Actually many people still see RMT (Real Money Trading) as evil. But something interesting is changing. Last year when we went to the Online Game Developers Conference in Seattle. We were a bit afraid to tell people that we worked in these secondary markets that spring up around games. The reason was that some of the game developers and publishers were very hostile towards us.

So last year we sat back and listened to developers and publishers concerns. We listened about how games can be destroyed by these secondary markets if they get out of control. Especially when some sort of dupe or exploit is found and people abuse the hell out of it. For our company we shifted things a little bit to try to reduce any impact on the games while still working in these markets. That may sound like an oxymoron statement. But here is a belief I have.

I believe that when a game has an in game item or items that people want to trade. If people have any ability at all to trade it outside of the game for real world value then they will. I see this as a fact and there is no way around this. Many games have tried to combat this by making items untradable or worthless. But that can affect the fun of the game. There there is always the fact that people will provide services. Such as power leveling, escorts or information such as guides. No matter what the game this external market always springs up.

Move forward to present day. The Online Game Developers Conference this year was renamed to ION. We attended with several of out staff. We were hearing something new this year. We knew that a few of the US game companies were embracing the sales of in game items as a way for their game to earn revenue. Asian game companies have already been doing this for several years. They in fact brag about how much money is going through the external markets around they games. It's a big cultural difference between North American (Western) and Asian game companies.

Here in the North American market game companies have finally figured out that no matter how hard they work at it these external markets spring up. So what are they to do? Well... Some of them are starting to look at how they can embrace it. Why embrace it? The facts are that more than one game company did studies about their North American markets and found that the external market is a whopping 8x larger that their own sales. What this means is if the game generates say $100,000,000 in sales in a year through retail sales of the game and subscriptions. The external markets selling those services, gold, items and accounts did around $800,000,000 in sales. While game publishers may be internally conflicted about the sales of stuff in the games they can not deny how much money is being left on the table.

We tried to get our sources for this information to go on the record. But both companies that did very similar studies and came out with similar results declined to make any official statements. They state that they did not ever intend on making these results public. Clearly though this is a huge thing to them as they are very excited about the possibilities in this new market.

"RMT" changes to "Second Market"

RMT has become a nasty word in the industry. It often brings up images of Gold Farmers and other stuff that can be harmful to games. Now that several game companies are looking to embrace these secondary markets if they can they have made up a new name for it. For the game sales and subscriptions they are calling this "First Market". for the sales that are happening external to the game that are not necessarily under their control they are calling this the "Second Market". Really it's very close to RMT. Except it's a newer name that says the same thing without some of the undesirable baggage associated with RMT.

On to the future

Now that game companies have seen the light we will start seeing more ways of the game publishers themselves tapping into this second market. New companies are springing up to try to officially support these markets with the approval of the game companies. There are two new player to player trading networks in development. ( http://www.playspan.com and http://www.realitybridge.net ) Playspan already has a large number of games on board and is in beta testing right now. Reality Bridge has had their first round of beta testing and is also getting ready to open to all players of all games. Both of these companies have different approaches as to how to support all of this trading and to provide payments or royalties back to the publishers. I have seen how both of them will be working and I think that both of them are going to be very successful.

Next year at this time I think we will have seen several games published by Western publishers that have adopted the Asian style of free or lo cost to start the game and then pay for certain items in the game to help your advancement.

For those of you that have been the black sheep in these markets for so many years. Your experience in RMT is about to pay off in these new Second Markets. We of course will be in the front lines of these new markets and we are glad that our experience here is starting to pay off in ways that the game industry sees as legitimate. I think for those with experience and who have a long history of honest business. You are about to see a big change in how your company is viewed. I know that for our company personally we are already seeing this change and it is opening up many new opportunities.

I commented on this over at my blog at: The Death of RMT and the Secondary Market

Be sure to check out the site if you get a chance. It's still in beta, and we are still fleshing it out but the general idea is to create a mix between a WSJ/Consumer Reports/Price Matching for the virtual currency industry. It's even got a few pretty (preliminary) charts!

My blog post comments as follows:

Ya know, this can be looked at in so many different points of view. I mean quite frankly, if your a gaming entertainment industry, such as Blizzard.. being the owner of one of the games (World of Warcraft) that endowes more or less MOST of the trafficing of Gold/Items/Accounts...

All that this Second Party business is doing to effect you, is putting your name (World of Warcraft/Blizzard) all over the internet. Not in a bad way either.

Being known as one of the most popular Mmorpg's available.. allows you to thrive and rise above other competition.

Personally, I don't understand what all the fuss is over. Though you may hear people complain about trades gone bad, businesses being found as scams etc, that doesn't make Blizzard look bad.

Furthermore, if it werent for Markee, I would've already quit World of Warcraft. If I would've never found this forum community, I would have never been able to explore the classes and game in the way that I have.





Though this will more than likely never be read by a Blizzard Affiliate... love us, don't hate us.


MarkeeDragon FTW!!

MD,

As one who knows the long history, you were and are a pioneer of RMT. You sure taught me a lot. Many who create the new definitions misrepresent the history, don't understand why the history is relevant, and believe they are inventing something new.

The transition of the industry towards RMT acceptance is all that is new. With a new presentation, RMT is presented as something bold and productive, useful marketing, but on meaning we know better. The only difference is the broader audience. It is claimed RMT acceptance is a sign of maturity in the medium of virtual worlds, but we know better on that point too. Virtual worlds evolve on their own, RMT acceptance has long existed, and the public acceptance of it is simply the evolution in maturity of the hobby industry as a whole.

Validation is the sign the market shift is TOWARDS you, and while the shift is slow, it is permanent. Exciting times, almost makes me wish I was still a gamer... almost.

It is good to see you are still doing well.

Galrahn
Retired Black Company / Non Factors
Minister of Propaganda
I am called many things...

You guys cannot possibly think that if the big games set up some kind of system to resell accounts, items, currency in game they will not IMMEDIATELY cut out all of us. It'll be game over so fast for all of us.


I do not see this as a good thing, at all.

Please lets work on our grammar, sentence structure, spelling, and general Language Arts/English skills before we submit articles more articles like this one. Good article, just hard to read because of massive grammatical mistakes and both run-on and fragmented sentences.

Yes, before you work on "articles more articles like this one"
: D MD...I have to relate my own hesitation that any acceptance by a game developer of RLTs cannot be good for the small companies that make up the bulk of us. We would be cut out of the buying/selling loop: likely by price undercutting. How cheap can a developer sell gold for in relation to what we can farm it?

I don't see how it can be a good sign, companies are never helpful to people that do not give them a cut.