Idea: An economy system, using real money

[MirceaKitsune]

This is a somewhat more eccentric and sensitive idea, and I'm not sure if it's even possible or anyone would truly want it. But it's a thought that occurred to me and I thought to ask about it still.

I spend a lot of time on Second Life, which is a virtual world platform where you can build and script anything in realtime. One unique thing about it is that people can buy and sell things for real money. That's one of the reasons why it's so popular too, and some claim to actually make a living from SL. The open-source server software Opensim is also used to host some grids with a real economy from what I heard.

This gave me an idea: What if a new type of node would be added, called a Shop. The owner can add items to its inventory like a chest. However, he also specifies a price (Bitcoin, Paypal, etc) per item. Other players can right-click the node, see the contents and price, and select as many items as they wish for extraction. Once the player clicks the OK button, the code issues a transaction order, and if it's successful the player gets their selected items. Same could be done with land: A player can secure an area and build a house or city or whatever. A node can present other players with a menu that displays the price of that zone. If the player pays, he becomes the owner of that zone and the nodes in it, and is allowed to edit them or even set entry rights. For each transaction, the server admin can also get a known percentage of the price, which can act as a donation to help with hosting.

Now I know this is probably not going to happen, because of the security that would be needed. Firstly, I'm not even aware of a payment system that allows anyone's code to issue a transaction and receive proof the transition was successful, even with email / web page confirmation. Minetest would probably need to get a contract with Paypal or a similar service, which IMO would be too much trouble. Second, servers using this would need to be ran by VERY trusted people in a strict regime. Not even admins would be allowed to add items (creative mode) and everything would have to be generated and mined entirely. No glitches in regards to nodes and inventory must ever exist either. If anything fails, the admin could get accused of fraud, and even Minetest could get in trouble. And of course, we'd need to be careful not to throw Minetest itself down a commercial path, which would be a path toward destruction.

Obviously, this idea wouldn't mean a premium version of Minetest or paid-only items... which would be wrong and goes against the nature of GPL too. Existing functionality would be unchanged, and players can of course just drop items and give them for free. It would be an optional vendor system that some players could place in their home or such. If it contains a rare item that someone with a Paypal or Bitcoin account really wants on that server, the person could find their self paying a dollar for it.

I thought this might be an idea because it could make Minetest even more popular and captivating. Imagine that in Minecraft you could mine for diamonds, which you could then sell for 50 real cents each... wouldn't that make it even more exciting? This could draw a lot of people to Minetest, and we'd probably see a boom of large professional servers. What do you think about the idea, and do you see it ever becoming possible?

[Inocudom]

I really don't want to see anything commercial added to Minetest (nor any other open source program for that matter.) EA does stuff like this with their games.

[Enke]

Eh, I think not. It's an interesting concept, but it's very easy to abuse. Plus, we would get an influx of players wishing only to make money from the game, and then it's not much of a game anymore.

[Krock]

Mods made with love are better than mods made with money.

[Enke]

Mods made with love are better than mods made with money.

Exactly.

[BrandonReese]

I'm always trying to think of ways to easily make money, and I've thought about minetest a lot. What is better than making money playing/managing a game?

What you would have to do, and a lot of games already do this, is have a website where players convert their real money into the virtual currency for the game.

PayPal already has a system in play to verify a transaction. For instance someone would put a paypal shopping cart on their site. When the transaction completes PayPal sends an Instant Payment Notification (IPN). Then your IPN script, that paypal posts the notification to, communicates with your minetest server in some way. That could be as simple a writing to a text file, then a mod on the server reads the text file periodically and updates the amount of credits for each player. Or with the money2 mod you might edit the players money_*.txt file directly.

I could probably write the scripts to do this ( Paypal to credits like in the money2 mod ) in about an hour. That isn't really the hard part if you ask me. The hard part is making items players are willing to pay for. I could see people maybe paying for land, but not nodes or items unless you fundamentally changed the game where you can't find all resources freely in the world.

Credits back to real currency wouldn't be too difficult either, it would just be a transaction from the paypal account you use to sell credits to another paypal account. To protect yourself from running out of money, so if you sold 100 credits for $1, 100 credits back to real money would be $0.75 or something like that. You have to consider how much was taken out for paypal fees when converting back to real money plus how much you want to keep for yourself. Ideally you don't want too many people even interested in taking money back out.

[BrandonReese]

And don't forget you can run into real world legal problems when you start dealing with real money. I know there have been lawsuits based on things that happened inside second life that caused real life loss in profits. If someone finds an exploit and drains a person's in game credits, all of the sudden they are stealing real money.

[MirceaKitsune]

BrandonReese: Yeah, the easiest way is to have a fake currency on the server, which can then be exchanged for real currency. SL does this too... you work with Linden dollars but can buy / sell them via Paypal. The server admins would probably need their own web page where you can to this, and lace your Minetest server account with a secure account. Still requires the server itself to be highly secure however.

