Aaron Ciccheli who owns 7.5% of GGG, owns two RMT websites that sell POE items.

"

Lothorienn wrote:

Meanwhile a friend of mine got permabanned without any evidence he was RMT-ing.
Which means if i want someone from the top people in a league banned i just have to report them, or make an actuall RMT offer on some 3rd party website and get them banned.
Stay classy GGG.

Report who ever you like, if you don't have proof and GGG don't see anything they won't get banned

As for your friend, GGG have plenty of evidence if they are telling him why he was banned, they just don't share it and waste their time dealing with the bullshit arguments that would arise.

It's amazing and sad that people will turn just about anything to make a political point and attempt to insult the other party over things that have nothing to due with government politics.


As for RMT, the primary stigma as I've always known it is that there is a general consensus that any game that forces people to spend real money beyond typical game fees (like original price, expansions) are seen poorly for having to "pay to win".

The very first time I ever heard about Path of Exile was someone I met in playing CounterStrike 1.6 years ago, and that he made his living with RMT in it. I had lost interest in d2 by that point and had no interest in getting into another game that centered around farming countless mobs for loot.

Years later, I felt the urge to farm for loot again. Everything from D2 I had was long since deleted, and in trying to get old and new battle.net squared away I figured I'd just move to D3. Playing the D3 demo repeatedly with different classes, I wasn't a big fan of the progression system.

As I was deciding on whether to pick up Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3, I saw PoE mentioned. I figured, its free to play, it will help me decide which of those I want to purchase.

Instead, I ended up spending more on PoE than the purchase price of both those games combined.

To me real money trading by itself isn't an issue - time has a value after all. However, I also feel a stigma towards paying real world money for virtual items of any sort. Yet, at the same time, having spent countless hours grinding across various games - I can also see why people are willing to spend real money for the sake of that time.

Going back to D2 - when I was playing, as annoying as the spambots were - they also gave me a sense of how active the game was, despite being over 10 years old at the time. If multiple companies still felt it was worth the effort to advertise, then there was still a notable population playing.

In short, you'll never fully eliminate rmt as there will always be people willing to pay extra to save time or out of convenience.

On that same note the money I've spent to support GGG has been with 2 purposes - convenience for me (more storage space = more time to decide to get rid of mostly junk) and to support the game model.

The game I was coming from was still based on a subscription. It had a famous IP but went F2P to stay afloat. While MTX was keeping it going, player feedback was largely ignored and it placed a heavy focus on gambling boxes and reskins of popular mtx.

While I haven't been in PoE long, it's refreshing to see relatively open and active communication between the dev team and playerbase. You don't always have to agree with or like what they say - some of you guys have no idea how much worse it could be.

Don't get me wrong, it's important for the gaming community to be weary of unethical practices. But let's try to not make mountains out of molehills either.

I knew going into PoE that the game's very design meant RMT was bound to have some impact. I can still play without feeling the need to spend real money on virtual loot just to get to end game.

having read the whole thread, the reddit response form chris and the links provided by everyone the feeling i am left with personally is:


shady as fuck.

Indeed its Shady

That was quite a read.

Anything on reddit MUST be true. LOL

IMO, the love affair Chris seems to have with troll land aka reddit has paid its dividend out.

"

CoAx wrote:

making money off a game that has poor drop rates and a bad trading system which incentivizes RMT.

Keep your RMT going and we will give you shares and make sure the game stays a grindfest, in return you need to give us a large portion of your profits. sounds like a good business plan

have you played diablo2?
THAT game had poor droprates.

to my knowledge, PoE even has (relatively) higher droprates for build-enabling uniques.
if you spend even 1 cent of real moneys on a rise-of-the-phoenix you are plain stupid or pathologically impatient. i find 5 every league and vendor them.

oh wait, the game has chase-uniques that are rather hard to acquire? ofc that must be designed to incentivize rmt, not because the whole point of this genre is to aim for progressively rarer and better loots.

"

PaoloPinkel wrote:

oh wait, the game has chase-uniques that are rather hard to acquire? ofc that must be designed to incentivize rmt, not because the whole point of this genre is to aim for progressively rarer and better loots.

And what about meta shifts? Allowing clearly OP stuff to exist for leagues and then nerfing it into the ground with majority of its realted items?

Or how about advertising trading in your game as crucial, and saying that droprates are based on the premise that players will most likely have to trade to get what they want, but then making the trading process as annoying and clunky as possible (and refusing to fix it)?

Now, I am not saying GGG are in a boat with RMT, but you should realize that thoughts like this will start appearing in people's heads, and I can't blame them.

The only thing I am upset about is that a part of my money went to RMT 'businessman' (current or past, I don't care).