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.

We caught a lot of flack when we launched Station Exchange, but that quickly died down and frankly I’m now convinced that this is something that some portion of the people that play these games want to do… and we have no problem with that, as long as it doesn’t detract from other people’s enjoyment of the game. By launching Station Exchange on some servers for EQ II, we moved a lot of that activity to the Exchange servers (obviously, it still happens on the other servers, but the level of activity has been significantly reduced). It’s also interesting to note that we haven’t seen a big difference in play style or activity on the Exchange servers.

The difference is that on the exchange servers everyone’s on a level playing field because this kind of activity is both allowed and regulated. On the other non-exchange servers, there are people that do break the rules and engage in this… and unfortunately this causes us customer service problems and in-game problems for our players. 

Let’s face it…farming does happen. People do get cheated. I’m not going to suggest that IGE or any of these companies cheat people, because I don’t believe that. What they are doing however is saying, “It’s ok to break the rules, as well as the EULAs,” which I think is just plain wrong. It’s like being a fence for stolen merchandise. 

So what PC Gamer did took a lot of guts… and I applaud them for it. Turning away money is never an easy thing to do.. but I for one will be glad not to see an IGE ad on the back cover of PC Gamer. It just never felt right.

Smed