PC Gamer kicks Gold Farmers out!

Over at Next Generation, PC Gamer Editor in chief, Greg "TheVede" Gederman explains why the magazine has decided to refuse ads from gold farming companies from now on. He is quite vehement about it actually:

Lately, 'gold farming' companies such as IGE and Power Leveling -— companies whose business is the accumulation and (potentially illicit) real-world sale of virtual MMO property, including gold, in-game items, and characters -— have begun running ads in magazines like ours. For the record, PC Gamer's official stance on these types of companies is that they are despicable: not only do they brazenly break many MMOs' End-User License Agreements, but they all-too-often ruin legitimate players'’ fun.
...
For my part, I sincerely apologize to all of our readers for not being able to make this happen sooner. Unfortunately, 'the separation of church and state' that exists between PC Gamer's ad sales team and editorial team make negotiations like this one tricky. But we'’re all on the same page now. Good thing, too, because for a while there I felt like I was a big green dude in purple pants, bearing the weight of an entire mountain on my shoulders.

(excerpt from Next Generation article "Why PC Gamer Kicked Out Gold Farmers")

As I had mentioned in a previous post almost a year ago, gold farming is an evil that we must rid MMOs of. Gold farming is a parasitic behaviour in which individuals or companies knowingly disregard the spirit of the games in which they operate and have a negative impact on game play. They disrupt the virtual economy put in place by the developers and operated by the players.

Case in point: what if you were playing Monopoly and a friend came in the game after it had started with a whack of Monopoly money. Would you and the other players allow him to bring this additional money on the pretext that he had bought it from a friend of his? How would that affect the game you were playing? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't allow it. Or how about if you were sitting at a poker or black jack table and someone sat down and played with his own deck of cards? Would you allow him? Would the House allow him?

Well it's the same in MMO. It ruins the game in the same manner, and should not and IS NOT allowed, with good reason.

Here are a few articles to sink your teeth in on the subject:

• Next Generation - Why PC Gamer Kicked Out Gold Farmers
• Ars Technica - PC Gamer puts the smack down on gold farmers
• Playfuls.com - PC Gamer Gives UP Gold Farming Ads

And of course, the response as been felt in the blogsphere:

• Terra Nova - Just Say No to gold farmer ads
• Kotaku - Why PC Gamer Dumped Gold Farmers
• Blog Search - "PC Gamer Gold Farming"

Now PC Gamer's initiative may not have a huge impact by itself, but it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully others will follow. As such, as a symbolic gesture more than anything else, I've removed all such sites from my Adsense profile. It's not much, but it's my small contribution.

Here's to you TheVede! Thanks for taking that first step.

MMOG secondary market: the bad and the ugly!

As reported earlier today on Slashdot, okrata.com's Garthilk managed to get an email interview with IGE president, Steve Salyer. Head over for a quick (and dirty) read on some real hard questions and answers (unless it gets too hard ) on a practice that has all camps fired up.

At the end of the interview he asks one innocent question (or loaded, depending on your point of view) that illustrates quite vividly what virtual goods and character sales does to a game. Whichever camp you're in, this debate is far from over, and it's likely to get uglier before it gets resolved. If it ever does.

Personnaly, I'm not in favor of, either the sales of goods, characters, or currencies, simply because:

• it destroys the delicate balance of the virtual market economy that was created be the developpers and the players;
• it puts an unfair advantage on those who have (or are willing to spend) real life money and use it to get ahead in the game;
• it brings real life elements into a virtual world that is trying to dissasociates itself from it.

How would you feel if you had spent hours, weeks, and months in your VW (virtual world) and had build up your character to something very impressive, only to see all your effort (and fun) wasted when you see some newbie kill/destroy off your character/ship/avatar with his uber character he just purchased on eBay? Or try to answer Garthilk's Monopoly question. And do it honestly.