Quote:
I think that you need to check the laws for your state. In DC, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, the four states I know about, it is illegal for underage persons to vend for real money except under certain circumstances - and an online auction house is not one of them. It doesn't matter what account they put the profits into, it is illegal. I doubt underage persons will be able to legally fund their account this way.
Moreover, there is a whole issue of self-employment for minors who make a bunch of money. And if a parent finds out that their child sells $1000 bucks of items on the RMAH and gets angry because their kid is online too much, you can bet they will sue Blizz for child labour infractions, and there are plenty of judges - I am not saying I agree with them - who would rule in favour of the parents. And this comes on top of using credit cards without permission. So, even if it is legal in your state, I doubt Blizzard will risk the lawsuits.
I could imagine a slippery scenario to get out of this dilemma where Blizzard says that your Blizz account represents "monopoly money" that adults can exchange out for real money if they want. But then if Blizz does that, there is very little difference between this and the system I suggested. Blizz already said they weren't doing that, though, and I doubt it would resolve any legal issues if they did.
I think it is a safe bet underage persons will not have access to the RMAH.
With the RMAH you have an option; attach an account with the 3rd party provider to your Bnet account (eg. Paypal), or have any money earned from the RMAH deposited into your e-account.
If the money goes into your e-account it cannot be cashed out later, so for all intents and purposes it is "monopoly money" and no different from gold or Microsoft points or TF2 hats.|||Quote:
With the RMAH you have an option; attach an account with the 3rd party provider to your Bnet account (eg. Paypal), or have any money earned from the RMAH deposited into your e-account.
If the money goes into your e-account it cannot be cashed out later, so for all intents and purposes it is "monopoly money" and no different from gold or Microsoft points or TF2 hats.
You can attach a 3rd party to your bnet account, but each AH transaction is individual in terms of whether you want the cash out or not; also, there is a circular way to revolve the money from your bnet account out, by buying items with the b-net money, then selling the items, and then taking those proceeds out...that said, you may not get back what was in there, depending on what you sell.|||Quote:
What Torr is missing though is the most important part that differentiates World of WarCraft and Diablo3. While in WoW the story of the game constantly progresses trough content patches, which justifies a monthly subscription fee, when it comes to Diablo3 we get all the content with the box, the story does not progress trough content patches, but only trough expansions.That and the lack of features puts Diablo3 in a position in which requirement for a monthly fee would be simply unreasonable. And before people start arguing, the main argument would be that Blizzard themselves don't feel comfortable enough with a subscription fee model for Diablo3, since they are well aware that they cannot justify a monthly subscription fee for a game that doesn't have most of the features of games that do require a subscription fee, the most important of which is continuous development of the story and the content, and that is why they are not going with a subscription based model.
I'm not missing that point, because I agree with everything you said. I was heavily against monthly fees in another thread (Machinations), so I didn't want to come here and repeat myself. My whole point was what you said... D3 in it's current form doesn't give you enough to warrant monthly fees, and I also agree with you that Blizzard is not going to have a subscription fee for Diablo in the future.
To me the comparison of D3 to WoW proves the point that a monthly fee would be unreasonable at this time.|||Quote:
I also find extremely hilarious how some players think that if a game does not have a subscription free is free and you don't really have the right to demand a quality service for $50-60 game. The most hilarious statement of all was from the previous thread about how the cost for the game "goes for the development, but the support comes extra". Customers should expect support for the product they are purchasing, they shouldn't be explained by random people on the forums that things that don't have monthly fee are free.
Seriously. Some people seem to want to pay more. To them I say Blizz, I'm sure, will happily accept any checks you wish to send them.|||Quote:
You can attach a 3rd party to your bnet account, but each AH transaction is individual in terms of whether you want the cash out or not; also, there is a circular way to revolve the money from your bnet account out, by buying items with the b-net money, then selling the items, and then taking those proceeds out...that said, you may not get back what was in there, depending on what you sell.
Yes, but the point is that there is no legal issue with allowing anyone to sell an item for virtual currency, regardless of their age.|||Quote:
You can attach a 3rd party to your bnet account, but each AH transaction is individual in terms of whether you want the cash out or not; also, there is a circular way to revolve the money from your bnet account out, by buying items with the b-net money, then selling the items, and then taking those proceeds out...that said, you may not get back what was in there, depending on what you sell.
But you see it is not virtual currency, regardless of how it feels. Someone paid you real money and no matter what account it goes into (Blizzard or third-party), it is real money. Indeed, Blizzard plan to take a percentage of it (the transaction fee) and call it real revenue.
If Blizzard made this monopoly money, then they would say that choosing to put money in your Blizzard account means purchasing this "monopoly money", which is equivalent in value to real-world dollars, but not real-world dollars. In addition to that probably not holding up in court when legal issues, it would mean that Blizzard could not collect real revenue from sales where the money goes into your Blizzard account.
But, Blizzard has already stated that their plan is not to do this and that the Blizzard account will have real money, which means it is illegal in most states for underage players to take part in the RMAH.
My suggestion for an exclusively gold-for-item auction house and exclusively cash-for-gold auction house does nothing to prevent buying items for cash, which I believe should be in the game. It just puts an intermediary of gold in there, thereby allowing underage players to access items that would be off limits, ensuring a gold sink, possibly reducing lawsuits (because underage persons can wait until age 18 to sell their gold) and moving the brunt of the transaction fees to those who will not care as much about them - something that is good for revenue made off of transactions and, because more people are likely to stick around, expansions.|||^Not a percentage. Flat fee.|||Quote:
^Not a percentage. Flat fee.
Yep. Sorry.|||Quote:
There are people who are very quick to call out Blizzard for trying to make money on the RMAH, who DON'T appreciate the fact that this game is free.
I understand what you mean, but the game isn't free. It'll be $60 I'm assuming, and probably another $60 for the xpac, just like it's predecessors. Like someone else mentioned, that will probably do them just fine being that they're going to sell an insane amount of copies. Sure, they could make more in some way or form, but do they need/want to? That's the point worth arguing I suppose.|||Quote:
I understand what you mean, but the game isn't free. It'll be $60 I'm assuming, and probably another $60 for the xpac, just like it's predecessors. Like someone else mentioned, that will probably do them just fine being that they're going to sell an insane amount of copies. Sure, they could make more in some way or form, but do they need/want to? That's the point worth arguing I suppose.
Not only that but they made the decision to make the game online only. If they had included offline single player then it could be argued that online support isn't included in the initial price.
No comments:
Post a Comment