Any 'automated' system of this type can be abused, plain and simple;
This has already been addressed by limits on how time is incurred.
and again you're totally ignoring the fact that any reimbursement of this type, especially with C-Points that have a monetary value associated with them could cause legal trouble for Cryptic,
How so? They didn't seem to have any problem when they gave everyone a batch of C-Points shortly after launch. C-Points aren't a legally recognized currency. Tax law doesn't apply. You can buy them, you can be given them... they're effectively used for internal bartering.
in that an arguement could be made that simnce Crypyic 'pays' for Foundry created missions, it sets up a 'paid contractor' type situation.
If that were true then the problem would exist already and regardless of this reward system. If the IRS doesn't have a problem with the system already, my compensation system shouldn't cross any new lines.
As much fun as it would be to get a kick-back, due to potential legal concerns a featured episode or Dev's fav would be a better option for Cryptic.
I'm still curious how a legal problem could exist.
Cryptic gave a batch of C-Points to everyone shortly after launch. If they're going to legally be seen as currency because you can buy them for dollars, then logically that would have been seen as Cryptic giving a "gift" or "payment" to all players. And as far as I know there was no legal reaction to them doing that.
By farther extension, if C-Points are recognized as having a real monetary value, so must all of the items you purchase in the C-Store with them. So when Cryptic offers you the means to get an item in-game that you could otherwise only get through the C-Store, isn't that also Cryptic giving you something of monetary value through their game?
It just seems to me that if there were a line of legality, Cryptic would have already crossed it a long time ago.
I'm still curious how a legal problem could exist.
Cryptic gave a batch of C-Points to everyone shortly after launch. If they're going to legally be seen as currency because you can buy them for dollars, then logically that would have been seen as Cryptic giving a "gift" or "payment" to all players. And as far as I know there was no legal reaction to them doing that.
By farther extension, if C-Points are recognized as having a real monetary value, so must all of the items you purchase in the C-Store with them. So when Cryptic offers you the means to get an item in-game that you could otherwise only get through the C-Store, isn't that also Cryptic giving you something of monetary value through their game?
It just seems to me that if there were a line of legality, Cryptic would have already crossed it a long time ago.
Cryptic cannot cross any line that gets close to an employer/employee relationship by paying a player in exchange for providing a valuable labor to Cryptic.
If I understand a part of the argument here is that Cryptic is getting something of value from the player in the form of the user designed content and thus it would be good to reward the player for this. To the extent that this reward is direct and has real value is the line they don't want to cross. Of course if the content has no value to Cryptic there would be no issue, but then why reward the player for doing what they enjoy doing.
I don't make a judgment on whether any ideas would cross that line, but I think a good question to ask is whether any player would endeavor to design content for a "financial" benefit to be received from Cryptic in exchange for doing so. Mere recognition is easy - cash payment in direct exchange for developing content is easy - things in between the two, not necessarily so easy but I doubt they'll want to get close to any line.
Also, tax laws generally care less whether you are paid in currency or in kind, only whether they have taxable value. Enforcement however becomes much more difficult in barter situations.
I don't make a judgment on whether any ideas would cross that line, but I think a good question to ask is whether any player would endeavor to design content for a "financial" benefit to be received from Cryptic in exchange for doing so. Mere recognition is easy - cash payment in direct exchange for developing content is easy - things in between the two, not necessarily so easy but I doubt they'll want to get close to any line.
If you could sell C-Points for money then obviously there would clearly be a problem.
But the only thing you can get with C-Points is what Cryptic is willing to give you. Nothing in that exchange is taxable. For that matter... I'm not even sure if the purchase of C-Points is taxable, given the purchase is often crossing state lines; I never pay tax for the stuff I buy on Amazon.
...you're totally ignoring the fact that any reimbursement of this type, especially with C-Points that have a monetary value associated with them could cause legal trouble for Cryptic, in that an arguement could be made that simnce Crypyic 'pays' for Foundry created missions, it sets up a 'paid contractor' type situation.
^^^^^
For this reason alone, it's enough to end the 'compensation' debate.
...
What?
I don't understand your argument. Please explain what you mean.
Cryptic cannot cross any line that gets close to an employer/employee relationship by paying a player in exchange for providing a valuable labor to Cryptic.
