Gold frauders threaten to send cost of MMO subscriptions soaring

Gold Farmers are a pain. They play through MMOs in an entirely selfish manner squeezing as much of the best loot as possible and not caring a damn for those who aren’t the most familiar with the game mechanic. They are there solely for the purpose of earning in-game stuff so they can sell it on. But they are a pretty minor irritation compared to what Gold Frauders – a term coined in a very interesting piece written by PlayNoEvil – might be doing to the MMO business.

Gold Frauders are players that use stolen credit card information to either buy game time to earn gold for future sale, or, in the worst cases, to buy game gold from other sellers – a practise which is itself banned (but still prevalent) in many online game worlds. That gold is bought using someone else’s money and then sold on at a 100% profit or more to the Gold Frauder. Simple.

Of course that’s a pain too, but it’s hardly ruining your game experience is it? Unfortunately yes; we’re just starting to see the knock on effect of all these fraudulent transactions. You see credit card companies don’t like operating in high risk markets. In fact markets like gambling and pornography have to pay a big premium for the benefit of credit card payment processing. And those that suffer frauds the most just get cut right off.

According to The Register, UK bank Halifax has now banned payments to Blizzard Entertainment – operators of huge international MMO World of Warcraft. If MMO providers are unable to stem the tide of fraudulent gold transactions or of the use of stolen credit card information, then the cost of play time simply has to increase as it will come under pressure from the banks.

If more banks decide to cut off MMOs then it’s going to be a very serious problem for their business models. Most MMOs get by using a subscription method of payment. Sure, you can use prepaid game cards as well, but that doesn’t have the same marketable appeal as getting someone to sign themselves up for a long term contract. In fact it makes it a lot harder to persuade players to part with their cash.

As online worlds and MMOs increase in sophistication, at the very least it should be fascinating to see how the developers respond.

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