Now we can all become Gold Sellers

**Speaker** · 12/17/2007 04:58:52

Sitting here this morning reading the Wall Street Journal and see an interesting small story on page B-2.

Seems a new start-up company called Live Gamer just raised 24-million dollars and will start partnering with different online gaming companies so those game players can sell their virtual loot. Who are they partnering with? Why SONY of course. Seems we as players will be able to sell our loot for real cash and retain 90% of the sale with SONY and Live Gamer retaining the rest. Turns out Gold Selling is now a 2-billion dollar a year business and they (SONY) want their cut. Guess IGE should of cut a deal earlier.

As one Venture Capitalist is quoted " I am very bullish on virtual goods as a way of monetizing consumer audiences." And SONY says (which allows sales in EQ2), said "There is a need for an independently operated marketplace for virtual good", so farm away.

http://www.livegamer.com/ The SOE Logo is already up onsite.

**Toldeo**

Let's wait for a red comment here. I hope this isn't what I think it is.

Gold selling and buying has ruined vanguard enough already.

**Rokenn**

The next thing you know you will start having to pay taxes on the value of your character.

**Toldeo**

Who do I have to pay taxes? SOE? America? my own country?

**Rokenn** · 12/17/2007 05:01:27

Double post ftl

**Rokenn**

Toldeo wrote:

Who do I have to pay taxes? SOE? America? my own country?

The US of course! Since the servers are located here. Now pay up!

**Saoraid**

so you admit browsing gold seller sites?!

BURN HIM!!! SMILEY

(guys face it, a millions of dollar business is going to attract someone always, and the big ones tend to be the ones who first of all are good in million of dollar businesses and second of all are always looking for more million of dollar businesses SMILEY

)

**Speaker**

Rokenn@Seradon wrote:

The next thing you know you will start having to pay taxes on the value of your character.

Well IRS is already looking at Second life where people are earning enough money to live on, technically anything you sell and profit is taxed. Hmmm, will SOE and Live Gamer mail out 1099's?

**Rokenn**

http://www.news.com/Are-virtual-*bleep*..._3-6027212.html

**Saoraid**

Speaker wrote:

Rokenn@Seradon wrote:
The next thing you know you will start having to pay taxes on the value of your character.
Well IRS is already looking at Second life where people are earning enough money to live on, technically anything you sell and profit is taxed. Hmmm, will SOE and Live Gamer mail out 1099's?

everything you earn profit with as a small income private person you forgot to add.

**Simnir**

it was only a matter of time before a company like this was going to come out. and, of course, im not surprised by the soe logo. funcom is on there too.

Said Trond Aas, CEO of Funcom, "Virtual trading has the potential to open an entirely new dimension for our players' in-world experience, but it has also caused endless grief through the actions of gold farmers and fraud artists, as well as the generally poor quality of service to participants. Live Gamer makes it possible for us to satisfy players' growing demand for this type of activity by providing a legitimate outlet that protects their experiences."

red highlighted text... yea...

**redpill**

The old addage "If you can't beat em, join em" comes to mind.

I imagine it came down to an accounting/management issue. They discussed it and probably realised they were spending too much time/money fighting the gold seller/farmers and decided they should just try to make money from the situation instead.

It's kind of like the drug war in the US (although gold selling is much more trivial by comparison). Some people will say that we should give in to the drug trade and at least be able to tax it and make money from it, as opposed to spending billions fighting a losing battle.\

In the end, there were just too many of them to overcome. You get one, another pops up in his place. In some ways you can blame your fellow gamers for keeping this new industry alive by supporting it with purchases.

Astuun

This won't end well.

**Akroma**

All something like this would allow them to do is regulate the flow of transfer of their product rather than some third party. Honestly, it's about damned time they got control of this problem. There's a market here and SOE is going to tap it, doesn't mean that it will be in an unfair or poorly implemented way either.

Ardenya

You guys obviously keep forgetting that SOE already does RTM trades fro quite some time. They opened special ruleset servers, Station Exchange, for EQ2 I think 2 3 years ago. On these servers players can buy items and cash for RL $$. The idea of players selling loot for $$ is not new, look at Second Life, its basically a turn-around of the classic RTM trade. Btw you can not transfer to or from these EQ2 SE servers, they are closed environments.

So, do you really think that SOE will bring this to all their games and all servers? Are you really thinking they would be that dumb? Thats not even pessimistic anymore...