Business And Economy Archive
Thread: eBay Jedi: a College Report
cripplestickmickII
Tue Feb 22, 2005 6:30 pm
#14
I have seen one guy get around the selling of interlectual rights etc by saying he is not selling anything by sony - when he is selling his jedi account for £600 he is selling the 5 months of time he has put in grinding the account. he in no way challenges the moral right etcetcetc.
same for the guys doing credit sales, they are selling their time, not the game or a fraction of the game
Milgram
Wed Feb 23, 2005 3:37 am
#15
Smart_Darwin wrote:
One of reasons I keep hearing for why this practice is condemned is that it violates the intellectual property rights of the game owners. I am not sure I buy this argument. By e-baying characters or credits you are not altering the intellectual property and you are certainly not claiming that it is your creation.
SOE may claim (and perhaps rightly so) that it should have control over how their intellectual property is used, but that is not an IP issue. Controlling the use of our product is an altogether more nebulous issue. For a "real world" example, we can look to the publishing industry: Used book sales seriously curtail the profitability of publishing houses. It is a major factor in the obscene prices on textbooks and the frequent editioning of the very same material. Despite the damage inflicted by this parasitic (depending on your point of view) industry why is it still allowed to continue? Could not a publishing house develop a type of EULA and explicitly prohibit the resale of used books? I suspect that if it was a defensible position it would have occured a while ago.
This brings us the the crux of the E-baying issue. For some reason, consumers of computer hardware and software have accepted that the things we purchase are not our own. Just because it runs on our computer we can't exchange a faulty (or ill-conceived) product, we accept increasingly tyrannical and invasive EULAs; these are things we would never accept when buying a cup of coffee, or a stove or a car.
I don't know how I feel about this issue, but I hope that my 2 cents will encourage more discussion along these lines.
Wow, that is such a brilliant point. The funny thing is, i was talking to some text book sales reps today. I am a TA for a class, and we are considering using some of their material. They were talking about how much the used market pulls on their profits, so they do things like excelent online, restricted access tutorials (how would you like to be tutored by a phd in the field - no kidding, it is available) that come with brand new text books.
They also talked about how text book publishers have the covers made in one plant, the text bound in another, and put together in a third, highly controled plant to prevent the manufacturers from "damaging" some of the books, then selling them on the black market (ebay). Interesting stuff.
GeekLordAragorn12
Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:30 am
#16
Milgram wrote:
First it is important to remember where all the money in SWG comes from: Mostly missions, and a little from looting credits (like when elders give you that and nothing else). During the solo group days (where most of the money in the economy is from)anyone with a half descent template could join a group and go grind credits. The best i ever did per hour is 700k. Usually i was more in the 500k-600k range. So if credits are so easy to grind, why do people need to go outside the game and buy credits with real life currency?
Ummm...if I'm not mistaken, weren't you the person who posted that anyone who had more than 500k exploited?
Milgram
Wed Feb 23, 2005 11:26 am
#17
GeekLordAragorn12 wrote:
Milgram wrote:
First it is important to remember where all the money in SWG comes from: Mostly missions, and a little from looting credits (like when elders give you that and nothing else). During the solo group days (where most of the money in the economy is from)anyone with a half descent template could join a group and go grind credits. The best i ever did per hour is 700k. Usually i was more in the 500k-600k range. So if credits are so easy to grind, why do people need to go outside the game and buy credits with real life currency?
Ummm...if I'm not mistaken, weren't you the person who posted that anyone who had more than 500k exploited?
Ya
. Unfortunately that post got deleted because it was obvious SARCASM. I guess forum modorators have no sense of humor when it comes to mocking the people who want to cap credits at 10 million. How is my thread more rediculous than theirs. I liked that post too .
GeekLordAragorn12
Wed Feb 23, 2005 11:31 am
#18
Milgram wrote:
GeekLordAragorn12 wrote:
Milgram wrote:
First it is important to remember where all the money in SWG comes from: Mostly missions, and a little from looting credits (like when elders give you that and nothing else). During the solo group days (where most of the money in the economy is from)anyone with a half descent template could join a group and go grind credits. The best i ever did per hour is 700k. Usually i was more in the 500k-600k range. So if credits are so easy to grind, why do people need to go outside the game and buy credits with real life currency?
Ummm...if I'm not mistaken, weren't you the person who posted that anyone who had more than 500k exploited?
Ya
Yea, ok. I was just checking about that...I was rather confused as to whether you were being sarcastic or just plain stupid
KillerCod
Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:28 pm
#19
Don't have a problem with it, one way or the other. It's not "cheating", and I can't really say that it is "wrong" from a "moral" standpoint either.
I don't think it would BE an issue if SOE was getting a piece of the action out of it, now would it? Let THEM start selling credits and pre-made accounts, and I bet there would be no controversy.
No intellectual property is exchanging hands here, it's the time that someone has spent working on thier character/credits. SOE has already been paid thier $15.95 (or more) a month for that person to play the game.