This mod wouldn't be useful for selling special items however, since items themselves are easy to craft. More like, people could mine rare stuff like mese / diamonds and put them on a vendor, for people who are willing to get them for a small sum of real money. Or for people who build large houses or other structures then might put them up for selling.

Mods made with love are better than mods made with money.

True, true. One problem is that this could push Minetest down a commercial path, which I wouldn't ever want to become a purpose. My idea was just an addition to some servers to make more people interested, and give even more depth to the gameplay and possibilities.

[twoelk]

I don't really think linking a "game" economy to real life money adds the abstract concept "depth". It does attract people interested in money though, of the "good" and of the "bad" kind not to speak of the kind that rather than spend time and efforts rather just buy cool impressing content.

Nope I don't think "Minetest" should even consider opening this can of worms. LindenLabs has expierienced it's share of legal and moral problems with this. There would be a lot grey areas in "International" servers as law concepts in the world differ as do those what minors should be exposed to. Once such an economy has an large enough and sizable userbase things such as gambling and questionable content would soon follow. I wouldn't want any server owner to explore this slippy area with hidden traps. Dont believe because you see this on public servers of other games this is an easy thing. They all have legal experts to cope with the issues that will arise just because humans are humans.

[MirceaKitsune]

Legal problems would indeed be a risk. As any glitch or abuse would then involve an incorrect win / loss of real money, and such an incident could even ruin the entire project (even if the economy system is a separate mod).

I can't personally say this idea is something I want specifically. But I noticed it helps some projects grow, or be taken more seriously I guess. For example, if SL didn't have a real economy, I doubt it would have even 1% of the user base and content it does currently, which would be really sad. Problem is that such a thing brings a lot of bad as well, which would indeed be hard to avoid.

[Linxx]

the only thing i see is making packages for donating players giving perks and stuff like that but an economy is a bit much

[cheapie]

the only thing i see is making packages for donating players giving perks and stuff like that but an economy is a bit much

It's not "donation" if you get stuff from it.

[Tedypig]

I think server owners should be able to make a little money for their efforts. I have a plan in place that really shouldn't add and security risks to the game.

Special privileges (Fly, Fast, Teleport, Some New Privilege, Etc..) = say, anywhere from $0.50 to $5.00 each.

Special tools (One hit kill sword, One hit chop axe, One hit dig shovel, One hit break pickaxe, Infinite tools, etc..) say anywhere between $1.00 and $10.00 each.

Special rank (If we ever get ranks) = say $5.00

Special title (If we ever get titles) = levels of donation. Say $1.00 = "Donator", $2.00 = "Silver Donator", and so on and so forth.

Land, in-game currency, and stuff like that would be kind of hard, or pose a huge security risk. Services like PayPal have info like who payed what to you, and I believe they have a "memo box" like a check does, stating what was purchased. As for making money off the game by players, NO! I do not think a player should be able to get money back for playing. Server owners put in work, time, money (for hardware upgrades/wear and tear on their hardware, etc..)

All in all, I think this is a half good idea. This is just my two pennies, please don't be mad at me for it.


TL;DR Money for owners= Yes, Money for players = No.


EDIT: Legal problems would be non-existent IF you put what people are buying and actually give it to them... AND PAY TAXES ON THE MONEY YOU MAKE!!! Remember this, Al Capone wasn't put away for all of the murders and stuff, he way put away for tax evasion.

[MirceaKitsune]

Money for server owners is probably a different matter. Easiest and safest way for now is donations.

My idea was an economy system similar to what Second Life does. Primarily because being able to make money from something can be the difference between a project only a few people heard of, and one with millions of users that's everyone on the internet knows of and is the most popular thing. In SL, there's a few people who claim to make a living off building and selling things. If people could make a living by building someone's house on a popular Minetest server, that would have sort of opened up a new perspective.

Obviously however, there would also be a lot of evils involved. More than I'd realistically like to see Minetest getting dragged into, if I think better on the subject now.

[mauvebic]

It wouldn't be a bad idea to monetize servers in some fashion. Hosting one isn't exactly free nor does everyone have all the free time required to moderate one (owing to a lack of suitable management tools).

[kaeza]

I'd like to remember the naysayers that this is an idea for a possible mod. Nobody will be forced to install it, so please don't bash other users like you do.

I personally would prefer donations/registrations via a website to alleviate server costs (or even make some money out of it), but my opinion is that as long as you're fine with the responsibility of such a system (and it's secure), I don't see anything wrong with it.

[Calinou]

Obviously, this idea wouldn't mean a premium version of Minetest or paid-only items... which would be wrong and goes against the nature of GPL too.

The (L/A)GPL allows commercial usage.