Breaking news. You heard it here first. You read that title correctly. As of 2 weeks ago eBay made an internal decision to no longer allow the sales of video game intangible goods. Stuff for World of Warcraft and Sony games has been getting removed from eBay for a long time. but now eBay has decided to make it a blanket policy. No sales of virtual goods for video games will be allowed.

There is no official statement made by eBay on this. But when we called our inside sources they confirmed that this policy went into place about 2 weeks ago. since that time they have been Veroing posters of virtual goods. They estimate that they will have all of the virtual goods removed within the next several weeks.

This is really a big deal. Sellers like Majim from www.uoemporium.com relied heavily on eBay for their sales. Now they will loose this important way of acquiring new customers. We also do sales of Ultima Online items. But we have not posted any to eBay is a few years. Currently we use our sales site at www.shatteredcrystal.com .

I personally think that this new policy is very harsh. But eBay has the power to do whatever they want in this area and they have.

11:45 AM Follow up. I have gotten several emails asking for proof. The only proof currently is that eBay staff is telling us this is why auctions are being removed. So I have asked for the policy change in writing from eBay. I also called Powerseller support and spoke with 2 different reps there. They confirmed that they heard that this change was happening but they have no place in writing that they can refer me to. So they are verifying that it is happening but it's not in writing yet. Also with that said. I can confirm that most of UO Emporiums auctions were removed today under this new policy. He posts 99% UO related items. UO has always been an ok product to post. In the past the only time we saw veros was when a game manufacturer stated to eBay that an auction or a seller was violating their copyright. That's just not the case here.

Amazing, I would imagine this will give rise to people using other alternatives to using eBay but then again eBay is going to lose alot of revenues as a result of this as well so at the end of the day they only hurting themselves and their bottom line revenues.

Would be interesting to see the day when there is a class-action or a legal battle over the question of virtual sales and what happens there after.

Just to confirm what Markee has said, I contacted Ebay through their live sales chat thing, this is what they said

The alternative is playerauctions.com

This will have a tremendous impact on gaming economies.
I wonder what led them to make this decision.
I would imagine it would be a huge loss to them financially.

Orvago, the UO Forum Administrator, says he chatted a long time with eBay and found out it not to be true.

http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=uouhall&Number=7058068

I guess wait and see is in order here

Odd, wonder why they told me and others, that the policy WAS changing then?

JC is just trying to stir things up as normal.

I regularly check the eBay UO Gold Page. From memory it was usually 10 pages long. Now it's down to 4. Yesterday there were 188 auctions in gold. Today there are 163.

One major person who is notably missing is UOWoman. All but one of her auctions are gone. She normally had dozens or more up.

Anyway. It's no joke. Over the phone they told me that they are removing the auctions and that it will take several weeks to complete the process. I did also follow up in email to ebay to confirm. No reply yet but I will post it when they do reply.

Yea, I also noticed the reduction in auctions, it's gone down by nearly 1000 auctions in total now

If you goto the Ultima Online category, most of the stuff is for WOW and other games, which is odd

But, the total number of auctions yesterday, was about 3100 in total, later on it dropped to 2782, now it's down to 2158

Now down to - 1867
Must be a coincedence eh?

Well believe what you will. Time will tell the truth and I'm ok with waiting.

Quote:

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Stratics Admin :Seeing how Stratics does not condone rumors and untruths, this discussion is closed.

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The growing popularity of Massively Multiplayer games has brought the issue of ownership rights in virtual worlds, and the appropriateness of what is called 'real money transfer' (RMT) into an increasingly public light. The success of the company IGE, as well as the launch of Sony Online Entertainment's 'Station Exchange' service would seem to indicate that RMT is now an acceptable part of Massive gaming. The well-known auction site eBay has recently made a policy decision that may throw these assumptions into a different light. Following up on a rumour that's been going around I spoke today with a media representative for the company, who confirmed that eBay is now delisting all auctions for 'virtual artifacts' from the site. This includes currency, items, and accounts/characters; not even the 'neopoints' used in the popular Neopets service is exempt from this decision. Read on below for the company's rationale for this decision, and a few words on the impact this could have on future RMT sales.

Slashdot

Oh the irony

Hehe. The so called mod has now locked 2 threads and deleted one on this subject because he expects ebay to personally notify stratics. Otherwise its merely speculation and not allowed.

JC is not stiring. This is actually what happened. Its quite comical.

Ebay is definitly following up on this.
I had an account pulled last night.
reworded it as selling tangibles (this auction is for the installation CDs, Manuals, blah blah) And look at that, you get the login info with the following characters, here's the characters..

Nope. No go. Got yanked.
There will be no way to word your way around their tangibility policy. Ebay is done with game accounts. Period.

The good news is that there's always places like playerauctions.com

By the way....

Why on Earth isn't there an auction site at markeedragon.com? - feedback, and trades could be streamlined. People would be more descriptive. A broker's reputation would be more clear. so basicly, every single thing that's good about markeedragon.com gets better - and then you could make a little money off of it too 5%, whatever.

I'd rather use a place with GOOD customer service than playerauctions.com

Ebay's out.

It's time for change.

And of course, by being a leader in this, you get more traffic through the rest of the network.

JC=That was your first mistake: Believing everything you read at UOSS. Should know better than that. Of course, not a surprise to me. "Higher authority scale"?? Dude, that's hilarious. JC=pwned.

What is a surprise is the fact that EBAY would cut themselves out of the Virtual market. Any bet EBAY and Gaming Development Company Execs (read: lawyers) have been talking for a while?

Me thinks someone has a HUGE opportunity to create a gaming auction website and make some mean green for awhile. You paying attention Mark?

Please contact me for information on how to send me my proppers ($$) for my cut to this brilliant idea.

