simply didn't go into the business of brokering account transfers.

They could ensure it was done properly (eliminating a lot of the risk for the participants). They could make sure that as the basic owner of the content the real ownership of the character is transferred. And they could eliminate third parties making a business of it.

I know some people would be horrified at the suggestion, but it is plain good business sense for SOE to be making the money on these transfers. They have better odds on maintaining an active subscription account; they have better control of account transfers to protect their customer base; they eliminate a lot of the customer service work related to these transfers; they could do something official (beyond the name change list) to tag someone as a sold account (again good for the player base); and on top of that they could make extra money for the transaction.

Hell, they could even host it as an auction and take a %. Or they could make it a flat fee and the buyer and seller negotiate beyond it. IE, SOE charges $50, and the players make a deal for $200 plus transaction fees.

Just never got it. A lawyer I suppose might tell me that this has some ramifications legally for ownership of the content, but it seems to me that they would have more opportunities to define what that ownership is if they could control the transactions better.

Nothing anyone ever does will prevent these transfers from happening anyway. SOE has the opportunity to make them safe and secure, and make extra money for themselves to boot.

"I know some people would be horrified at the suggestion, but it is plain good business sense for SOE to be making the money on these transfers"

Ya, that is a first reaction. But would you play that game?
Who do you think would play it?

People buy that stuff to catch up, or leg up. What would be their motivation(to cheat), if it were actually part of the game.

Sounds way too much like RL to be a fun game. /shrug.

Heh, it is the game you are playing already, though.

If SOE did the exchanges, at least they could visibly flag the people that did it.

And I am only talking about selling accounts at the moment, not gear. Just the accounts.

Are you folks who defend Yantis/IGE really comfortable with this being such an enormous business? 400 million.... that's a lot of plat. If one quarter of that were plat sales... that'd be 100,000,000,000 (1000 dollars per 1 million plat) platinum sold. Actually, twice that because they have the acquisition costs of the plat.

A business this lucrative I'm sure people are going to be very busy looking for every possible dup, exploit and whatever other way to gather more plat to sell.

Would this make IGE a big target now for a lawsuit from SOE? Before they would have to file multiple suits, but if they now targeted IGE and won, I think it could go a long way to discouraging item/plat/character selling. Although I don't know whether SOE could win such a suit or if it would be worth their time.

"Would this make IGE a big target now for a lawsuit from SOE"

IGE is based in Hong Kong.

I would say big fat hairy chance.

400million?! There are that many people who pay for that stuff? Whatever happened to playing a game for fun and earning everything..........

"The total trade volume for virtual property is estimated by Professor Edward Castronova, professor of economics at Cal-State Fullerton, to exceed $400m annually, with an undetermined portion of that amount annually captured in real-world dollars by dealers in virtual currency and goods."

From the wording of that, it seems like the 400 mil represents all the virtual items, items if they were sold for RL cash.

undetermined portion of that amount annually captured in real-world dollars by dealers in virtual currency and goods sounds like Yantis IGE et al only get a fraction of that. Hard to figure out what they are saying there.

The $400 million appears to be an estimate of the dollar value of all items being traded or sold in EQ, such as in the Bazaar. Not that most of it actually is ever sold for dollars, of course.

Even if their platinum sales were in the realm of 1 million dollars a year, that's 1 billion platinum farmed, duped and sold.

Hmm going back a few posts I am not a supporter of Yantis.

I am, however, a realist.

People are gonna sell accounts. No matter what rules you make, it is gonna happen. You can decide to have a policy you don't hope to enforce, or you can have a policy that you invest a lot of time and energy trying to enforce, or you can cut the business out from under the feet of the third parties and become the official source of it.

Item trading? no.

But look at it for a moment from SOE's perspective. I was a player of EQ for 3.5 years (well my last renewal will make it 4.5 but it is canceled and I don't play).

On the one hand, they can just let me go when I went and periodically send me emails offering me sweet free month deals to login and play again.

Or they can facilitate me getting my account bought immediately by someone who will take over the payment for it and give themselves anotehr angle to maintain the account.

Realistically speaking, they don't give a damn about me...or even my account. But if they could harvest some transaction fees from activity that is gonna happen whatever they do, while making it safer for their customers to do it, and saving themselves the headache and expense of trying to police it...seems to me it is in everyones best interest.

For the record, I have not and will not sell my account. Oldoak is gathering moss in PoK, and probably will for the next 9 or 10 months unless I log in on a lark to say hello to my old guildmates.

But in a sense this is the old question of legalized prostitution. You can take a sin stance and say it is bad. You can say it leads to all sorts of vague and hard to proove moral ills. You can keep it illegal.

