That is a HUGE thing, actually

But anyway all transactions are served via licensed banks, so what's the difference? Also, what's the difference with say, eBay, which allows users to trade between themselves? Steam also allows to trade cards. There a lot of similar examples.

p.s. And, one more time, there are already games who's exactly working with real money similar to what I'm talking about. And they're working legally.

p.p.s. why are every person here talking about legal stuff even when I've explicitly said that the topic is not about that part? I know it could be hard to implement this thing, but it's off-topic here...

why are every person here talking about legal stuff even when I've explicitly said that the topic is not about that part

It's like watching someone holding a gun and putting the barrel into his mouth while saying: "Shis ish perfectly shafe, I'ffe sheen people do that". You just can't help shouting: "Nooooo... don't do it".

But anyway all transactions are served via licensed banks, so what's the difference?

You want a fee, so obviously it's not customer A at bank AA transferring to customer B at bank BB. In order for you to harvest your "little fee", you must collect the money, and pass it on (minus a little fee).

There you go, that's the problem. Not all transactions are served via licensed banks.

You also don't seem to realize what kind of a problem you're steering at regardless of some silly regulations. We're not talking about having to pay a fine. The worst thing is not even being sentenced a prison term. The worst thing that can conceivably happen is spending a couple of months in a stress position with a sack over your head without trial.

Let's say I am Sheik Mustafa Al Whatevah and I need to send $100,000 to my Holy Warriors in the USA so they can buy weapons and assassinate some people. I can't do the transfer via a regular bank because that sum will immediately trigger every alert, the money will be seized, and the account owner will be audited. Also, my country is officially an "ally", so I wouldn't want to make it so obvious.
I'd have to do a few thousand small transactions which is tedious, and the flood of transactions might also be suspicious... also, I know that they're already watching me and my known accounts, so I would need to hire three dozen straw men, and it would take weeks... awwww man, this is hard.

Now, luckily there is this game which isn't a bank and which will happily transfer my money anyway. Formally I'm buying a couple of in-game items from another player. That's not much different from buying WoW gold from a Chinese gold farmer, right? Nobody suspects a thing.
Maybe I'll play safe and do it in 10 transactions with 2 or 3 accounts, just to be 100% sure that nobody gets suspicious.

The other "player" (the terrorist) gets the money from you. Some guy gets a couple of payments from some internet firm. Why not, happens every day, not suspect. No alarm bells go off. The boys have their money, they buy guns and kill a hundred people. Enter the governmental agencies.

Do we know these guys? Did any alarm bells go off? Do we know where the money came from? No. But where did that money come from? Let's see... a guy named "norlin" sent them alltogether $98k last week, in several smaller transactions. Well, that's interesting.

What do you think will happen to you? Do you really believe this is not a problem? I'd watch the sky for drones and lock the doors really tight at night. Better yet, get a facelift, change your name, burn all personal possessions, and move to another country, preferrably Antarctica.

can't do the transfer via a regular bank

Why not? All transfers still will be through banks, anyway. How do you think eBay works and what exact difference you see from my idea (if not talking about virtual goods vs. real goods)?

which isn't a bank

Why do you think so? This is one of possible options – get a banking license and make the game a kind of internet-bank UI (roughly). AFAIK, guys from the Entropia Universe has made exactly this thing – they just made own bank for the game.

So, again, the topis is not about "how to implement this". The topic is about "What it will give/take to/from the game", "How it will affect the gameplay, players count" and so on.

A normally crucial part of the mechanism (even in games just with in-game trades) is making the TRANSACTION Atomic -- some kind of escrow mechanism to assure that one party or the other doesn't get ripped off (OTHERWISE THEN YOUR CUSTOMER DEPARTMENT WILL HAVE TO HANDLE SUCH ISSUES ENDLESSLY AND THE COSTS OF *THAT* SUBTRACT FROM YOUR PROFITS).

Unfortunately for outside games, real monies ($$$) that require interfacing in complicated ways with external money exchange entities (and all the effort to create and maintain that connection will require) --- AND STILL YOUR COMPANY WOULD BE BLAMED FOR ANY IRREGULARITIES.

You DONT want company personnel to have to get involved (it has to almost completely be an automatic system) as labor costs for that function nullify profits VERY QUICKLY.

