Correct me if I am wrong but I can’t think of another MMO where the PLEX/Gems/Gold/Zen/etc is sold in a player-owned market or player-owned structure. All other MMOs I know of sell their premium currency with a dedicated company-owned trader or interface. Essentially EVE is the only MMO that allows the player-market to pocket the tax from someone buying PLEX/Gems/Zen/etc. For the rest, that tax is a money sink.
What if CCP banned PLEX (and PLEX-items e.g. extractors) from player-markets (i.e. only NPC stations can sell PLEX)? Would EVE lose any of its uniqueness? What would be the impact of such a ban? Is there a reason why CCP has chosen to continue allowing its PLEX to be sold this way?
EVE isn’t so unique. Maybe it was at one point in the past but now…it’s just another MMO with everything an MMO is expected to have: PvP, PvE, NPCs, a store, skill grind and microtransactions.
CCP sells PLEX for real-life money, the players buy and sell PLEX for ISK. That’s the way they set it up. They’re selling in-game time also. Basically, they’re selling air and pixels.
The day financial regulators allowed real-money dealing in games is the day gaming died.
Well first of all, they didn’t so much “allow” it as they didn’t disallow it. Second, companies are just giving the people what they want, and the people want to open loot crates with $2.49 keys and pay 20 dollars for skins and emotes. It’s not like these companies are holding a gun to anyone’s head. They’re doing it because it literally results in the most positive consumer response and makes them the most money.
And quite frankly I’d rather have politicians stay the hell out of my games. If you need an example as to why, just look at Germany.
They didn’t disallow it because somewhere they got kickbacks. Everybody wins but the players.
BS. the people don’t know what they want and neither do the game developers, that’s why a few games make them money hand over fists and many others just simply suck. It’s like movies, no one knows which movie will be a blockbuster and that’s why the studios keep with Age old formulas, very few introduce new amalgams for fear of taking hundred-million $$ risks.
That’s the crooks’ excuse. Like gambling. The house always wins and say “not like we’re holding a gun to their head”.
I believe the second proposition for sure, the first one not so much. Most players don’t like microtransactions and the ones who do don’t know their arse from a whole in the ground or have money to spare on top of rainy-day cash.
I never suggested any politician do anything regarding that. They screw us even more than game developers. Somehow the idea that we need politicians has incrusted itself in the human mind like a blood leach and now we’re stuck with liars and killers who pretend to be our friends every election cycle.
Archeage has APEX - which works the same way as PLEX in EVE Online.
The reason why it is not common is because dual-sub business model doesn’t work as it splits your community. This is also the reason why alpha/omega doesn’t work in Eve Online.
In Archeage it is patron/non-patron (you pay with APEX to become patron) but in later version of Archeage called Archeage: Unchained they changed the business model to buy-to-play which removed APEX following the same business model that is in Archeage’s biggest competitor - Black Desert Online from Pearl Abyss and also in The Elder Scrolls Online from Zenimax Online.
In a buy-to-play model you don’t need a real-to-virtual currency like PLEX since you have no subscriptions.
if you are only looking at currencies then yea there isn’t that many out there but if you expanded a little further you will find there are several mmo’s out there that use other things besides game currency as a form of exchange. Three games that I can think of right off the bat from my gaming history are from Aeria games, grand fantasia, eden eternal and kitsusaga. They may not all be active these days but from what I can remember players were using the loot wheel item crystals as an exchange item over currency and not only that but also cash shop enhancement items too.