Advertising gaming services that violate the terms of service of games

This week the ethics of our group and publication have been challenged by a very simple but daunting question: should we take money from advertisers who offer services which violate the terms of service of MMO/MMORPG games? Before I get into the group response let me explain what the specific services are we’re talking about:

MMORPG gold farming, character buying and selling

We use a service called ReviewMe to allow advertisers the option to buy reviews and our very first review request came this week from a site with a service that showed players where they can buy gold for the cheapest price for the MMORPG World of Warcraft and Everquest. Since I’m the one who handles responding to these requests on behalf of the group, I need to make sure these advertisers fit the type of businesses we want to write reviews on and promote.

I immediately thought of the consequences of publishing a paid review which told players the places with the cheapest prices to violate the TOS of games and this wasn’t a decision I should make alone for the group and proceeded to contact all of the eight VTOR authors and poll them individually about the issue.

Though the site in question wasn’t a site which directly sold gold, only providing a service telling where to buy the gold at, it seemed a more gray area than a site which directly sold the gold and/or characters.

This would be an important milestone for our publication. If we accepted and wrote the review then we would be setting a precedent that these kind of sites were ok when in fact they aren’t ok with terms of service for games we like playing. We looked at the possibility of agreeing to write this one and perhaps only review, taking all the money and donating it to a worthy charity in-world. That idea appealed to a few of the authors.

Another concern was what if we decline the review, will this mean that we don’t receive any more paid review requests? As it turned out, before even making our decision, three more paid review requests came in. One of them Darius has already written on Wii Game Cheats.

What makes strategy guides and game cheat sites different from gold farming? A lot, actually. A cheat is usually something programatically that you can do or an easter egg in the game. Strategy guides and maps are not violations of any MMORPG games terms of service, but additional help for players to better enjoy the game and more advance faster.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I don’t visit many cheat or strategy guide sites. That’s not saying I never do so please don’t misunderstand, but I prefer exploring and learning things in games on my own. Still, there are times every gamer needs to reach for an instruction manual, map, strategy guide or tip website. That’s reasonable. There are also some sites which focus more on helping players through gameplay that stays within the TOS. I would like to think we’d continue to write about and share links to those type sites.

Also, I pointed out to my fellow VTOR authors that we were already tainted somewhat as I’ve seen Google Adsense ads running for gold farming and character sale related sites. Another VTOR author pointed out that this was a passive form of acceptance since we don’t get to choose which ads run on the site.

With Google Adsense you can filter up to 200 domains but it isn’t very practical watching for any gold farming domain and blocking it when there are thousands more than the alloted 200 that could be use. So if you see Google Adsense ads for gold farming — perhaps in this very post (how is that for irony) — it’s not because we ever approved the ads as a group, it’s because Google’s algorithm decided to show that type of ad.

The voting
I’m proud of the group as a whole and how everybody voted on this important issue. It wasn’t a straight up no answer from every author and those who choose yes did so pointing out different reasons why they felt we should consider writing reviews on these types of sites and ervices. At the end of the day we ended up with three no votes and four yes votes with my vote being the final undecided vote.

If I chose yes then I’d be committing VTOR to the review and need to explain our intentions why we were taking money for a paid review for a site that violates terms of service. Even though we would be donating this money to a charity, one of my concerns was that some (most?) readers would see this as siding with dishonesty. That VTOR would suffer an integrity hit. We’re trying to grow our readership, not chase it away.

If I voted “no” we’d be tied 4-4. Since our group had seven VTOR authors until recently when we added Darius (#8) we’ve never had a tie vote situation before. We hadn’t discussed or planned how to deal with ties. Our next meeting was this coming Friday and there was not enough time to make another vote on how to deal with ties. The more I thought about a tie, I was reminded that a tie was still not a majority, so that made a no vote mean we would decline the review and a yes vote that we would approve, write and publish the review.

Supporting shoddy work conditions
Whenever I started thinking about gold farming and power leveling the last couple days (the review decision window was 72 hours) I thought about groups of people behind player names working in small confined places making pennies on the hour. I’ve ran against groups camping monster spawn areas before and wondered if they were gold farmers. Always left a negative impression on me both that they were taking up a spot where people wanted to play a game versus making it a business. I also know how hard my own teenage son has worked over the last couple months to get his WoW character to level 70. And lastly, I remember how hard I’ve had to work personally to level up characters. I’ve never managed to get any character over level 25 in any MMORPG because of the time involved. I’m hoping LOTRO will be my first 25+ character since we’re going to have one lifetime account.

It is this spirit that fuels the Terms of Service behind these MMORPGs that prohibit this activity. While it might still be cheating to look up a code for unlimited lives or to have a higher level character buff you and give you powerful items, it’s not the same as paying money to completely skip the process of leveling.

Some find leveling tiring and boring work and would rather pay to play at higher levels than spend the time. I do understand and respect that point of view, but I don’t see how as a publication we can, Google Adsense type arrangements aside, accept money for this type of advertising and therefore be promoting these types of businesses. How indirectly or directly we support them is something the group needs to continue to ponder and come up with a published guideline so prospective advertisers will know in advance what types of businesses we’d like to promote on VTOReality.com.

Never say never
This doesn’t mean — nor should it be interpreted as — we’ll never write about gold farming or (gasp) link to these type sites in news/opinion posts but at least for the time being we are saying no. Since we are a group and we make group decisions, it isn’t only my vote this time — nor will it be in the future — that counts. I think that’s part of what makes this group blogging venture cool. The group was split on this issue and that’s how the record will stand.

With a 4-4 tie and without a majority, the review was declined. This coming Friday our group will ponder the other reviews we have pending and what to do when there is no majority in a vote. I’d also like to see us post on the advertising page what types of businesses advertising we will specifically not take for this site. If we make too many rules nobody will want to advertise, thus we need to be very specific about what types of sites and services we don’t want.

I’m proud of our group — yes, even the ones who voted that we should do this — because overall their individual comments showed careful consideration. I thought about sharing who voted what in this post as well as a few choice quotes but then decided I’d rather see each individual author speak for themselves about how they feel about the issue of buying and selling characters and gold. I don’t want to put words in any of their mouths or paraphrase their perspective. They can piggyback off this post for one of their own in the future or use the comments below. I hope they all speak out about the issue and elaborate.

At the end of the day, this is not something I would do if this were my own site and don’t feel comfortable promoting these type sites. When we started VTOR it was and remains a major goal to focus on the quality of the posted material. This was our first defining moment with a certain type of advertising where we really needed to think beyond the dollars and cents and whether it made good sense. I’m happy that it turned out the way it did.

Your turn
With that said, we’d like to open this up to readers for comment. Are we being too judgemental turning down these type ads? It’s too late for the one discussed herein, but should we have a more relaxed policy for these type ads going forward? Would you consider ads/reviews an endorsement by VTOR for these types of sites/services? Must admit I do, but I’m not sure how the rest of the group feels about that, or how you feel?

Please take a minute and share with us how you would feel about these reviews and/or ads appearing or not in the future.