This seems possible, but you're going to need to substantiate it. Please link some evidence, whether it's in the form of a dev post, or some tax law, or something else.
And to avoid 'gray pay', that might find a lawyer desperate enough for a frivilous lawsuit, Cryptic will offer nothing of real value outside of the game. My best guess is an Accolade and online 'created by', but absoutly nothing of 'Value'. All I read between the lines here is 'will I get REAL money for this somehow'.
Depends what you consider "real value".
Personally I don't consider uniforms and ships "real value".
On the other hand credits and gold in MMOs seem to have "real value" if people are willing to go to third-party agencies to pay real money to get it illegitimately. By that logic even in-game credits have "real value"... which would make the exchange a market that someone might feel should be taxed. Goods are changing hands that have "real value", after all.
Is it so hard to understand that Cryptic will not be getting rich off of this, but rather, the game will keep itself going through UGC and will not have to be shut down for lack of funding. This is the way we keep the game alive, not how Cryptic fleeces us. We have an opportunity to make the game our own, and all people are concerned with is if they personaly will profit from the process.
Intent and reality are two different things. Cryptic might have added this simply because people asked for it, or they might have added it as a means to get more content in the game, or they might have added it with the thought that us creating content is cheaper than them hiring level designers. Regardless of their intent, content is being put into a game that Cryptic charges access to.
The end result is that they are making money off the presence of what we create. That will be true for as long as people have to pay to play it.
Make UGC for yourself first, and if others enjoy it then you may get something nice in return. UGC for $$$ will fail.
I agree that UGC for $$$ will fail. UGC for something else, though? No reason it can't work. Just have to find where the line is of what they can do. And judging by what we've seen them do already, they can do quite a bit.
What they can do without any legal problems is assign a certain number
of C-Store credits to be earned by publishing a mission. Very similar to LOTRO
where you get store credits for various things...I think DDO gives them
for earning faction.
They can do that..no problem. Its basically an award system.
Now if you want them to sell UGC missions in the store and basic C-Store
credits based on its sales...............get the legal team out.
Then you have Joe Writer filing legal papers against cryptic for cheating him/her
out of royalties...ect...ect..ect..
To be safe, the points awarded need to be automatic, and either equal or based on
a scale of some sort..AND cryptic can't sell the UGC missions.
What they can do without any legal problems is assign a certain number
of C-Store credits to be earned by publishing a mission. Very similar to LOTRO
where you get store credits for various things...I think DDO gives them
for earning faction.
They can do that..no problem. Its basically an award system.
Now if you want them to sell UGC missions in the store and basic C-Store
credits based on its sales...............get the legal team out.
Then you have Joe Writer filing legal papers against cryptic for cheating him/her
out of royalties...ect...ect..ect..
To be safe, the points awarded need to be automatic, and either equal or based on
a scale of some sort..AND cryptic can't sell the UGC missions.
And that can be abused by a group of players publishing simple missions - playing yhrough them quick tio get the minimum number of plays needed to make them 'fully published' - get the C-Point reward; unpublish the mission; then rinse repeat, effectively making Cryptic loose money in that it becomes a way to generate 'free' C Points.
And that can be abused by a group of players publishing simple missions - playing yhrough them quick tio get the minimum number of plays needed to make them 'fully published' - get the C-Point reward; unpublish the mission; then rinse repeat, effectively making Cryptic loose money in that it becomes a way to generate 'free' C Points.
Hardly. If you've looked at pretty much every Cryptic post on the subject they say that missions need to be APPROVED. A mission isn't instantly available when you make it. Besides which, even if that weren't the case, playing at a rate of 1 CP per unique character/account playthrough is not farmable. Who here has so many unique characters or even accounts that they can literally farm themselves 10 CP? Let's pretend there are people who would do this, ok, so then you have 10 CP. Now what? You can't do anything with such a piddly little amount. Most people only have three characters as that is standard. Buying more character slots to farm 1 single lonely CP is insanity. It's not even a real world money sink it's a losing process.
Doing the mission ten times over? Theres no incentive to the actual player to redo someone elses mission for them; let alone on any significant scale. Like any other mission their rewards will likely be greatly reduced after the first completion to say nothing of the time it takes to simply do it.
