Question regarding multiaccounting for third party projects
-
> This seems like a really bad idea. I have seen other games try it, and kind of succeed, but honestly, this has a LARGE number of not-game-related issues. Some of them as silly as it turns screeps into a money laundering service. Most importantly though, it makes aterm and team finical and legally responsible for services provided by the third party.
Would you mind elaborating on this? I don't see how it's possible to turn it into a money laundering service when money isn't going to exchange hands, and if it were to turn into one couldn't it already be done with the tokens anyways?
But really, if there are a large number of issues it would be helpful if you could list some of them.
> For example, lets say I use ScreepsPlus and want to pay for it. I think I like it so I buy a subscription token and send it around where it needs to go to get access. Then I decide that I don't like it, and issues a charge back. Now artem is out the cash and has to deal with credit card issues. The overall concept seems dangerous.
That's not how this works. You would only be able to send credits, not subscription tokens. That means you'd have to buy a token, sell it on the market, transfer the credits, and then for some reason ask Artem for a refund. That makes no sense- once you put the token on the market you have no right for a refund for it.
> Is this something that you can even say. How will you defend the room. Lets say this exception is allowed, how will you keep me from creating a "side account" and doing what ever. Policing this restriction seems like a horrible job.
Easy- I won't defend the room. If players decide to take it out then oh well, room is gone. Maybe I'll respawn or maybe I won't.
I don't see how policing it would be difficult at all. There's already an API for pulling out "pvp" actions. I can easily monitor that for players who are attacking people. If someone things I'm breaking my self imposed rule then it should be trivial for people to find examples of me doing so and bringing it up.
I will also point out that in the other thread it seems like Artem said multiaccounting is allowed. We're still waiting on clarification but if what he's saying is true then nothing will keep you from creating a side account.
> So your going to consume server resources and not pay for them? the 10CPU thing is supposed to be lie a loss leader demo to get people into the larger game. Now your going to run it full time? Seems a bit unfair.
Again, I will only do this if the admins are okay with it. I will also point out that I would have to pay to do this. I'd also argue that the third party services bring publicity to the game. No one is complaining about me using server resources to populate the League of Automated Nations website.
> I think, if you want to bill for a service then you should use out of game methods, like PayPal. If you want to talk to "screeps" then an API should be developed that allows you to do so. (With the server being open source you could add "patches" or mods that allow it.
That defeats the whole point. The goal here is to *not* bring cash into this. There is no making money or profit here.
Again, I'm bringing this up to get an idea of what people think. If people don't like it it won't happen.
-
> Would you mind elaborating on this? I don't see how it's possible to turn it into a money laundering service when money isn't going to exchange hands, and if it were to turn into one couldn't it already be done with the tokens anyways?
Credits are a form of in-game currency. Tied to, by way of purchasable outside the game, then sell-able inside the game subscription tokens. This pattern (in any game) is very closely splitting legal hairs. You can not (in many jurisdictions) host, or share a game currency that has both an in and an out. The emphasis seems to be on the "out" part.
So while it is legally ok to save money come in, then have that turn into in game currency, Being able to take the in game currency back out in any way (say to pay for a service) makes the in game currently a non-fiat currency (like bit-coin, but with different rules obviously).
Some, top of my head examples that would need to be at least addressed:
- Money Laundering concerns - Obfusciation of the source of funds for a service (more later)
- Banking regulation concerns - Now that you have a non-fiat currency you have tons of regulations you have to meet
- Credit card processing concerns (having both an in and and out violates Valve's published agreements, and most common credit card processing "clearing houses" agreements.
- Gambling concerns - Seems silly but having a game that has a money in and money out falls under some gambling laws.
> That's not how this works. You would only be able to send credits, not subscription tokens. That means you'd have to buy a token, sell it on the market, transfer the credits, and then for some reason ask Artem for a refund. That makes no sense- once you put the token on the market you have no right for a refund for it.
Well that's not exactly what I said. If I buy a token, sell it on the market, don't like your serveice, then charge back the cost of the token, I am usually well within my rights to do so. It gets really fuzzy around these areas but that's why most card processing agreements forbid transactions of this nature. For example stripe forbids
"Virtual currency that can be monetized, resold, or converted to physical or digital products and services or otherwise exit the virtual world (e.g., Bitcoin); sale of stored value or credits maintained, accepted and issued by anyone other than the seller"
> I will also point out that in the other thread it seems like Artem said multiaccounting is allowed. We're still waiting on clarification but if what he's saying is true then nothing will keep you from creating a side account.
