Shaunessy said:
Then tell me why, if it is illegal, is it a $200 million a year, with estimates in the 1 billion, industry? If it is illegal why didn't SOE, Mythic, SE, Blizzard and all the other big MMO companies jump on RMT with legal reprocussions? If it is illegal why did SOE start their own RMT buisness, instead of prosecuting offenders on their own servers? It say's it is prohibited and the company declares the reprocussions for those actions. You will NEVER see one person brought up on legal charges over RMT.
Taking control of it allows just that: control. Same as when people advocate legalizing Marijuana (which, after all, is less harmful than tobacco).
As for WHY companies haven't dealt more harshly with it, the motivation which has often been suggested is pure capitalism.
That is, SE is not going to shut down thousands of accounts that pay $12+ per month unless there is a major reason to do so. Although RMT is against their ToS, they can choose not to exercise their rights.
Many have suggested that the RMT countermeasures we recently had were an effort to lower inflation before the Xbox 360 release . . . new players will be shocked by the time required to get anything done and simply leave (whereas players who have stayed on long have suffered it slowly, like a frog being slow-boiled alive).
Further evidence that SE is trying to lower inflation are the new GP items. Not only does GP lower supply of some items, but the new items allow people to craft without using as many crystals. Thus, we should expect a relative supply increase and a relative demand decrease.
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All of that can be considered an aside, though. The real fact is, RMT is against ToS. It is against the ToS for a reason, and that reason is that it hurts the casual and even the harcore but non-gilbuying player.
So the gilsellers lost maybe 40 million. Anyone remember that the RMT countermeasures removed 300 billion gil (10 billion average /server)? 40 million is nothing to them. The gilsellers make that back within a day or two and oh well. Meanwhile they're running characters on 29 other servers.
SE and the GM's do not do enough to stop gilsellers. Cokken landed a good hit. /cheer and get back to your lives.
What's all the fuss about? Boo gilsellers.
Someone who thinks that Cokken did something wrong, please make an argument that 1) gilsellers should be in our game and 2) gilsellers don't change the game environment.