This is practically exactly like the weapons and items that come on C-Store ships. The Constitution, for example, you can sell several pieces on it for about 25 credits. You can then throw away the ship, reobtain it for free, and sell the new parts for 25 credits or so. Cryptic basically scoffed (as they should have) at the notion that this is abusable or farmable. They basically said 'if they feel like wasting all that time for nothing, let them' because the gain is **** poor. You could make more than that just by picking up one single drop (that isn't food, of course).
And that can be abused by a group of players publishing simple missions - playing yhrough them quick tio get the minimum number of plays needed to make them 'fully published' - get the C-Point reward; unpublish the mission; then rinse repeat, effectively making Cryptic loose money in that it becomes a way to generate 'free' C Points.
It's not cheating Cryptic out of money.
The whole point is that players are getting something to do. Their intent is irrelevant. If they're playing the missions they're playing the game and they're paying Cryptic to play the game and the author is getting a reward relative to how much those players are playing the missions.
The only way they'd be cheating the system and cheating Cryptic would be if they're somehow generating C-Points for authors without playing the missions. But that's impossible, since the reward is directly proportionate to mission play time.
And again, we're talking 1cp per 1 hour of gameplay. What's a "simple" mission? Something that could be done in 5 minutes? People would have to play it 12 times to earn the author 1cp. And if they institute per-character-per-mission time caps of 30 minutes, it'd take 2 people 6 times of 5 minutes or, if they idle it, 2 people 2 times of 30 minutes.
Regardless of motive, if they idle, etc., the value of the mission to Cryptic will always be higher than the value of the reward given to the author. There's simply no way to abuse this. Another way to look at it is that the value of the reward isn't determined by the players directly; it's determined by the value of the mission to Cryptic. That's why I referred to it as a "commission" before; the author only ever gets around 5% of the value Cryptic is getting.
Who here has so many unique characters or even accounts that they can literally farm themselves 10 CP? Let's pretend there are people who would do this, ok, so then you have 10 CP. Now what? You can't do anything with such a piddly little amount. Most people only have three characters as that is standard. Buying more character slots to farm 1 single lonely CP is insanity. It's not even a real world money sink it's a losing process.
Yep.
On the one hand it's incredibly hard for anyone to game the system to a notable degree. It would take a concentrated effort of many people to earn an author any notable reward.
On the other hand it doesn't matter if they do. Here's my math example that I wrote up for dstahl:
Example of Math in Practice
Assumptions:
* C-Store point currency
* Cap time-played per character of 30 minutes
* No time-played counting for author of content
* Reward of 1cp for every one hour of play time
* Accumulative reward of 1200cp (price of a T5 ship)
* $15 = 62 hours of play time
- Average player plays 2 hours per day
- 31-day month
- $15/month subscription
* 1cp = $0.0125 (based on 5000cp purchase price)
In order for an author to earn 1200cp they would have to have missions that have provided a total of at least 1200 hours of play time and of at least 2,400 play throughs by unique characters.
1200 hours of play time equates to $290.32 of subscription income.
1200cp equates to $15 worth of C-Store points
In summary, for the value-add of $290.32 to the game by the content author, the author is rewarded $15 worth of C-Store points. That equates to an effective commission of 5.16%.
Our subscription fee allows us to put a dollar value on the time we play. We can also put a dollar value on the C-Points rewarded based on amount of time spent playing specific missions. Comparing the two we can see, and make sure, that this system always makes more for Cryptic than it makes for the author. And so long as it does, Cryptic profits.
1) Featured games earn like 10,000 Cryptic Points.
2) Each hit on your game gets you 1 Cryptic Point.
Something like that. This way it's not actual money. The only way I could see actual money being factored in would be if we made C-store items which is unlikely.
Not directly.
Cryptic only loses money giving a person C-Points if that person would otherwise buy C-Points, themselves. If they never would, Cryptic wouldn't have lost anything.
You spend real-world currency for C-Points. You spend C-Points in game to purchase goods and services. Buying C-Points is currency conversion, albeit one-way. If I coud spend $CAD to buy $USD, but not the other way around (not going to happen in real-world economices) it's still currency conversion. Something every first year economics student will learn.
