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According to Jeffrey Steefel, executive producer at Turbine, developer of Lord of the Rings Online, paying real money for in-game items is the wave of the future.

Ah, the beauty of the Internet. Remember when we gamers used to pay fifty bucks for a game, and possibly throw down for a strategy guide or some special controller? Now we've got subscription games, including pay-to-not see ads and pay-for-the-full experience. We've also got the lovely micropayments for additional content, and of course, an entire real economy rooted in virtual gold. We now have sweatshops existing solely for the purpose of harvesting virtual currency and then selling it for real money.

Joystiq posted about Jeffrey Steefel's interview with Eurogamer where he talked about paying real money for your virtual desires. Steefel said in the interview:

Our position is pretty straightforward right now. Our responsibility is to the subscribers of the game, to deliver to them the experience they expect. So we certainly do not support people farming or taking advantage of the system in that way. It's against our Terms of Service and we do try and enforce that. ... But, we all know that something will happen in the next two to five years to business models in general, so we're paying attention to what's going on; watching what's going on with Sony Station whose servers support and manage this.

Hmm, I find it kind of funny that he says they don't support fold farming. Hello! The moment you support monetary worth for in-game items you are supporting gold farming. Of course Steefel doesn't support it in principle, but think of it like whenever you hear politicians or see bumper stickers that say "I support our troops." You don't need to say you support them. We all support them by paying taxes, which fund the military. Even people who don't like the troops, or don't agree with what they're doing, are supporting the troops as long as they're paying taxes.

The more developers encourage, enable, or support (however you want to call it) virtual property having real value, the more we'll see gold farming sweatshops popping up. They can also attempt to enforce their terms of service, but gold farms exist to circumvent those enforcements. The fact is, the more ways you find to sell something, the more black markets will find ways to exploit it.

Hey, thanks: Joystiq

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Blackbolt

Posted at: 06/04/07 at 7:01 PM PST

I don't see the point in purchasing virtual items. It's the lamest scam ever. If it's not bad enough we have to pay for online, now we have to pay more for items now. I still can't believe there's gold farming on WoW and players actually paying for it. How can people become nearly obsessed to a point where you actually start paying for items? Plus with SecondLife and all the other virtual reality games, it's only going to get worse.

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