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17 June Edit: It's now been... a really long time since RMT has been disallowed. Four whole months. 142 days. By now, any RMT trades agreed upon prior to the ban going into effect should have long since been completed. Please note that any non-art-related RMT conducted after this date, regardless of the date the agreement was made, will be penalised in full. Penalties will range from the removal of trading privileges to permanent account bans, depending on the severity of the infraction, and we do not expect to be lenient regarding such infractions. Please take heed of this warning.
4 Feb Edit: Hey there, it's now been a week. Please remove all RMT offers from trade threads, trade shops, and non-art-related RMT from your profile pages, if you haven't already. Moderators will begin sweeping for remaining offers shortly.
Hello there! While we hope everyone has had a safe and pleasant 2022 so far, I'm afraid we come to you with some bad news. We've been reviewing the legalities around real-money trading (RMT) for some time now. You can see our previous announcement about RMT here, where we stopped supporting RMT on PokéFarm, but did not ban it. And this account breach incident where we first brought up issues with RMT and how it contributed to the rampant theft. After all of this, we've reached an unfortunate conclusion: In order to prevent legal issues, we are going to have to stop allowing RMT for PokéFarm digital goods. This includes both direct payments through services like Paypal and exchanging gift cards, whether physical or digital. Any RMT trade agreements found to have been made after this announcement is posted will incur site penalties ranging from a warning, to trade locks, to permanent site locks in the worst case scenario.
I'll get into the legal stuff a bit later, but first I'm going to explain what we mean by "PokéFarm digital goods". This is anything obtainable from the game itself. Things that are PokéFarm digital goods:
As a knock-on effect, PokéFarm is also no longer going to allow players to use PFQ as a platform to arrange RMT trades for digital goods from other websites. If the other site allows RMT trading, please make any such trade arrangements over there. If the other site doesn't allow RMT trading, then attempting to arrange it here was already a violation of both their and our Terms of Service. Please make a big note that art is NOT a PokéFarm digital good. In the case of art (including templates), PokéFarm is only acting as a platform. The ability to use Paypal or similar to pay for art commissioned on PokéFarm is not affected by this change.
Now for the legal stuff. There are two big issues with RMT in exchange for PokéFarm's digital goods. The first might come to mind when you hear the term "loot boxes". RMT attaches a *monetary value to PokéFarm digital goods that was never actually intended, and because Boxes (and Box Boxes) can be purchased from other players using RMT, purchasing and opening those Boxes can constitute gambling and we can't allow that. Purchasing ZC (in-game or virtual currency) from the site and using that to purchase Boxes instead keeps this from being gambling in the legal sense, which is why gacha games have you buy things like Primogems in Genshin Impact or Saint Quartz in Fate/Grand Order. The other reason is rather more people-driven. Be honest; of everyone who has conducted RMT trading for PokéFarm digital goods, how many of you have declared any profits you made on your taxes? Some of you have made thousands of dollars, especially through trading digital currencies or melanistic Pokémon. Not all of you have done this, but PokéFarm really, really can't play host to tax evasion, or worse, money laundering. As some very notorious people have learned throughout history, you do not get on the bad side of the IRS or HM Revenue and Customs.
Things we know people are going to ask:
We are aware that this is not going to be a popular decision. I don't think anyone on staff likes it. Some of us really don't like it, since we were doing RMT ourselves. But legal is legal. We welcome feedback, suggestions, and discussion, but please keep it civil. Being upset is understandable. Abusive language is not.
*Monetary value: This refers to the ability to convert digital goods back into real-world currency, or to get money "back out" of the system.
4 Feb Edit: Hey there, it's now been a week. Please remove all RMT offers from trade threads, trade shops, and non-art-related RMT from your profile pages, if you haven't already. Moderators will begin sweeping for remaining offers shortly.
Hello there! While we hope everyone has had a safe and pleasant 2022 so far, I'm afraid we come to you with some bad news. We've been reviewing the legalities around real-money trading (RMT) for some time now. You can see our previous announcement about RMT here, where we stopped supporting RMT on PokéFarm, but did not ban it. And this account breach incident where we first brought up issues with RMT and how it contributed to the rampant theft. After all of this, we've reached an unfortunate conclusion: In order to prevent legal issues, we are going to have to stop allowing RMT for PokéFarm digital goods. This includes both direct payments through services like Paypal and exchanging gift cards, whether physical or digital. Any RMT trade agreements found to have been made after this announcement is posted will incur site penalties ranging from a warning, to trade locks, to permanent site locks in the worst case scenario.