Yeah, lets ignore this issue for now. It needs clarification.
> Again, I will only do this if the admins are okay with it. I will also point out that I would have to pay to do this. I'd also argue that the third party services bring publicity to the game. No one is complaining about me using server resources to populate the League of Automated Nations website.
Fair enough
> That defeats the whole point. The goal here is to *not* bring cash into this. There is no making money or profit here.
I think that may be my point. If your third party service is good enough to "earn" my paying in "energy" or "tokens" or "credits" then why not just pay in cash. It doesn't have to be a lot.
What about a class or lib or something that was tacked on to the owners code base, that allowed them to track incoming payments and such. It would not address the first set of issues, but it wouldn't require multi accounting either.
-
RE: "Money Laundering concerns"
This doesn't have to be for large sums of money. Any things that obfuscates the source of the cash value of a transaction automatically falls under this envelope. Because your buying a token, selling that token in game, then using the credits to pay for a service, your essentially unable to say "show me the $1 that paid for this service." And thus you have a money laundering services. The DOD has gone bat shit crazy closing down, even small sites that participate or facilitate in these types of transactions, in the past.
Legally speaking it's not clear if they are allowed to do so, but they do it any way, and because the site is closed down people don't have the funds to fight against the action.
-
> This doesn't have to be for large sums of money. Any things that obfuscates the source of the cash value of a transaction automatically falls under this envelope. Because your buying a token, selling that token in game, then using the credits to pay for a service, your essentially unable to say "show me the $1 that paid for this service." And thus you have a money laundering services. The DOD has gone bat shit crazy closing down, even small sites that participate or facilitate in these types of transactions, in the past.
I still don't get how this works. There never is a $1 paid for the service, and the service has no value outside of the game. It's not like this is people paying for contractors. How does someone profit by paying for grafana monitoring of their screeps game? That's the part I'm not getting here.
> Credits are a form of in-game currency. Tied to, by way of purchasable outside the game, then sell-able inside the game subscription tokens. This pattern (in any game) is very closely splitting legal hairs. You can not (in many jurisdictions) host, or share a game currency that has both an in and an out. The emphasis seems to be on the "out" part.
> So while it is legally ok to save money come in, then have that turn into in game currency, Being able to take the in game currency back out in any way (say to pay for a service) makes the in game currently a non-fiat currency (like bit-coin, but with different rules obviously).
So that makes it sound like the game developers are currently breaking these rules, but I don't see how that applies do what I'm talking about. The only thing my service would do is facilitate moving credits from one person to another in an automated way- there is no way to convert it into money.
> Virtual currency that can be monetized, resold, or converted to physical or digital products and services or otherwise exit the virtual world (e.g., Bitcoin); sale of stored value or credits maintained, accepted and issued by anyone other than the seller.
What you are saying here seems to imply that the screeps admins should not be allowed to sell subscriptions that can be converted into tokens and back again as long as they allow people to resell those tokens- am I interpreting that right?
-
> What you are saying here seems to imply that the screeps admins should not be allowed to sell subscriptions that can be converted into tokens and back again as long as they allow people to resell those tokens- am I interpreting that right?
Virtual currency that can be monetized, resold, or converted to physical or digital products and services or otherwise exit the virtual world (e.g., Bitcoin); sale of stored value or credits maintained, accepted and issued by anyone other than the seller.
They sell the tokens, they sell the subscription, it's all them, so it's fine. Mix in a third party, and it gets bad.
>still don't get how this works. There never is a $1 paid for the service, and the service has no value outside of the game. It's not like this is people paying for contractors. How does someone profit by paying for grafana monitoring of their screeps game? That's the part I'm not getting here.
There paying for a service. The hosting, the configuration, the admin and the use of and access to the graphs. The fact that they are trading in game currency for this out of game service is the problem, combine it with the fact that you can (not have to but just have the ability to) pay real world currency for this in game currency, no matter how many transformations it has to go though, makes the situation worse.
> there is no way to convert it into money.
That's the problem, your making it a non-fiat currency (a currency not issued and valued by a government) by adding the ability to use it to pay for a service.
-
>Virtual currency that can be monetized, resold, or converted to physical or digital products and services or otherwise exit the virtual world (e.g., Bitcoin); sale of stored value or credits maintained, accepted and issued by anyone other than the seller.
> They sell the tokens, they sell the subscription, it's all them, so it's fine. Mix in a third party, and it gets bad.
