Hard to say, but this screenshot is making the rounds:
eBay’s proactively removing RMT auctions is huge in and of itself. However, there’s another side to this: note the MMO being referenced in the CS chat. Note that UO is one of the few MMOs that permit RMT, so eBay removing UO RMT auctions would be… pretty huge.
Previously, eBay’s official policy is that they would pull an auction at the original copyright holder’s request. Of course, this then mandated a race between an MMO’s CS department and the thousands of RMT dealers to see who could keep an auction up the longest. This back-and-forth is what instigated the Blacksnow vs Mythic lawsuit; Mythic asked eBay to pull Blacksnow’s RMT auctions, to which Blacksnow asserted was stomping on their business. (The whole sordid story is up here; it ended with Blacksnow disappearing into the midst to their legal team’s consternation.)
In any event, there are still hundreds of RMT auctions on eBay last I checked.
Discussion ongoing in the UO community here and here. Markee Dragon, a large UO gold seller/news site, claims to have been contacted by eBay here.
#1 by Nicademus on January 25th, 2007
People still play UO????
Seriously?
#2 by Axecleaver on January 25th, 2007
This sounds like a financial decision for ebay. It takes a lot of FTE’s to respond to copyright holders every day, and I would bet that someone ran the numbers and realized it just wasn’t worth the overhead to continue to broker sales for these items.
Think of all the $20 gold sales auctions they must remove on a daily basis.
#3 by con on January 25th, 2007
I think the problem here is that there’s no way for ebay(paypal) to even begin fairly judging a dispute.
#4 by VPellen on January 25th, 2007
Yeah, I’m guessing they just don’t want to deal with the disputes that occur when gold-sellers don’t “pay up”.
#5 by MrOrange on January 25th, 2007
No no no
its all smoke and mirrors.
You cannot PUT words in CERTAIN orders, or it will be a violation.
I tested it out lastnight, as a matter of fact, in a show of faith to the wife after a discussion over WOW
I listed my account.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330080308362
it took me 10 minutes to get it to list. having the word CDKEY in the title circumnavigated a filter that said ” You may not list ONLY virtual items.PLEASE CHANGE YOUR TITLE”
Anyway,this morning the wife told me to take it down so i did. but that does not mean it wont go back up ROFL
#6 by Wolfe on January 26th, 2007
A probably cause for eBay to worry about this is the fraudulent buyers who use stolen credit card numbers to purchase virtual things. All small time sellers are tricked into selling their stuff to these scammers a few times before learning how to get clean sales. (And even then you get tricked on occation as the methods arnt fully reliable.)
PayPal will not help the scammed seller in these cases so they earn a great lot of undesireable brand value for every scam incident. (Since most of the scam victims are the type of player who isnt an RMT pro but ordinary joe who just wants to get a $300 for the trouble of having played WoW for a year.)
A few years ago the scam buyers got their hands on maybe 20-40% of the total sales for some of the games. That will be many angry users for PayPal to worry about now.
#7 by MrOrange on January 26th, 2007
Lum,you got a severe lack of debate on your site.
#8 by Nyght on January 26th, 2007
So it’s all about counterparty risk.. and whatnot..
#9 by slog on January 26th, 2007
Ebay has been getting a reputation as a haven for scammers. Maybe they are trying to clean up their reputation?
#10 by Worthingcomputers on January 26th, 2007
I’m Worthingcomputers who posted the screenshot
I was equally surprised at the news from Markeedragon, so I decided to check into it myself
I sent off an email via their contact us area, but the delay in receiving a reply can be 3 days, so I decided to open up a chat session and that’s when I was told the rumours are true
BUT
The stratics Admin (Orvago) was apparently told that it was a FALSE rumour, yet many others got the same reply via live chat as I did.
#11 by Worthingcomputers on January 26th, 2007
Forgot to add, the number of auctions yesterday was upwards of 3200, later it dropped to 2782
There are now (as of this time) 2158 auctions in the Ultima Online category
#12 by damijin on January 26th, 2007
This is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that eBay sees far more traffic as a virtual billboard than it does for actual auctions. Most RMT companies simply use eBay to direct buyers toward another website for their gold purchasing needs.