- Any trade agreements for RMT made prior to this announcement may be completed, preferably as soon as possible.
- Players have one week from the time of this announcement to remove any existing RMT offers from their Trade Shops and profiles.
I'll get into the legal stuff a bit later, but first I'm going to explain what we mean by "PokéFarm digital goods". This is anything obtainable from the game itself. Things that are PokéFarm digital goods:
- Pokémon (whether regular, shiny, albino, melanistic, Delta, or Custom Sprites)
- Items (ALL game items that can be found or purchased on PokéFarm, including items purchased with Zophan Canisters)
- Currency (Credits, Gold Poke, Zophan Canisters)
As a knock-on effect, PokéFarm is also no longer going to allow players to use PFQ as a platform to arrange RMT trades for digital goods from other websites. If the other site allows RMT trading, please make any such trade arrangements over there. If the other site doesn't allow RMT trading, then attempting to arrange it here was already a violation of both their and our Terms of Service. Please make a big note that art is NOT a PokéFarm digital good. In the case of art (including templates), PokéFarm is only acting as a platform. The ability to use Paypal or similar to pay for art commissioned on PokéFarm is not affected by this change.
Now for the legal stuff. There are two big issues with RMT in exchange for PokéFarm's digital goods. The first might come to mind when you hear the term "loot boxes". RMT attaches a *monetary value to PokéFarm digital goods that was never actually intended, and because Boxes (and Box Boxes) can be purchased from other players using RMT, purchasing and opening those Boxes can constitute gambling and we can't allow that. Purchasing ZC (in-game or virtual currency) from the site and using that to purchase Boxes instead keeps this from being gambling in the legal sense, which is why gacha games have you buy things like Primogems in Genshin Impact or Saint Quartz in Fate/Grand Order. The other reason is rather more people-driven. Be honest; of everyone who has conducted RMT trading for PokéFarm digital goods, how many of you have declared any profits you made on your taxes? Some of you have made thousands of dollars, especially through trading digital currencies or melanistic Pokémon. Not all of you have done this, but PokéFarm really, really can't play host to tax evasion, or worse, money laundering. As some very notorious people have learned throughout history, you do not get on the bad side of the IRS or HM Revenue and Customs.
Things we know people are going to ask:
- Can we have a grace period before this goes into effect? I'm afraid not. If this decision were being made for anything other than legal reasons, we absolutely would be giving everyone a grace period. But offering some extra time to do a thing that we just said is legally problematic rather sends the wrong message.
- Can I still sell art for real money? Yes! As we said earlier, in fact, but I know that was a lot to read. We are not going to discourage anyone from using RMT for art commissions, beyond the obligatory reminder that it's risky and we can't do much to help if it goes wrong. (If anything, we think a lot of artists here are undervaluing their work and should be charging more than they are.)
- What about Gragon's Gift? As the name states, Gragon's Gift is a gift, or a bonus, not a purchase.
QUOTE originally posted by Cele
The discussion over the past months/years was removal of RMT on the basis of users scamming one another / etc. Basically it being a heavily difficult issue to resolve when it comes to trade breaches, because we can neither force nor prove the reversal of funds via PayPal when a user tries to fleece or scam someone else. These discussions were ultimately not acted on because we didn't want to punish the many for the few.
The discussion that began 14 Jan was on the basis of users likely not claiming their income from it on their taxes, which is what lead to the ban of RMT becoming final. This was legality that we came across - we could no longer argue it. We had to move to ban it immediately upon reaching that conclusion on its legality, and that is why we are here.
We are aware that this is not going to be a popular decision. I don't think anyone on staff likes it. Some of us really don't like it, since we were doing RMT ourselves. But legal is legal. We welcome feedback, suggestions, and discussion, but please keep it civil. Being upset is understandable. Abusive language is not.
*Monetary value: This refers to the ability to convert digital goods back into real-world currency, or to get money "back out" of the system.
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