By doing so you create the environment where crime festers. Where people in bad circumstances have even more opportunity to get into worse situations. PLaces where prostitution is legal the prostitutes have police protection from the dangers of brutal pimps, etc. They are encouraged (and forced heh) to keep active checkups so they don't spread venereal disease. The police don't spend their manhours chasing em down and instead focus on the violent crimes, etc.

I know the example is a pretty controversial question overall, but it is more or less the same (ok we all love a sensational debate). You can disdain the activity. But it won't stop it happening. You can create an environment where it is more controlled, and safer for the people who are gonna be doing it anyway, though.

EDIT: And, honestly, we all know SOE is already putting their finger in the pie here. They charge for the name change service, and everyone and their cousin (INCLUDING SOE, ESPECIALLY SOE) knows that the people using that service are, for the most part, people who have bought accounts. SOE should actually bear some responsibility for that trade process with a good infrastructure if they really are gonna be sucking off some profit from it.

I could never sell my account. Khieran/Brienna/Kerech all mean far too much to me to think of someone else playing them, not to mention all the various alts I had. I played EQ faithfully for 3 years, then off/on for another 1.5 years. I bought 2 copies of every expansion and 3 copies of the first couple, back when I had 3 accounts (plus the 3 copies of the original Everquest itself). Sony never even sent me a thank you :)

IGE is based in Hong Kong.

I would say big fat hairy chance.

According to the article the parent company is based in Boca Raton, Florida with a subsidiary in Hong Kong.

I think the reason that SoE do not allow account sharing or buying/selling of items/platinum/characters is not because they particularly care about it or want to stop it, but because they want to stop the customer service nightmare that would arise if they allowed these activities to take place.

If SoE allowed these activities then there would be constant complaints about a friend (with access to your account) taking your stuff or getting you banned, someone you bought an item from didn’t actually give you the item, you bought a character but then the old owner obtained the password and stole it back from you. SoE would need to find some way to deal with it.

Alternatively they can just disallow it under the EULA and if anyone tries to complain to them about these things they can simply point out that the activity wasn’t allowed anyway and ban the account. Basically if you do a trade outside the game or share your account information then you are taking all of the risks involved on yourself.

For the same reason they don’t support multi questing – if you buy a MQ from someone and they don’t complete their end of the bargain you cant go running to SoE to complain about it.

EDIT: And, honestly, we all know SOE is already putting their finger in the pie here. They charge for the name change service, and everyone and their cousin (INCLUDING SOE, ESPECIALLY SOE) knows that the people using that service are, for the most part, people who have bought accounts. SOE should actually bear some responsibility for that trade process with a good infrastructure if they really are gonna be sucking off some profit from it.

Actually...

If you are transferring characters from account to account, or server to server or even undergo the namechange the billing information must be the same as what it was when the account was originally created. A buddy of mine was refused a character move from the Karana server to Sol Ro because his billing information did not match - even though the account was STILL his own. It took him six months of emails and phonecalls to explain to SOE that the account truly was his and that the discrepency in the billing information was because of a change of permanent address and credit cards that he pays his monthly subscription with.

So I think it's a bit more complicated than what we think.

There are two motivations for the name change.

What they said was customer service. The idea is that you are getting harassed in game by someone and want to change your character name to get away from it. One would wonder why they felt they could charge you for the priviledge. I have heard of some pretty scary and f*cked up stuff happening with stalking in the game. Usually it involves a broken real life experience. Not always. I have heard from reliable sources about people getting stalked in REAL LIFE by people who they encountered in the game. And I have heard about it a lot.

So...would you as a company start charging $50 to help a customer avoid that kind of thing?


The mechanism you described can certainly be circumvented. I know for ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that many of the names I saw in the name change list for my own server were in fact account sales.

Whether they make someone pass through playing on a game card for a bit before changing their account information I can't say, but the fact remains those name changes are mostly account sales.

Well, SoE has to be getting something out of it since IGE has been able to call them up and get banned accounts unbanned with just one phone call.

These companies deal with kids using Mom and Dads money to buy plat and gear but also deal with businessmen and foreign gamers that feel that there is nothing wrong with buying what you want. Those of us that have played for what is it 4 - 5 years now and have to kill for what we get don't have the cash to throw hundreds (or in some cases thousands) away for Uber Gear and Powerleveling. Sure it is nice to have a lv 65 (or 5 of them) with full time gear but if you have only played for under a month you are still a newbie and not much use to a group. It is like playing Doom in God mode.

Realistically those that do pay for those services I think arent going to have much impact in the game other than, 1. Some inflated bazaar prices depending on rarity of the item, and 2. perhaps some of the high end game people might find things more crowded if there are a bunch of twinks with no clue running around.