Since these people don’t actually make much money on eBay auctions themselves, they’ll continue to shoot up advertisement auctions and circumvent any word filters eBay puts into place. They’ll get banned eventually, sure, but when you’re trying to get people to actually leave eBay, losing your reputation rating doesn’t mean much.
Now, that’s not to say that eBay’s stance isn’t a big deal. In light of the Korea going-ons, it gives RMT a major legitimacy hit, and that’s good for everyone who doesn’t want to see IGE leading the North-American Farmer’s Association of Gold Selling.
#13 by Jason Ballew on January 26th, 2007
Just letting you know that I linked to you in regards to this.
Personally, I think the MMO companies should just internalize the entire RMT thing like SOE did and be done with it.
#14 by Jeff Freeman on January 26th, 2007
I think if you are going to allow it, then you’ve got to provide support for it in order to protect your customers from your other customers.
Funny thing is, though I’ve always been firmly in the “3rd party RMT companies are parasites”-camp, I could see contracting them to support RMT in an old-n-busted game, if my resources were too busy on new-hotness game to implement support.
If I were the first company to do that, I’d probably get a real good deal, too…
Nah, screw that, I’d never trust the parasites.
#15 by MrOrange on January 26th, 2007
Yah,why not, i mean if there is a large enough demand, why shouldnt the game companies OPENLY sell gold instead of behind the scenes
I hope noone is niave enough to think some of the RMTs are not Blizzard,Mythic,etc,etc. I mean..when you have a printing press,why NOT print your own money.
#16 by Andrew Crystall on January 26th, 2007
MrOrange,
Because that directly affecys the ability of players to compete (either they reduce other spouts, hurting players who don’t buy, or they don’t and it’s inflationary).
Trade between players DOES NOT have this issue.
That’s why.
As for Ebay’s descision, wow, Christmas has come early for IGE.
#17 by Sam Fisher on January 28th, 2007
Actually I think this might be true. I sold 2 WoW accounts about 3 weeks ago to a RMT company. I noticed this past week on my feedback that it showed they were no longer a registered user.
I sent them an email to see what was going on since I was planning on selling another WoW account in a couple months.
He said that Ebay suspended their Ebay account due to violations in selling Guild Wars currency.
Oddly enough my friend sent me this screen shot today, so I think its legit.
#18 by Former WoW Player on January 29th, 2007
It took me 3 postings to get my WoW account sold. It was really annoying to have eBay keep pulling my auction. I thought there was a lawsuit years back with some kid that was selling vitual items from games and he won the case by saying it was his time, not the item that was of value and that is what the person was paying for. I saw one person on eBay selling “a joke” along with a FREE WoW Account.
#19 by Joe on January 29th, 2007
Internalizing the RMT is not the answer to this problem, but it helps to a degree. There are a great number of players who do not want to play on servers populated by RMT players. Sony did make a safe haven for the buyers however a great many of the buyers do not make players on these servers. They do not want to have a destroyed in game economy. They want to help destroy it over time.
No trade items and an official ID check at every logon would be the only solution. (an unrealistic one of course)
Until they make a drastic change I am glad to see someone doing something about it. They are doing more than SOE has done in the past year.
#20 by PowerGamers on February 1st, 2007
This unwise move by eBay will lose them millions of dollars in auction fees and double the profits of giant companies such as IGE. The MMORPG industry shows a high demand of in-game currency and where’s a high demand, marketers will always provide a wide array of offers such as Power-Gamers RPG Vault. Games like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, EverQuest, StarWars Galaxy, Guildwars, SilkRoad, Lineage and the list could go on forever, are highly addictive and players will go to great lengths to enrich their gaming experience and otherwise enhance their virtual characters by purchasing the items and in-game currency for real cash.
#21 by Whatever on March 27th, 2007
This sucks, because IGE is already lame enough, they offer you $50 for your accounts and in turn sell it for $500. They wont even fix Playerauctions so people can upgrade to seller accounts, yes they own it. Bad move Ebay…