Real Money Trading

I was going to make fun of the fact that mods never responding to the actual questions presented and only the weird side things they jump on but like dang. So, did the mods who participated in the discussion continue RMT?

"You may leave now." this is the reason im scared of suggesting and criticizing things lol. i hope that was just passive aggressiveness and their account didnt get punished aha.... :eyes emoji: (and yes the passive aggressiveness is bad too. unprofessional, gets nothing done. i have anxiety, if i dont that response i'd die on the spot lmao. also their post was a joke)

Please have some patience, Eltafez is currently preparing an actual, full response to questions.

Apologies for my late replies, I'm trying to get the important information out of the way while reading through and making sure my own info is correct. xD;

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And you're right. He hadn't checked with us to make sure his reply was appropriate. For that, we apologise. If you have suggestions regarding ZC pricing on items, please do share your idea with us over in the Suggestions forum so we can see if it's viable.

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As for staff having done RMT while the most recent discussions were on-going-- just so you have a rough timeline: Recent discussion started around Jan. 14. Before that, the previous discussion was - and I actually had to hunt it down in the Discord channel - roughly when the announcement was made regarding the scammer. That discussion resulted in a "no, this is still fine for now". So close to a year. There have indeed been a couple of new staff members who messed up due to not knowing they weren't supposed to use said information, and each of them have had a harsh talking to and their threads removed upon finding out. I'm afraid that is all I can say about it. With that, I'm locking the thread for a little bit so things can cool down. It's almost 1:30 in the morning my time.

Alright, here I am again. Before I unlock the thread I'd like to establish the following: Since we're not going to change our mind on this one, I only ask that messages be kept within the rules. This sounds obvious but is apparently a tough act to follow - for both staff and userbase. On this note, I asked my fellow colleagues not to reply unless it's to answer (reasonable) questions and to stray no further than that. This does mean that replies to such questions may be slow as they're being filtered out from the bunch, but I hope they can be done in a timely manner. If your question has been overlooked somehow and a staff member has posted in the meantime, feel free to give me a nudge in PMs. If you wish to express your opinion, be it positive or negative, you may continue to do so - again, so long as it is within site rules. If you have issues and think your message might come off as rule breaking, I invite you to PM me so I can have a look. Please note though, that I'm still handling things in real life so replies on my end will likely be slow. I'll leave this thread open now - only locked it to let things calm down and so I and my fellow colleagues could rest (and have a full night's sleep in my case). If you'd like to discuss something that isn't (or maybe is) about RMT, please give this thread a read and join in the discussion. Tl;dr: Feel free to post, stay within the rules. Staff won't reply unless it's to answer questions.

i missed my chance to post this before the thread was locked but would still like to share as someone who actively spent money on this site (through PFQ directly and through RMT), i feel the need to point this out: inherently, there was no way for staff to warn us about this without it /immediately/ becoming illegal. i cant imagine a single way that wouldn't put PFQ in serious legal trouble if staff had allowed everyone, en mass, to take advantage of RMT before banning it. that sounds like a guaranteed way of getting the site taken down. another thing to address is the fact that RMT was most definitely being used as a loophole. not to out myself in participating in suspicious activity, but i myself have done RMT for ZC because it was cheaper for me to buy ZC through another player than it was to buy from PFQ directly. not only does this allow a PFQ user to profit off of the site while avoiding tax, PFQ (a site with no ads btw) loses its profit. i feel the need to stress that this is the opinion of person who: - bought melans through RMT - planned on selling pokemon and items through RMT - is directly impacted by this - actively works full-time - actively took advantage of the loopholes RMT created normally i dont comment on these threads because i generally agree with the way staff runs the site, and ultimately the reason im here and the reason i stay is because i love playing an ad-free collecting game that actively encourages hoarding; but i felt the need to stress that this is probably an issue that should've been addressed sooner. a lot of us are lucky it was allowed up until this point, and we're lucky that none of us are facing any legal consequences. i personally am just grateful that the site wasn't terminated, i get to keep everything i received through RMTs, and that those who were (understandably) made uncomfortable by seeing RMT threads no longer have to worry about them. i also like that you have to support the site directly if you want to buy ZC, even if it is more expensive for me that way, at least it's going directly back into the site.

Hi there. I just wanted to pop in to say that after reading 20 pages of angry replies I was under the impression that this Real Money Trades has to do with trades between users..not using money to buy something directly from the site itself. I am pretty sure this was said right up front in the original post. Now..please allow me to say my piece.. First off this is supposed to be a FUN site where you collect cool pokemons and do stuff. This is not a business site. Secondly this is not a business/financial platform to buy and sell; this is what E-Bay, Etsy and the like are for. If you are so hard up on money then why spend your rent money buying intangible things? Also...all this teeth-gnashing puts regular users like myself in jeopardy as Niet and others could very well just simply throw up their hands in frustration and quit this site. Please understand that from a legal and financial standpoint, if something happens in a transaction between USERS it puts this site in a awkward legal position as they can be held liable for any fraudulent actions a user commits. Again..this is a GAME site, not a commerce site. Buying canisters and stuff directly from the site using real money is one thing, a user buying stuff with real money from another user using this site as a relay/platform is quite another. This is not like E-Bay or Etsy and therefore is not set up to safeguard against the transactions between users..it is precarious enough to make sure transactions between a single user buying directly from the site are safe and secure. Finally I find it almost amusing how many threaten to quit and leave (basically having a temper tantrum) because they cannot exploit this site and make a few bucks while totally ignoring that this is not what this site is for to begin with. It is a FUN site to collect imaginary critters not buy, sell and trade using real currency. Wanna sell your art? Then use a site that is designed for that, don't demand that Niet and the others change the whole modus operandi of this site to fulfill that. Again..this is supposed to be a FUN site, don't let your greed ruin the fun for the rest of us. Thanks and I support Niets decision. It is his site and he and those involved needs to do what is safe for him/them and the rest of us.

@Sharpy @Trebor @Necr0 guess we'll never get an actual answer :shrug:

As far as I understood it this decision only effected RMT for site goods. I thought you could still sell art here?

I have a question regarding the staff the did do (or at least attempted to do) RMTs after the recent staff discussions started: Were they under the impression that there would be a grace period for all users? If the answer to that is no, which I assume it is, I think any staff that tried to do a RMT since then should be removed immediately. Any person that doesn't realize how immoral that is should not be in charge of moderating the userbase. It shows a severe lack of judgement from them (giving them the benefit of the doubt) or malice. This is also just such a bad look for the site overall. How can you claim that it would be illegal to allow a grace period for users while having no real repercussions for one of your own staff who did the exact thing you're saying is illegal? And a "harsh talking to" should not be enough of an answer in a case like this. You guys said it yourselves, this is a legal issue, not some minor mistake. Also a side note to this discussion: I think it was a really bad decision to immediately lock the thread after giving this information. I do understand that you all wanted to sleep, so I'm not blaming you for locking the thread because of that (especially since it was also getting pretty wild), but I think you went about it wrong. A much better way of doing it should've been by saying something along the lines of "we need our rest, we'll be locking the thread now so it doesn't get out of control in the meantime and we'll reopen the thread in the morning and we'll give some answers then." Putting out such a controversial piece of information and then immediately locking the thread looks like you're just trying to not allow people to express their concerns about said information.