Yes, I agree that we are accepting for granted more and more invasive tactics by software and hardware vendors to use "thier" products, and that we wouldn't stand for it in some other aspects of our lives.
Now, having said my piece I hope I don't get banned or kicked out of the game!
I don't think it would BE an issue if SOE was getting a piece of the action out of it, now would it? Let THEM start selling credits and pre-made accounts, and I bet there would be no controversy.
No intellectual property is exchanging hands here, it's the time that someone has spent working on thier character/credits. SOE has already been paid thier $15.95 (or more) a month for that person to play the game.
Yes, I agree that we are accepting for granted more and more invasive tactics by software and hardware vendors to use "thier" products, and that we wouldn't stand for it in some other aspects of our lives.
Now, having said my piece I hope I don't get banned or kicked out of the game!
Niccolado
Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:53 pm
#20
When I read this I really had to add something to the discussion...
1. If SOE starts selling credits ingame it would completely ruin the ingame trade system. In a NPC loot-and-sell all kinds of equipment, it might work, but not in a system where the crafters make the equipment. The Echonomy would totally be messed up. Thats why i am so angry with SOE, because from what I have heard (just rumours tough..) they who did the credit dupe did not get permaban!
Think about it. If you could easily get your hands on lets say 50.000.000 credits you could buy quite a lot. if you where the only one who bought this ammount of cash! but lets imagine that "only" 10% of the player mass buy credits legally from SOEs (if they where selling credits!!) That would increase the people with 50 mill credits to lets say... 10.000 people(?) on each server. So 10k of people suddenly owns 50 million credits each. that will press the prices up ofcource, but at the same time it will completely make they who dont buy credits from SOE out of equipment! Because they cant afford to buy that common Powerhammer to 50k or 100k credits! Thats called inflasion and is NOT good for the society in general! And if 100% of the people bought 50M credits...whats the point in bringing in all these cash anyway, because the echonomy would have done a rocket jump so high that if someone where selling bananas on the bazzar you woul pay 10k credit for it!! And at that point, SOE would be better off messing with the echonomy...
2. The sale of characters I dont know. Never done it, will never do it. Not because its illegal by SOE, but because i see no point in starting up a game where i am already the "winner". I want to work myself up the hirachy, and at the end say: yes. I am now Jedi Master. And I have gone all the way myself! Should it be allowed? I dunno. Never tought about it really :=) But I would never have done it. Thats for sure.
1. If SOE starts selling credits ingame it would completely ruin the ingame trade system. In a NPC loot-and-sell all kinds of equipment, it might work, but not in a system where the crafters make the equipment. The Echonomy would totally be messed up. Thats why i am so angry with SOE, because from what I have heard (just rumours tough..) they who did the credit dupe did not get permaban!
Think about it. If you could easily get your hands on lets say 50.000.000 credits you could buy quite a lot. if you where the only one who bought this ammount of cash! but lets imagine that "only" 10% of the player mass buy credits legally from SOEs (if they where selling credits!!) That would increase the people with 50 mill credits to lets say... 10.000 people(?) on each server. So 10k of people suddenly owns 50 million credits each. that will press the prices up ofcource, but at the same time it will completely make they who dont buy credits from SOE out of equipment! Because they cant afford to buy that common Powerhammer to 50k or 100k credits! Thats called inflasion and is NOT good for the society in general! And if 100% of the people bought 50M credits...whats the point in bringing in all these cash anyway, because the echonomy would have done a rocket jump so high that if someone where selling bananas on the bazzar you woul pay 10k credit for it!! And at that point, SOE would be better off messing with the echonomy...
2. The sale of characters I dont know. Never done it, will never do it. Not because its illegal by SOE, but because i see no point in starting up a game where i am already the "winner". I want to work myself up the hirachy, and at the end say: yes. I am now Jedi Master. And I have gone all the way myself! Should it be allowed? I dunno. Never tought about it really :=) But I would never have done it. Thats for sure.
ALeoNN
Thu Feb 24, 2005 12:56 am
#21
I think the underlying questions that are to beaddressed by this report are: What is the concept of virtual ownership, and how much is an intangible object valued?
GeekLordAragorn12
Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:46 am
#24
Earnhardt wrote:
Check this out.
SO U MEEEN AI KIN HEV MI DEDY PAI SO AI KIN WEN @ STRA WAERS??11!
Smart_Darwin
Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:23 am
#25
An even more important question is who owns our hard drives? Who owns the 0's and 1's in it? Do I have any right to claim ownership for anything that I pay for in the digital universe? Why should it be ok for a company to say they will take my money, but retain all rights for the delivery of the service (including not being able to provide that service reliably)?
Milgram
Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:57 pm
#26
Smart_Darwin wrote:
An even more important question is who owns our hard drives? Who owns the 0's and 1's in it? Do I have any right to claim ownership for anything that I pay for in the digital universe? Why should it be ok for a company to say they will take my money, but retain all rights for the delivery of the service (including not being able to provide that service reliably)?
All your player's info is stored on their drives. All you keep on yours is a key confituration and a set of macros.