But I'd guess 90% of any given server wont see much disruption. Most people who do that will quickly get bored of the game and move on to something else. They'll play for 6 months or so and discover they have no clue, and even the people in their own uber guild dont really care to associate much with them.

Of course, it will have bazaar disruptions, which will affect most people. But I'm sure SoE considers that a minor issue.

I would also find the 400 million number highly suspect.

If Yantis clears even 10 percent of that then there wouldnt be much incentive to sell for 10 million I should think.

On the other hand, I would think it would be easier for SoE to go after a US based company than one operating out of Hong Kong. Even if that part of the operation still operates out of there, the parent company is now on US soil. Assuming SoE even feels its worth their time of course.

I'm skeptical about the 10 million dollar figure. That's only a "rumor" speculated by the guy in the second site linked and it seems pretty high to me. As far as what I think about internet rumors... :moon:

Here's another interesting story you might want to read:

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,61999,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

Apparently, even more fast buck artists are jumping into this enterprise of buying and selling imaginary items and money. I love this quote:

"I feel like I am above the players of these games. They are toiling and investing hours and hours into creating wealth and building empires and here I am, no virtual avatar running around and no virtual real estate, just skimming money off the top."

Yeah, these guys really have players best interests at heart. Ha! I don't know whether to feel disgust at this trend of players buying their way to the top in mmogs or resentment that so many people have all this discretionary income to blow on frivolous things like this. It's probably more towards disgust since future, promising mmogs like WoW are going to be tainted right from the start by this virtual auction crap. /sigh

Company prices are always a multiple of their annual revenue.

How big a multiple depends on how unique the company is, how the growth potential is, and what the overall revenue potential of the market is.

Good rule of thumb is that it is at least a 3x multiple we are looking at here. That would make annual revenues (NOT profits - revenues) of somewhere in the 3.5MM range.

The thing is internet stuff used to go for outrageous multiples. This one could have as well. But my gut is he is grossing between $2 and $4 million a year.

The thing is internet stuff used to go for outrageous multiples. This one could have as well. But my gut is he is grossing between $2 and $4 million a year.

But that's only a guess on your part, almost the same as the 'rumor' quoted on that other linked site.

If it is true and this Yantis person raked in 10 million+ for his auction site, then hats off to him as someone who believes in the virtue of capitalism. He made out big time exploiting the greed and gullibility of online game players to his advantage. Entreprenuerial types should give him a standing ovation.

However, as a player of mmogs, he also gets a /rude from me as well. His actions, and those of IGE and other auctioneers, will have a cheapening effect on the desirability of MMOGs for me. If you read the Wired article I linked in my previous post, you'll see that there is a new breed of online gaming speculator class developing; people whose only purpose playing MMOGs is to gather up items and game money to buy and sell on these types of sites, rather like the commodities market.

Do you really want to play and compete against this type of 'player'? Imagine how rigged or tense randoming or distributing a piece of loot will be when there's real money at stake for these guys. Ugh no thanks.

It is an informed guess. I have participated in these types of buy sell decisions before.

What multiple is paid in any given instance you can't know, of course.

But ... I didn't just throw a dart at a board to come up with it ; ). Granted, my experience is with different types of companies.

EDIT: I would also add that whatever he was actually paid, it may well have been comprised of a mix of actual cash and shares (or a minority stake) in the purchasing company. That gets figured into the value of the sale but doesn't really mean he walks away with the money.

example, he gets $1mm in cash, and $9mm in stock in the company.

We won't really know...but I doubt the deal was nearly as big in cash as the rumor-y post indicated.

Why SOE will never sue Yantis/IGE et al (in my opinion).... to do this they would have to show that the items being sold actually had some kind of monetary value in the real world. Once this is proven then you have a loss / copyright violation / pretty much anything you like that SOE could go after them with. Unfortunately they would also have put themselves up into an impossible position - zone crashs just as you were about to kill some named and you lose chance at item worth x amount - you could then sue SOE for this loss. Same with hacked accounts, rollbacks, any server instability - it all has a real value which would then be recoverable. Somehow I can't see them wanting to open that can of worms.

Make it all no drop - well apart from trivial stuff .... or put in some kind of item tracking system that lets SOE locate and ban the purchasers of these goods (lets see demand stay high then) ... or impliment some kind of ownership thing whereby the first person to equip an item becomes its owner and nodrop is activated at this point (ie item is still lootable if no one would use it, but as soon as its equipped its stuck on that character forever.

That is the legal issue I was wondering about...some effect on the definition of ownersheip and value of items gotten in the game.

They don't need to sue 'em, they should just set up sting operations and ban any account involved in it.