I thought the issue was that I could buy a token from them and then sell it to someone else on the steam store.
> There paying for a service. The hosting, the configuration, the admin and the use of and access to the graphs. The fact that they are trading in game currency for this out of game service is the problem, combine it with the fact that you can (not have to but just have the ability to) pay real world currency for this in game currency, no matter how many transformations it has to go though, makes the situation worse.
That's not money laundering. Money laundering needs to turn money that's illicite into money that looks legitimate. I'm still not understanding how they can do that. These services also can not be purchased for money, just for credits, making them essentially an extension of the game. Nothing is stopping someone from transferring money in game without an automatic system in order to do the same thing- hell, I can go into "general" right now and offer to buy a pizza for anyone who sends me 2m credits.
-
> I thought the issue was that I could buy a token from them and then sell it to someone else on the steam store.
That probably isn't an issue, because you can never get money back from the steam store. You get a credit that you can use for future purchases but you can never get real money back. Though it might be. I know if you sell enough on the steam store it does become a "concern". I have had to file tax paper work for "earnings" on the steam store. But I believe that there isn't a problem with selling the token on the steam store because you can never get a not steam service for the "money" that is in your account. The problem is that your trading what stated off as cash with steam or screeps, then turning that back into a service through a third party.
I'm not sure how they are able to sell subscription tokens via their own payment gateway and then sell them on steam. It could be part of their agreement.
> That's not money laundering. Money laundering needs to turn money that's illicite into money that looks legitimate.
Not exactly. Well yes. The problem isn't that it's money laundering, its that it could be used to launder money, so you fall under money laundering rules. Because "ags131 " can't say where the $1 comes from, and there's no way to track where the $1 comes from, it becomes a problem. It doesn't matter that the actual $1 is never exchanged and that ags131 is trading in game credits for a service that is worth $1.
Now before you say that the service isn't worth $1 because he doesn't charge for it normally, that likely doesn't matter either. He has to pay for hosting or internet or electricity or something, and that eventually leads down the path of "where did that $1 come from".
BUT I don't think that's the question you were asking. I think we have stepped off topic a bit.
-
> Not exactly. Well yes. The problem isn't that it's money laundering, its that it could be used to launder money, so you fall under money laundering rules. Because "ags131 " can't say where the $1 comes from, and there's no way to track where the $1 comes from, it becomes a problem. It doesn't matter that the actual $1 is never exchanged and that ags131 is trading in game credits for a service that is worth $1.
What dollar? *That's* what I'm talking about. At no point is anyone giving ags131 a dollar. No one is giving anyone money. So I honestly have no idea this dollar keeps coming from.
-
A virtual currency is "a digital representation of value that is neither issued by a central bank or a public authority, nor necessarily attached to a fiat currency, but is accepted by natural or legal persons as a means of payment and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically"
https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance
The IRS says that you have to treat the income (the payment in fake money for a service) just like tangible property.
"Payments using virtual currency made to independent contractors and other service providers are taxable and self-employment tax rules generally apply. Normally, payers must issue Form 1099."
and
"A payment made using virtual currency is subject to information reporting to the same extent as any other payment made in property. "
You would end up being subject to at least
-
FinCEN regulations
- The "BSA"
- various SEC policies and regulations
- Stored Value/Unclaimed Property Laws
- Money Transmittal Licensure
- PATRIOT Act
- opt-out and opt-in requirements under certain federal, state and international laws. (because of other regulations)
- Child Protection laws.
- Gambling/Contests/Sweepstakes laws, largely resulting from the fact that you can put money in do things and get a virtual currency out.
Most of the laws would trigger for aterm et. al. And these laws are just US laws. There will be different laws for different countries. And even more laws/regulations/treaties/etc. that need to be dealt with if you put money in in one country then take the service out in anther country.
> What dollar? *That's* what I'm talking about. At no point is anyone giving ags131 a dollar. No one is giving anyone money. So I honestly have no idea this dollar keeps coming from.
Your paying him for something.
"Specifically speaking this service will allow people to pay for "subscriptions" using in game credits to pay for out of game services" <- that makes it a virtual currency. Subject to all these laws and rules.
-
-
From everything I've read online this really only matters if the virtual currency is "convertible", which it appears that this is not. Half of what you pointed to refers to bitcoins, which is where most of the regulations come from.
I also want to point out that EVE Online explicitly allows this- they do *not* allow people to sell services for real money but do allow it for isk (their in game currency). I find it very weird that they would be unaware of the laws against this.