Hasta.

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Well believe what you will. Time will tell the truth and I'm ok with waiting.

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I am ok with it too. At first I decided it was true because it was posted on Markee, but then Stratics says it is not true. Both sources are basically on the same authoritative level, so who is one to believe?

Now that Slashdot, someone on a higher authoritative level, is reporting the change I will once again assume it to be true until eBay makes the announcement about the change.

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We have a site that we have had in development for a very long time. It's scheduled to be done in about a month. It will allow anyone to sell virtual goods with a low barrier to entry. It will also guarantee zero fraud. I know that's a huge statement but it is true.

You'll see it in about a month. Wish it could be done right now but it's a massive programming project.

Well it took long enough. Here is an official statement I received in email.

-----Original Message-----
From: eBay Customer Support [mailto:rswebhelp@ebay.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 8:25 AM
To: Marcus Eikenberry a.k.a. Markee Dragon
Subject: Re: EN62823 INF Response to your email concerning eBay's ended listing policies. (KMM243338530V55221L0KM)

Dear Marcus,

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to this issue.

eBay policy doesn't allow the sale of online virtual gaming items,
including game accounts, game characters, game currency, game points or
other similar game items. Although you may have sold similar items in
the past, future listings of such items will not be permitted.

As always, our goal is to keep the eBay marketplace a safe place to buy
and sell. Please understand that violations of eBay policy may result in
a range of actions, including listing cancellation, limits on account
privileges, account suspension, forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled
listings, and loss of PowerSeller status.

I encourage you to read the information available in our Help Topics
about why we restrict certain items from the eBay site. Please visit:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/downloadable.html

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing eBay.

Sincerely,
Yuri

eBay Customer Support

Yeah, I've been researching into PlayerAuctions, not only is it owned by IGE, but they do not allow sellers to operate store fronts or the way we've all been used to doing business. A site that markee suggested would be something of fresh air. Ebay was a good run for everyone im sure, although it feels like a slap in the face to long time selers (sept 1999) for Ultima Online goods, totally over 2,000$ in bills by their company that I paid regularly monthly for over 7 years.

They did not have the professional manner in which to even tell us sellers, you can't sell items anymore we are changing our policy this and that. To ban a long term member like Majim, without warning, not to mention cybernickel, these top sellers including myself, uotreasures, were probably providing some pretty dececnt salaries and employment for the people of ebay.

Just a little courtesy and common respect goes a long way in business, they show very little in respect to that. And thats what bothers me the most about this whole situation, I didn't want someone to hold my hand, but a notification of some sort would have been admirable to so say the least.

What bothers me more is, if you click sell an item, Ultima Online : GOLD, SCROLLS, ETC is still listed in their catagories. They are no better than then the users who abused ebay (mainly) the 0 account feedback users who said go to my webpage now and had free advertisement for months. To us they shut the door in our faces.

I wish markee dragon the best of luck with his site and considering his reputation, I'm sure this will be the start of the way things needed to have been done in this first place. This whole experience for me for the last 7 years has been trail and error. I could only accept money orders at one time, then there was billpoint, then paypal.com, but they would not allow canadians, then they would, then there stupid chargebacks 10$ settlements, the rate increases, then ebay monopolizes and buys out paypal.com and you can no longer use anything but theirs. Sounds a little like Star Wars and we are the rebels.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on this whole ordeal. Running a valid auction site, would present two problems, I am not sure it could remain on US soil nor north america, I've gotten seize letters before, but its not hard to get a site host in china or what not. The definatly reality of all this is, whoever puts up this site is going to set the tone for the next 5 years as I can see it. Until all other game companies either sell their own product or follow suit like StationExchange.com .

Cheers,

Thanks a lot for listening,

Rhos Barnes
PlayerItems.com

This is the E-mail I got from Support. Apparently this is a form letter. How nice.
Thank you for writing eBay with your question. eBay policy doesn't allow the sale of online virtual gaming items, including game accounts, game characters, game currency, game points or other similar game items. Although you may have sold similar items in the past, future listings of such items will not be permitted. The virtual items policy was only recently implemented. I am unsure as to why there was a lack of announcement about it, but I will forward your concerns to the appropriate people. As always, our goal is to keep the eBay marketplace a safe place to buy and sell. Please understand that violations of eBay policy may result ina range of actions, including listing cancellation, limits on account privileges, account suspension, forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings, and loss of PowerSeller status. I encourage you to read the information available in our Help Topics about why we restrict certain items from the eBay site. Please visit: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/downloadable.html Thank you for using eBay for your online trading needs. Sincerely, DermoteBay Customer Support.

Well I think there is a way to get around it. Everyone here probably has heard of runescape and how it's not allowed to trade those accounts. Well they say that they are selling a joke. Yes a joke, and then they say they will give the added bonus of the runescape account and list all that info as well. They say it is an added bonus. Do you guys think this would work. Technically you tell them you are selling the joke, and giving the account away "free". I think it would work but somebody may need to correct me on that?


example---->

Disclaimer: Runescape is trademark of JAGEX LTD. -I am not in any way profiting from this by selling a runescape account, I am selling a postcard with a riddle. It is coincidence that the bidding winner gets a card with the answer to the account's details. -Everything involving Runescape will remain property of JAGEX LTD.
HAPPY BIDDING


Would that work only changing some words? I mean really it does seem like it would be pretty hard to decide to cancel those out.

*rubs eyes, blinks, then shakes dust from her login. Reads... blinks, grins... then whoops for joy*

YAY!!!!

I've been hating ebay auctions for years!!!

I think I'll return to UO... ^.^

wow, to toly amazing!
keep going, sexy.

This may be old news to you but i've not heard of this until now.

Thats gonna hurt alot of people but honestly there are better places to sell anyway.