On the one hand you have a market place (Amazon in your example) where they literally created a platform for third parties to sell their product on, using the name and reputation of the market place (Amazon). This is fully supported. There are legal agreements between the market place and third parties. And so forth. There’s no magic, no assumption needed, nothing.
In-game, there’s nothing of this. Nada. Noppes. Nothing.
The only similarity there is, is that there are buyers. Buyers who purchase an undefinedservice of another player using an in-game currency which can’t, in reasonable ways, leave Blizzard’s ecosystem.
If you see many similarities, then you may be used to AI-hallucinations a bit too much by now.
Fact 1: There is a Service chat in the game as an official plattform for players to buy services from other players.
Fact 2: Blizzard sells wow tokens for 20 bucks in the store, that can be traded for gold to another player and then converted to 13 bucks or gametime by another player. Short: Blizzard is selling wow tokens for a direct profit.
Gold is an in-game virtual currency that can be bought in the store for real money with Blizzard taking a significant share of that transaction directly, and I don’t see why Blizzard should get special treatment regarding wow gold compared to all other companies with in-game virtual currency.
Blizzard is taking a very stupid and silly long-term risk by having something as morally repulsive as boosting for in-game virtual currency in the game.
I think they should rethink how they can make Money with wow, because the current monetization is very archaic with very bad things implemented by previous management. Having boosting and also the wow token in the game opens just too many questions and cans of worms like the pay2win-question, that are unnecessary, and they’re better off moving away from that.
I’m business-friendly in general, I think it’s cool if they make money with cosmetics or something similar, but they should make that money in a way that is healthy for everyone involved including themselves long-term. Else they risk creating a lose-lose-situation in my opinion.
A practically unregulated channel isn’t an official platform. Don’t stretch the reality to suit your narrative, my man.
I don’t think anyone argues that Blizzard makes money out of selling the tokens. That part is crystal clear…
What do you mean special treatment? People buy an in-game currency with real money, and then they are free to do with it as they please. Want to trade it to a level-1 char? …other than that stuff is already a bit restricted afaik…that is up to the player.
As I stated before, the transaction was completed before that point. That’s no longer Blizzard’s responsibility.
Well. First and foremost, boosting in a varying shape, has existed since the initial release and before that even. You will not prevent it, ever. Forbid it, and people do more risky stuff to do it in a more hidden way. Don’t forget the state of these transactions from before the token got introduced…it wasn’t too pretty either.
No. Tokens in the game replaced the shady gold sellers who had been spamming the game in plenty of ways since the day the game released. Boosting can never ever be prevented. If you are in favor of that, you’re fighting an impossible battle.
How would it ever be a lose-lose? Yes, some people make stupid decisions to buy gold equal to 143 Eur to trade it to a level 10 DK in Orgrimmar. So what? The other dude just wants to buy a token to cover some repairs for another expansion, without needing to do a part of the game they don’t like (grind, AH trading, what not).
What you seem to be after is two things:
Ban boosting. Never happening.
Prevent direct Gold trading with other players. This would be oddly limiting to prevent some players from making stupid decisions. Plus it promotes Real Money Transactions, circumventing in-game systems.
Imagine having Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. providing a trade channel for whatever goods & services for private to private trades and making them accountable for when you threw your money at the wrong person there
Yeah…if you can’t understand that those examples would be a completely different context, then I’m not sure what to say. Oh yes…analogies rarely ever make valid points…because…oh yeah, details matter.
A major reason for wow token / in-game boosting is to prevent irl money boosting. It’s 100% supported by Blizzard, it just isn’t regulated by Blizzard. And that is the problem - Blizz is taking profit from sales without giving consumer protection. It wants to have its cake and eat it, under the guise of “better this way than irl money boost”.
