Quote Originally Posted by Tigerlilley View Post
Edited to add: I can't help but feel like this is yet another massive blow to our attempts at community building on OCE. Our members of the FC there are more casual and gil purchases for gifts aren't an option for everyone. Plus it signifcantly hinders our prizes from events, obviously.

RIP first Christmas.
Yeah, that's an oof (and it doesn't really help that I often get the anxious feeling that online venues really don't want "communities" in the old social sense anymore, either ... I'm probably overthinking it, but there's a pretty logical seeming case for it, too. See some of my comments about Discord for the likely problem, or all the heat being thrown around towards Zuckerberg in recent years, etc.).

Sadly even not counting the chargeback problems, I'm also not surprised RMT is getting put under the "hyper priority we don't care what gets dinged up in the fight" lens again, given the general scrutiny digital goods have come under lately for various reasons (money laundering, taxes, etc) thanks in large part to NFTs and recent cryptocoin shenanigans. The kind of thing that seems silly for players to care about but likely is something that big business is basically having their arm twisted to.

Wouldn't be the first time I've seen heartless seeming game changes made that seem enough in the face of RL policy shifts to make you at least wonder, either - e.g., Diablo 3 ending its real money auction house feature conspicuously around the time US tax officials were putting "virtual currencies" under the lens (targeting things like Bitcoin of course, but there wasn't any logical reason that D3 gold wouldn't have been covered as well, if Blizzard had continued to officially support its exchange for real money ... indeed, one has to wonder in that light if an insufficiently tough stance against RMT could even get one's ingame currency considered "money." Possibly an overthink there, but could you imagine if it did happen and you did have to pay tax on ingame currency earnings? Active players could basically be forced to become vendors to afford it, seeing that you can't exactly remit taxes in gil or gold ... LOL).

Or WoW reforming its skill system in late BC to always prioritize PvP over PvE needs and heavily mute the effect of RNG, which was right around the time that they were introducing PvP as an esport with cash prize tournaments - and, quite notably, right around the same time US officials were cracking down on those online poker rooms. Possibly a business risk concern as to whether or not WoW was strictly enough a game of skill to avoid becoming collateral damage under such scrutiny?