Real Money Trading

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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

To put it another way, anything that can be traded through your Trade Centre, the Market, or any other bit of PokéFarm.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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*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.

I very much understand why this is taking place but...I feel like many people are going to be quitting in droves now.

We have discussed that during the time of composing the post, but we did decide that this would be best to avoid any further... issues like the aforementioned stuff in Methos's post

I feel like this is my reason to quit. I really enjoy this game and friends here. Hatching pokemons is ultra satisfacting, but... Pokefarm was also nice way for me to have money to buy stuff for my pets ;-; And you know. I felt like this time was useful. And now what? Game without (almost without) updates, without news about new version, without events (ok, we had christmas...) and now you you block thing that kept some people here?

Not that I personally have a problem with this but I think one of the issues is for players that have paid and quit or are quitting. They want to get some of that money back which I think is valid but it does become an obvious issue on it's own (I'm not suggesting refunds or anything of that sort, cause well it don't work like that lol). I think it's perfectly valid but certainly sucky for some people though it could discourage some to not purchase any upgrades anymore or as frequently and such.

Pokefarm was never intended to be a source of money for people. We are a website game where our focus is clicking eggs and hatching pretty mons. Making money on the side is understandable, but using Pokefarm as your main source of income seems kind of... silly?

Don't put worlds I never said into my mouth please. It was kinda rude. [Mod edit: accidentally edited post instead of quoting to reply.]

While this doesn't effect me, I think calling it silly is a bit.. underhanded personally as not everyone has the ability to go out and work a "real job" It was a source of income to melan hunt and sell for money to be used where there isnt much of a possibility outside that. Especially for people who cannot do other things like art for it. Though I do understand the response this will likely have as "well pokefarm is a pet site game, not a job" and I get that, but that isn't my point. This'll probably be my only two cents here though. Do what you need to do to protect the site and your own pockets (referring to the people at the head who actually gain money from running this site, not "you" specifically).

I'm perfectly fine with this, as I don't really pay for a game and expect to get money back. I would simply hope that more updates continue to roll out that increase QoL/improve the game/etc, as this was a major feature for many players. At the end of the day, it's a game, not a bank. It's truly unfortunate for those more affected by this change; I can understand where they're coming from. EDIT: This post was made by an adult with adult responsibilities.

So I asked a cpl if I could buy a cpl things from them next friday because that's when I get paid, is that still okay? Cause I don't have the money for the things I want to get right this second.