Policy change: Sales of art for gil forbidden

[Entity]

Wow, haha. And after I was thinking of coming back to start up my gil commissions tonight. Damn. Even though I can understand this situation logically, in a sense, it's kinda lame. Most of my gil funds are because of this too. Even after all these years I still dont feel all that confident about my art to be selling for REAL money but eh, what can you do.

 

Kinda baffling they go after the artists who aren't even doing anything to the players but don't seem to be doing this kind of thing to the bots. The few times I come to Uldah and Gridania I still see bots just pour into the GC hall then port away so.

 

In any case, that's a real disappointment. As someone said in an earlier post, in the most basic sense it is [KIND OF] against the ToS, but it's something that can be overlooked, especially since it's something that requires a mutual agreement (It's not like we're FORCING people to buy our artstuff). Oh well. =/

[Lydia Lightfoot]

All this will do is fuel legitimate RMT.

[Lydia Lightfoot]

As I understand it, the laws that allow us to keep a FFXIV-related site open, up, and running don't allow us to breach the ToS that Square-Enix has implemented for their IP and service. If we were to breach said ToS, the RPC could get shut down by Square-Enix due to the violation.

 

...pursuant to the Materials Use License that governs this site (which does not permit any promotion of forbidden activities in game), all threads advertising art of any sort, commissioned or otherwise, for gil are forbidden as of February 12, 2015.

 

 

For the record, guys, if a video game developer actually had the legal capability to shut down a website that is theoretically promoting RMT, there would be exactly zero gold farming / account sale / power leveling websites in existence. Those websites aren't a secret. They're blatant. They come up on search engines really, really easily. Game developers know that they exist. If they could do anything about it, they would. They can't. They don't have any legal ground to shut down a website for activities which violate their game's TOS, because the website isn't a player of the game and therefore isn't subject to the TOS.

 

Not suggesting you guys should change the policy back or anything - hey, man, it's your website, you put up whatever rules you want. I'm just saying it's not something you have to actually be, like... "afraid" of. If that makes sense.

[FreelanceWizard]

Those sites generally do not use materials provided by Square-Enix under the Materials Use License. We do. That's the major difference. If they decide we've violated that license, they can revoke it, send a C&D to Amazon, and poof! We're gone.

 

Also, RMT sites are indeed targeted by developers, though their ability to go after them is somewhat limited by how they're hosted ("bulletproof" hosting) and who's running them (non-US operators). Conversely, we're a US site, on US hosting, with an easy accessible legal notices address.

 

SE is notably litigious when they feel their IP is being violated, and personally, I'd rather keep the site on extremely solid legal ground, rather than violating a license agreement. If one wishes to get a commission done for gil, there's many places where you can find that -- just not here.

 

All that said, this is something I ran past counsel when it was set almost two years ago, and the policy was set per his advice. I am not a lawyer, but I know when to call one up to ask questions.

[Sisiya Siya]

 

I should add that I do think it is a fair decision.

 

Players who can create stuff out-of-game for in-game currency is of course unfair on those who cannot. Whereas, every single player has a fair chance of making anything in-game for in-game currency if they put the work into it. I can understand some artists frustration on this but I think that's more disappointment than anything.

[Branson Thorne]

How will they know though? Unless it's advertised on the official forums. People often use numerous other means to negotiate this kinda stuff anyway don't they?

 

And how would they proceed to ban/punish people/service accounts?

 

I should add that I do think it is a fair decision.

 

Players who can create stuff out-of-game for in-game currency is of course unfair on those who cannot. Whereas, every single player has a fair chance of making anything in-game for in-game currency if they put the work into it. I can understand some artists frustration on this but I think that's more disappointment than anything.

 

Honestly, they wouldn't. It's one of those things where they rely on the threat of being punished to be more effective then they could actually govern or punish something like this.

 

With so much gil exchanging hands through legal ways, unless someone posted in the forums or spoke about it publicly, they would have no idea and thus unable to take any action.

 

It's like those websites still selling gill on Balmung through an external site. They don't get banned because they did not advertise in-game or through public SE websites. Instead, people go looking for them. If you are a gil buyer, you are not going to report the seller.

 

The only thing that gets banned consitently by SE are the bots that show up all over the place right after maintenance.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Still, as a site that uses the SE Matieral Use License (and to an extent uses their community rules as a base on a number of decisions), we do need to follow them.

 

In RPC's case, it means no public advertising of art/out of game stuff for in-game gil per their terms of RMT. The staff aren't going to be looking at PM or private chats or off-site actions. That falls out of our scope. (and really, a person would need to report/forward a PM for us to even see it).

 

For sites that don't conform to the Material Use License, see: Tumblr. (Because yes, reddit follows it too).