Some non-real-money systems in existing games have simultaneous windows that open up for each player and SHOW exactly what's being traded by each side and Locks into a 2 way agreement mechanism, and blocks any/all cheating on the deal from happening. When an outside MONEY mechanism is required, it has to be AS immediate as possible (AND be able to handle all the endcase potential in something of that complexity).

is making the TRANSACTION
…immediate as possible.

Are you sure you're familiar to what you're talking about? E.g., VISA and MasterCard doesn't have any immediate transactions. First they block required amound and then process it after few days or even weeks, sometimes.

And – again – what difference do you see between my idea vs eBay? or you're thinking eBay is working illegally?

Please don't argue with your OPINION in case of you're talking about laws/money regulations.
But laws and legal stuff requires 100% knowledge of how exactly things are working. Obviously, you don't know it (nor do I) and just pissed off because of non-standard idea which looks terrifying to you, right? Just don't.

OPINION is good for what I've started this topic – to discuss in-game mechanics.

And – again – what difference do you see between my idea vs eBay? or you're thinking eBay is working illegally?

It's not that moving money around the world is always illegal, it's that it is regulated by many, many laws. If you just do it without researching the laws of every country in which you will be sending/receiving money, then you could easily break some laws that you don't know about.

Sites like eBay will employ a lot of lawyers to make sure that they're following the laws of all the countries that they operate in.
I used to work on games with real-money prizes, and we had over 200 different jurisdictions with their own laws that we had to comply with.

In some jurisdictions, if you can win money by playing a game, they will automatically classify it as gambling, which almost always means that there's a lot of very strict regulations with large penalties. Just because you think that you should be allowed to facilitate trade on the internet doesn't mean that every single country agrees with you. There are a lot of legal pitfalls.


There's some interesting details at the border of tech and legality --

If two players are directly sending money to each other and you have no part in it, then that's a nice bit of legal insulation for your game... but in this case, how does your game verify that the transaction occurred, and use that information to move the in-game items from one player to another? Maybe you can use bitcoin here, which allows you to verify that a transaction has occurred.
This also means that you cannot profit from transactions though.

The other alternative is that player 1 gives money to you, and then you give that money to player 2 (and perhaps keep a small % as a processing fee). This makes the technology side easier, as you're fully in control of the transaction, but it also is a much more dangerous legal situation, as you're now directly paying money to players. If you're paying money to a player, that could be considered paying them for services (in which case income tax becomes an issue), or you could be delivering a prize (in which case gambling becomes an issue), etc, etc...

I think the safest way to set up a game like this would be to allow third party websites to integrate with your game and act as trading markets between players. You could then make a second company that runs a trading website, which offers real-money trades. This at least will mean that it's not your games-company's fault when a government tries to shut the whole thing down (but you should still get a lawyer)

theoretically it's possible because, at least, guys from Entropia Universe are doing the same things and seems they don't have legal issues)

Just to reiterate -- you don't know what legal issues they faced. They might have a whole team of lawyers who have navigated countless legal issues and put a lot of care into making sure that everything they do is legal in every country where they allow trading.

In some jurisdictions, if you can win money by playing a game, they will automatically classify it as gambling,

That's the whole main point of my idea – you can't "win" anything! All you can – buy from other PLAYERS and sell to other PLAYERS.

No way to just "wow I've got random loot for $1m!!!11one". It could cost real money only in that case if someone else want to buy it. By his price (or whatever you both will negotiate). The same as Steam collecting cards, for example.

but in this case, how does your game verify that the transaction occurred

How does eBay work? How does they allow people to sell items to each other? How they are receiving their fees? I'm really don't understand why is so hard to understand that my idea, basically, is the same as eBay and similar sites? It's just a kind of market-ish platform for people. Doesn't matter what exactly they're selling/buying – old stuff from their pantry or some bytes from the game.

you don't know what legal issues they faced

You're right, but I know they're working for several years => so, it's possible one way or another and it's profitable (or has chances to be profitable). That's the main point of why I'm asking here not to discuss legal stuff.

can't do the transfer via a regular bank

Why not? All transfers still will be through banks, anyway. How do you think eBay works and what exact difference you see from my idea (if not talking about virtual goods vs. real goods)?

which isn't a bank

Why do you think so? This is one of possible options – get a banking license and make the game a kind of internet-bank UI (roughly). AFAIK, guys from the Entropia Universe has made exactly this thing – they just made own bank for the game.

