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News Report: PlaySpan secures deal with K2, FFXI bans more farmers and RMT's "secondary evil".
By PJ, Oct 03, 2007
Following on news from last week, via Warcry, PlaySpan has officially agreed on an exclusive deal with K2 Network Inc. to facilitate an in-game marketplace for peer
to peer transactions. This development will allow a new stream of revenue to be generated from transactions between players. K2 Network operates F2P
online games with revenue coming mostly from virtual item sales.
While another operator, Square Enix banned more farmers in FFXI this month as PlayNoEvil reports. 750 farmer accounts were among the 7,050 banned accounts, and 1,030 accounts
were suspended.
The major reason behind game operators banning gold farmers is that they alledgedly ruin the other players' experience of the game. Tobold clearly
explains this and calls it the secondary
evil of RMT. RMT itself is subjective so it is difficult to judge whether it is right or wrong. But what makes the public despise RMT are the
"secondary evil" activities such as scamming, spamming, camping and so on.
In fact, PlayNoEvil considers RMT and gold farming to be user
created entertainment and a measure of the game's success.
As more and more casual gamers are attracted to MMORPGs, RMT is likely to stay. Mmocritic has given the issue some thought and pretty much sums up why the players buy gold: "Casual players simply do not have
the time, desire, or energy to play repetitive achievement orientated games".
[Edited on 10/3/2007 by PJ]
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Other articles
By PJ, Mar 27, 2008 - 12 comments
IGE is one of the largest virtual currency and service providers for MMORPGs. Until 2006, the secondary market had been dominated by IGE - ever since
they acquired MySuperSales back in January 2004. According to their website, the company is located in Hong Kong, but previous office locations include Spain,
Switzerland, US, and China, making IGE a true global player.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 31, 2007 - No comments yet
This week, we have a short update on the current IGE class action case. The official website for the case
reported a motion to stay was filed in order to put the trial on
hold while it is resolving the dispute with Blizzard. IGE claims that it is bound by the TOU and EULA agreement with Blizzard. If selling gold for
real money is breaking the terms in TOU and EULA then this has to be settled with Blizzard first. The arbitration will probably involve some compensation and will be dealt in
privacy.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 25, 2007 - No comments yet
A self-introduction email of Jeff Lyndon in the VERN mailing circulation caught our
eyes and we thought doing an interview with him would be interesting. So we catch up with Jeff to talk about what he thinks of the RMT industry.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 25, 2007 - No comments yet
Moving closer to the end of the year, we take a look at the economy and RMT aspects of the upcoming game, Hellgate: London.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 18, 2007 - 1 comment
Last week, Korea and China were apparently engaging in a Cyber War. Korea's RMT websites such as ItemBay, Item Mania and Item Play Forum were down
for most of the time due to some Denial of Service attacks from China, PlayNoEvil had this covered.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 16, 2007 - 1 comment
By PJ, Oct 12, 2007 - No comments yet
This week we focus on three interesting virtual currency sellers. Two of them are from Canada, Mmorpg-shop and Igsky, number three, Guild4Power,
operates from the US and China.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 10, 2007 - No comments yet
As reported in JoongAng Daily (via PlayNoEvil)
the RMT market in Korea was estimated to be worth around 1 Trillion (more than US$1 Billion) Won in 2006. The biggest auction website in Korea's RMT
market, Itembay last week set a new record with a 12.5 million Won ($13,678) transaction for a set of very rare swords and armor for NHN's R2 game.
The amount is enough to buy a compact Hyundai car.
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 05, 2007 - No comments yet
In this report we took a closer look at a few more well known companies in the industry: Itemgarden and Withgames are Chinese companies, both
having front end contacts in the West. Presence in a reputable country and ability to communicate in English is one of key factors customers look out
for. Igxe used another approach: The company started in Hong Kong and in the US,
then later made their entrance into China by acquiring and consolidating a local company.
[Edited on 10/19/2007 by carebear]
Read more >>
By PJ, Oct 11, 2007 - 1 comment
Following on news from last week, via Warcry, PlaySpan has officially agreed on an exclusive deal with K2 Network Inc. to facilitate an in-game marketplace for peer
to peer transactions. This development will allow a new stream of revenue to be generated from transactions between players. K2 Network operates F2P
online games with revenue coming mostly from virtual item sales.
Read more >>
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