Real Money Trading

I've been following this thread and have been wanted to respond with some questions. If a trade is agreed upon off site, using real money, would that be considered a strike against site rules? It's one thing to clearly state an agreement to RMT in the forums where it's public info. That's a very clear offense. It's also another thing to agree within private messaging on the site (which if staff has the ability to look through pms that's sort of sus, but that's another discussion). But any agreements to RMT made off-site isn't exactly trackable is it? I mean someone can agree to buy a melan off of a user on Twitter for example in private messages and they can receive said Pokemon as a gift. And while it may seem suspicious to receive such a prized Pokemon as a gift, there are instances where it is indeed a gift. I don't see how that could be tracked unless there was hard evidence exposing such a trade was completed. One other thing that just popped into my mind is what if Pokemon were traded for actual objects? And I don't mean art by the way. No money is exchanged in the process, but there is still trade made either way. I don't know if anyone has actually done this, but let's say me, for example, wanted to trade a cute t-shirt for some Pokemon, does that count against the rules as well?

Ah, Apologies if I mess this up But I believe it was said staff started seriouslly discussing banning RMT on jan 14th of this year? so it would have been 2 weeks not 18 months.

@TmelordSnowy This thread here says that while the rules have changed says that while the site won't support it, that the door is open to change meaning that at the very least it has been on the minds of the mod team since then.

If I may, I said that only a couple of new staff members - the ones that have joined mid 2021 - have made the mistake of using the information to their advantage. The most recent discussion regarding RMT happened Jan. 14 - a few weeks ago. Before that, there was a time frame of a year in which everything was still okay.

and I was specifically talking about this post by Eltafez yesterday Here I havent been active on this site in 2 years I haven't kept up with the news. Im going off the recent post posted.

Sorry, I missed this initially until it was pointed out to me by another colleague. Q: If a trade is agreed upon off site, using real money, would that be considered a strike against site rules? It would be circumventing the rules we have so yes, it would be considered a strike. While we're here, please keep in mind that staff can and will look through Personal Messages if we have valid reason to do so (eg. a report about illicit activity). This is outlined in the rules - "Rule 10: British Laws Apply" specifically. Q: One other thing that just popped into my mind is what if Pokemon were traded for actual objects? I don't really know of anyone who would make physical goods to trade for pixels, but in short... I guess that could work -if- you can make it work?

Sorry to be pushy here Elta but I think this is a really good point and would be interesting to see the answer. Especially if say it truly was a gift with no under the table RMT involved. How would you know either way? Would innocent people get bopped through this?

We wouldn't lock users unless we had substantial evidence. I freely admit it's going to be very difficult to monitor for us, especially if done under the table, but if that's a risk users are willing to place on themselves and on the site, then my hands are tied.

i really hope staff do pay attention to this. i gifted 5 melans when RMT was still allowed, and 1 soon after the update came out. i dont think getting a melan gifted is "suspicious", it's just rare because melans themselves are rare y'know ? but Elta's response does reassure me, hopefully if i do gift melans again i wont be penalized. thank you for the response, this is just my 2 cents as a Certified Melan Giver TM lol

I mean, an example that comes to mind would be to order something from an online shop and just have it delievered to someone else? I do have some trades that fell through since RMT is now banned, but there could still be an actuall exchange of value in that way. EDIT.: Though I can already think of a few ways that could be messy already^^