Home » Games News » Cutting out the middle-man
Back to the IGE and real-money transaction issue, the other benefit here is that moving to a micro transaction model effectively cuts out the middle man.
Companies like IGE made wonderland Gold off gold farmers' backs, and sold in-game items and currency for real cash. Allowing the gamer to make these transactions legitimately, in-game, using systems built by the game developers to do as such, drops the hammer on these grey-market middle-men and puts the power back in both the gamer's and the developers' hands. And money in our hands is much better than money in theirs, don't you think?
At the end of the day, I still find it comical that many in the western world complain about "yet another pay-to-play MMO" and shell out what many would consider a hefty (and slowly increasing, as we move to more complex, richer MMO experiences) monthly fee, yet were willing to pay tens, hundreds or even thousands of dollars on eBay or IGE for an in-game item. It seems ridiculous, doesn't it?
As both a gamer and someone who works in enterprise software development for a living, I find that I can distance myself from the emotional "allowing and legitimizing RMT is bad and micro transactions will ruin the game" mentality because I see the value gained by going with an alternate business model.