C-Points may be considered money as they are a product of currency conversion. Not to mention it's opportunity cost to Cryptic as well. :rolleyes:
C-Points may be considered money as they are a product of currency conversion. Not to mention it's opportunity cost to Cryptic as well. :rolleyes:
By that logic your $15/month is currency exchange for a month's worth of play time, but there's nothing legally preventing Cryptic from giving us free time. Same applies here. In both cases we're trading real money for some sort of product that Cryptic controls the distribution of, and in neither case can we reverse the trade to get real money back.
C-Points cannot be considered money. The most they can be considered is having monetary value. Any service or product we pay for has monetary value... the law doesn't consider them money.
Originally Posted by Armsman
And that can be abused by a group of players publishing simple missions - playing yhrough them quick tio get the minimum number of plays needed to make them 'fully published' - get the C-Point reward; unpublish the mission; then rinse repeat, effectively making Cryptic loose money in that it becomes a way to generate 'free' C Points.
Hardly. If you've looked at pretty much every Cryptic post on the subject they say that missions need to be APPROVED. A mission isn't instantly available when you make it. Besides which, even if that weren't the case, playing at a rate of 1 CP per unique character/account playthrough is not farmable. Who here has so many unique characters or even accounts that they can literally farm themselves 10 CP? Let's pretend there are people who would do this, ok, so then you have 10 CP. Now what? You can't do anything with such a piddly little amount. Most people only have three characters as that is standard. Buying more character slots to farm 1 single lonely CP is insanity. It's not even a real world money sink it's a losing process.
Doing the mission ten times over? Theres no incentive to the actual player to redo someone elses mission for them; let alone on any significant scale. Like any other mission their rewards will likely be greatly reduced after the first completion to say nothing of the time it takes to simply do it.
This is practically exactly like the weapons and items that come on C-Store ships. The Constitution, for example, you can sell several pieces on it for about 25 credits. You can then throw away the ship, reobtain it for free, and sell the new parts for 25 credits or so. Cryptic basically scoffed (as they should have) at the notion that this is abusable or farmable. They basically said 'if they feel like wasting all that time for nothing, let them' because the gain is **** poor. You could make more than that just by picking up one single drop (that isn't food, of course).
I was not saying one player could do it. It would take a group, but again, if automated, say:
A Mission takes 10 'plays' to be approve and the C-Point reward given; and the ****ion published.
The mission in question ends up being 'destroy one enemy squdron' - usually 1 - 3 ships.
You get 10 people each cycling through each others mission; and they get published and everyone in the group gets the C-Point reward.
They ALL then unpublish the missions; and republish them; rinse repeat.
You could rack up free C-Points pretty quickly this way. Yes, the end result would probably be Crytic banning accounts; which in the end hurts the game's bottom line and creates more people wanting to spread bad word of mouth about STO.
In the end, the negatives and risxks outweigh the positives. There's no real reason for Cryptic to reward users in any type of STO currency; as that breeds incentive to exploit the currency generation system.
Again, it boils down to:
If the idea that a misson you do may bring a new sub to the game for Cryptic; and increase STO's revenue generation;while you get nothing of 'monetary value' in return doesn't sit well with you, DON'T create anything using the Foundry. Continue to play STO as you had been before the Foundry system; and hell, play napproved and published missions you like made by players who don't mind using the Foundy for no STO currency reward (be it C-Poits, EC, Marks, whatever) . That way you don't lose anything and you don't feel cheated.
You get 10 people each cycling through each others mission; and they get published and everyone in the group gets the C-Point reward.
If that's how they want to spend their time, then that's how they want to spend their time. It doesn't matter. The value-add to Cryptic will always be more than the value of the rewards given to the author. The author would only ever get 5% of the value. It doesn't matter how or why people play the missions.
At least that's the case with my system in which it comes down to simple play time.
If the system is based on the mission play count, then yes... very abusable.
The value of the reward is measured in time relative to the value of the mission that's measured in time.
5% of X will always be 5% of X, no matter how X is determined.
If that's how they want to spend their time, then that's how they want to spend their time. It doesn't matter. The value-add to Cryptic will always be more than the value of the rewards given to the author. The author would only ever get 5% of the value. It doesn't matter how or why people play the missions.
