I’d like to offer a huge congratulations to PC Gamer for taking a stand and refusing advertising from IGE and other auction sites. In my opinion this was the right thing to do and it took a lot of guts. It’s saying ‘not all money is the same,’ which I strongly agree with. I think we’re beginning to see the impact that this kind of unsanctioned activity is having on in-game activities in MMO’s. – SOE’s John Smedley, in his first blog entry.

I just had a quick chat with a couple of old guildies from the SWG days. One of them was poking around on the main Sony Station site, looking for one of their other games (yes, they do make non-MMOGs). He got to the bottom of the page and saw something that, as he put it “Made me wonder what fucking alternate reality I was living in.” This is what he saw:

Right. So here you’ve got your standard Google ads. All well and good. Except, no one has made sure the ads aren’t for SELLING THE COMPANY’S PROPERTY through third party vendors. I know the SOE folks are are all hot for their ’solution’ to the fact that they’ve put a treadmill into the game. I know that not all RMT is bad, no matter what the academic folks say. Heck, as long as I’m casting stones, I’ll be up front about it: I’ve purchased in-game currency. I’m no angel. But there is a world of difference between some random guy buying some gil (oops), and a major force in Massive games hosting ads on their front page for third party RMTers. And crappy RMTers at that … jeez, guys, where’s IGE?

Obviously, this is a mistake. No one would have ok’d this at the SOE manse if they’d taken the time to think this through. No one has a problem with Google ads on your frontpage … it’s yours to do with as you please, right? But c’mon, guys! Wake up! What does it say to all the nice little Wizards and Necros that don’t buy gold when you’ve got ads for their sale right there front and center? The negative reaction to the Station Exchange will be nothing compared to what will happen if every EQ player comes to understand that you are advertising for ‘Chinese Farmers’ (to use the pejorative).

Indeed, this is bigger than just bad publicity – Remember that thing about the Korean stance on RMT? I imagine that’s a country SOE wants to continue doing business in … but I could be mistaken.

Seriously: Smed, whoever in marketing cooked this up, fix this. Like, yesterday. You need to keep on top of these things, guys. Cuz somebody’s always watching … and not all of them are as nice as I am.

I’ll leave you with some words from a more articulate man than I, Mr. Scott Jennings:

While Station Exchange’s introduction rubbed me in several wrong ways (since as an MMO player RMT trading makes me ill and as a developer I see people trying to buy their way past a game as the ultimate symptom that the game has issues), at the end of the day it’s SOE’s game to run … With outside arbitrage dealers such as IGE, none of the above applies. And interestingly, despite IGE’s initial ‘Gosh, Station Exchange is great, it legimitizes our business model, happy happy!’ press releases’ oddly enough, IGE still sells things on non-Station Exchange EQ2 servers. Funny how that works. I guess the people who specifically chose to remain on non-RMT enabled servers for that game? Yeah, they shouldn’t get to make that choice. It should be made for them. Yeah.

Update: Smed wrote to say: “We added google ads and are filtering out RMT sites or at least we are supposed to be. We absolutely will not take ads from those sites. They will be taken down immediately.” So good deal. Looks like it was just a mistake after all. Thanks guys.

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