Autobot workhouse one of korea MMORPG

[Sarchi]

What game is that, by the way?

[Jackard]

looks like WoW

[Dataslycer]

They are essentially stealing from the companys' revenue that that would have went through cash shops.

[Brackwell]

If game developers don't step up and take a more affirmative action against these power leveling and game currency-selling websites they will lose to them.

[Bumbar]

If game developers don't step up and take a more affirmative action against these power leveling and game currency-selling websites they will lose to them.

What exactly will game developers lose? Let's say you devote enough resources to identify and remove farmers so reliably, it becomes unprofitable for them to operate. You lose money they bring directly, since they also pay for account creation and subscription. You lose money from players that rely on their service and there are such players. And you also have to invest money in fighting them, since you need dedicated tools to scan game database and employees to verify that information. It's a no win scenario, no company will spend money to hurt their source of income.

On the other hand, if you let them be you don't upset anybody enough to actually leave the game. People that hate goldsellers can be pleased with occasional mass bans, which is exactly what Blizzard is doing. As long as you publicly state you're fighting gold farmers and slap them on the wrist occasionally, nobody will give a fuck about them.

[lordyun]

looks like WoW

Not WOW
is WOW style game AION

[Brackwell]

If game developers don't step up and take a more affirmative action against these power leveling and game currency-selling websites they will lose to them.

What exactly will game developers lose? Let's say you devote enough resources to identify and remove farmers so reliably, it becomes unprofitable for them to operate. You lose money they bring directly, since they also pay for account creation and subscription. You lose money from players that rely on their service and there are such players. And you also have to invest money in fighting them, since you need dedicated tools to scan game database and employees to verify that information. It's a no win scenario, no company will spend money to hurt their source of income.

On the other hand, if you let them be you don't upset anybody enough to actually leave the game. People that hate goldsellers can be pleased with occasional mass bans, which is exactly what Blizzard is doing. As long as you publicly state you're fighting gold farmers and slap them on the wrist occasionally, nobody will give a fuck about them.

What? No. I don't think you understand how these people operate.

1. They don't pay for subscriptions to these games. They rely on hacked accounts and stolen credit cards to operate their bots. This is fact. I've had my World of Warcraft account stolen once. When I got it back and logged in, I seen all the bot characters they had on my account. They were level 1s used to advertise but they were part of a bot guild, which I was able to remove a large amount of gold from and given away to the players as a sort of "revenge."

2. Lets just say for the sake of the argument that 20% of players rely on power-leveling services and gold sellers to play a game they are paying to play to begin with. Lets say that they leave because gold sellers and power-leveling services have been removed indefinitely and the players that relied on them decide to quit playing. You still have the 80% playerbase paying to play the game not to mention the fact that those who leave are almost instantly replaced, depending on the popularity of the game.

3. While you don't need fancy tools to figure out which accounts are bots, it will take some manual work to remove them. It would take someone investigating each suspected account one at a time. Checking account information/subscription information (such as what billing information was used and if it matches with personal and billing addresses, etc.) So I guess you could say the cost is time and labor.

4. Gold sellers and power-leveling services completely ruin a game by causing in-game economy inflation and unfair advantages to others who actually play the game themselves. Then again this returns to the fact that any player who lives will undoubtedly be replaced.

Gold-selling and power-leveling are actually salary-based jobs in most of Asia. If you've seen any documentaries they show that they recruit runaway kids with offers of being able to play computer games all day and your housing and food is paid for. They aren't being paid money, they are being allowed to give up all responsibilities of life and do what they want to do, play computer games.

[Bumbar]

1. They don't pay for subscriptions to these games. They rely on hacked accounts and stolen credit cards to operate their bots. This is fact. I've had my World of Warcraft account stolen once. When I got it back and logged in, I seen all the bot characters they had on my account. They were level 1s used to advertise but they were part of a bot guild, which I was able to remove a large amount of gold from and given away to the players as a sort of "revenge."

Hacked accounts are mostly used for advertising, as they are found and banned quite quickly. I seriously doubt they use hacked accounts to farm gold, at best they might strip them naked and transfer gold to some other account, but that's not nearly enough to keep them running.

2. Lets just say for the sake of the argument that 20% of players rely on power-leveling services and gold sellers to play a game they are paying to play to begin with. Lets say that they leave because gold sellers and power-leveling services have been removed indefinitely and the players that relied on them decide to quit playing. You still have the 80% playerbase paying to play the game not to mention the fact that those who leave are almost instantly replaced, depending on the popularity of the game.

Do the math, calculate how much money Blizzard makes from subscriptions alone and now imagine they lose 20% of that. Do you really see that happening and their CEO explaining himself to stockholders, about how they still have 80% and hell, who needs more than that anyway.

3. While you don't need fancy tools to figure out which accounts are bots, it will take some manual work to remove them. It would take someone investigating each suspected account one at a time. Checking account information/subscription information (such as what billing information was used and if it matches with personal and billing addresses, etc.) So I guess you could say the cost is time and labor.

You need fancy tools, trust me. You can't rely on people to monitor activities of hundreds of thousands of players and spot botters. You need some sort of tool, that scans the database and identifies repetitive actions common to farmers. And then you need people to check those reports and do whatever they need to do. You also need to log additional information about what characters are doing, which increases the sizes of your already huge databases and since that fancy tool uses up computational resources, you need to upgrade your equipment to handle extra load. In any case, hardware and software upgrade costs would be substantial.

4. Gold sellers and power-leveling services completely ruin a game by causing in-game economy inflation and unfair advantages to others who actually play the game themselves. Then again this returns to the fact that any player who lives will undoubtedly be replaced.

They don't ruin anything, if they did game companies would shut them down. Game economy is shaped and regulated by the developers. If farmers cause inflation, developers can fix it in number of ways. Wows economy is pretty solid and it has the highest amount of gold sellers. You even have games that allow you to buy gold for RL cash officially. Their economy isn't screwed up either.

Gold-selling and power-leveling are actually salary-based jobs in most of Asia. If you've seen any documentaries they show that they recruit runaway kids with offers of being able to play computer games all day and your housing and food is paid for. They aren't being paid money, they are being allowed to give up all responsibilities of life and do what they want to do, play computer games.

You're contradicting yourself, first you say they're salary based jobs, then you say they aren't paid anything. In China penalty for slavery is death, they don't joke around. And shutting down these companies, leaves those poor sods unemployed.
Virtual gold isn't only business known in Asia. Shoes and clothes you wear were also probably manufactured in some Asian sweatshop. Same goes for your computer and other high tech gadgetry you own. If you want some shocking video footage from Asia, forget gold farming sweatshops, search for electronics recycling operations.

[Jackard]

2. Lets just say for the sake of the argument that 20% of players rely on power-leveling services and gold sellers to play a game they are paying to play to begin with. Lets say that they leave because gold sellers and power-leveling services have been removed indefinitely and the players that relied on them decide to quit playing. You still have the 80% playerbase paying to play the game not to mention the fact that those who leave are almost instantly replaced, depending on the popularity of the game.

20% of several million

[Brackwell]

You forgot to mention that the 20% of people who would hypothetically leave would be replaced. I am also aware of the cheap labor other countries including Asia provide. Other than that you make good counter-points.