So, again, the topis is not about "how to implement this". The topic is about "What it will give/take to/from the game", "How it will affect the gameplay, players count" and so on.

Well, lets see....

How would you ensure that payment is actually coming from LEGAL banks? Because that is now YOUR job to do. MAYBE you find a third party that can do the hard work for of making sure payments can only come from certain sources.

But now you get players complaining that they cannot make payments because a) they are underage and cannot initiate such transfers ("I want to buy prepaid cards for your game" -> will be abused by criminals), b) they are living/playing in a country without a financial institute your system can legally collect funds from ("I would like to pay through <insert shady internet service X here>" -> will be abused too)... list goes on and on.

If you ONLY collect money from legal financial institutes, you will get a ton of players that cannot make payments (hence pre paid cards for many games and services). Sure, paypal ans similar services might help here, but AFAIK they are NOT making the same checks and balances as the normal banks have to. If you have an account and a credit card, you can use Paypal. Will paypal really check what goes on with your account? Will they check the legality of that credit card? I doubt it.

In the end, its up to YOU to do the checks and balances. And let me tell you, as someone with some knowledge of the rules and regulations that financial institutes have to adhere to, these are some SERIOUSLY complex and expensive checks and balances. IF you can avoid them, I would advise you do.

What is the difference to EBay? Well. I guess the big difference to ebay is that NORMALLY, there is an exchange of a physical good. Which kind of makes it way EASIER to spot a fradulent use (nobody orders 100's of expensive 1000$ chairs from just 3 different sellers. What do you do with 100 physical chairs?)... I am pretty sure that there are still criminals trying to abuse EBay, because if they can, they will!

EBay is a big company with the funds to battle fradulent use. They have the funds and expierience to battle abuse of their system. Do you? And do your really want to take on this battle?

Making your game a bank... dude, trust me, you don't want to do that. Start looking into all the international and national regulations and restricitons on banking, which your internet bank would also have to follow, and tell me you want to take on ALL of that.... Don't forget EVERY country on this world might have different, additional restrictions.

Some countries might not even be able to PLAY your game because financial transactions to these countries are forbidden in other countries.

You would have to build a large company just to run the banking side of things.

And let me just guess that the Entropia guys have exactly that, a company behind it, and yet still might fail to follow all the rules. They might get away with it for now, just as some banks did shady things for 10 or more years without getting a slap on the wrist. Maybe Entropia Universe servers are already switched off and nobody playing that game anymore when the owners have to face millions and billions of $ worth of legal punishments for failing to follow all ther rules a bank, internet or physical, has to.

Look, lets just say your idea triggered some red flags with some people on the forum here that have some expierience with similar services or the world of financial transactions. If you want to ignore these opinions then fine, lets talk about something else. Please post here some years down the line when you DO get into trouble should you follow through with your idea, so we can say "told you so" ;)

In some jurisdictions, if you can win money by playing a game, they will automatically classify it as gambling,

That's the whole main point of my idea – you can't "win" anything! All you can – buy from other PLAYERS and sell to other PLAYERS.

No way to just "wow I've got random loot for $1m!!!11one". It could cost real money only in that case if someone else want to buy it. By his price (or whatever you both will negotiate). The same as Steam collecting cards, for example.

Again CS:GO gambling... you just can trade cosmetic weapon skins with other players. You can ask for money for them. They have different rarities influencing the RL money value of the skin. Nothing you could win, no gambling involved. What could possibly go wrong?

Well turns out you can abuse EVERYTHING for gambling as soon as players can trade with other players, and the things traded have a RL money worth. The gambling does NOT have to take place on your own trading site to make you part of a gambling system. You might only be the one facilating the financial side of this gambling industry, but you seem to be still held responsible for it, hence why Valve is trying to shut down CS:GO gambling.

How would you ensure that payment

I don't see any point in this discussion since all things are repeated a lot of times already and I have answered it.

Seriously, guys, if you don't have anything about the current topic – you can just create an own topic about such legal stuff.

The topic is about gameplay and in-game economy and how real-money trades could affect in-game world.