At least that's the case with my system in which it comes down to simple play time.
If the system is based on the mission play count, then yes... very abusable.
The value of the reward is measured in time relative to the value of the mission that's measured in time.
5% of X will always be 5% of X, no matter how X is determined.
Except that you compare this "scoffing at the idea" of people selling Connie parts and reacquiring it to get energy credits. Cryptic doesn't sell energy credits, so they lose nothing by allowing this. The same can't be said for C-Points.
What they can do without any legal problems is assign a certain number
of C-Store credits to be earned by publishing a mission. Very similar to LOTRO
where you get store credits for various things...I think DDO gives them
for earning faction.
They can do that..no problem. Its basically an award system.
Now if you want them to sell UGC missions in the store and basic C-Store
credits based on its sales...............get the legal team out.
Then you have Joe Writer filing legal papers against cryptic for cheating him/her
out of royalties...ect...ect..ect..
To be safe, the points awarded need to be automatic, and either equal or based on
a scale of some sort..AND cryptic can't sell the UGC missions.
my main point here is, it doesn't matter if players can exploit set awards or what not,
the issue and point of the above post is that cryptic cannot and will not sell player created
UGC in the C-Store...never happen, can't happen without opening up a lawsuit.
or
requiring a release signed in ink...witnessed and prob noterized.
just plain old awards for doing, ya they can if they like and I have guessed on how they
might or might not do that, but on farther thought...don't care. They can do that however they
like. I am personally more interested in having fun making stuff.
Except that you compare this "scoffing at the idea" of people selling Connie parts and reacquiring it to get energy credits. Cryptic doesn't sell energy credits, so they lose nothing by allowing this. The same can't be said for C-Points.
I don't get your point regarding the Connie. I've made no such comparison. But now that you mention it... if you can sell C-Store purchased items in-game for credits.... that's sort of messed up. It basically does give people the ability to buy credits with C-Points, and a monetary value passes down to those credits. There's simply a couple degrees of separation. I'd wager the parts sell for so cheap that it's not worth exploiting, though.
To the notion that Cryptic would "lose" money on my proposal, no they wouldn't. At worst they'd simply make less money. It's a commission to authors. It cuts into profits (by about 5% of the mission's value-add) but it's not money coming out of their pocket. And then that's only true if the author would have purchased C-Points otherwise.
I don't get your point regarding the Connie. I've made no such comparison. But now that you mention it... if you can sell C-Store purchased items in-game for credits.... that's sort of messed up. It basically does give people the ability to buy credits with C-Points, and a monetary value passes down to those credits. There's simply a couple degrees of separation. I'd wager the parts sell for so cheap that it's not worth exploiting, though.
To the notion that Cryptic would "lose" money on my proposal, no they wouldn't. At worst they'd simply make less money. It's a commission to authors. It cuts into profits (by about 5% of the mission's value-add) but it's not money coming out of their pocket. And then that's only true if the author would have purchased C-Points otherwise.
Sorry, my mistake, Ezhno said that not you. And it's not the whole connie, it's just weapons/items it comes with, which are mark 1 I think and worth very little.
And fair enough, they won't "lose" money-- there isn't really anything to lose when the product you're selling is intangible and costs nothing to produce*-- but they won't be making money where they potentially could be.
*-- Beyond initial development time/costs. Point was, there is no physical material or cost that goes in to each unit, so anything gain after they exceed the development cost is pure profit.
my main point here is, it doesn't matter if players can exploit set awards or what not,
the issue and point of the above post is that cryptic cannot and will not sell player created
UGC in the C-Store...never happen, can't happen without opening up a lawsuit.
or
requiring a release signed in ink...witnessed and prob noterized.
I honestly don't see what's different between selling missions on the C-Store or including them as part of the subscription price, from a legal standpoint. Either way you're paying to play them and Cryptic is making money on them. The only thing their being on the C-Store would change is the fact becoming more apparent that you are paying for them.
And man... they'd have to be dirt cheap to make sense.
In my math the value of a 1-hour long mission to Cryptic is $0.25, or 20 C-Points. I think that's what it comes out to, anyway.
And fair enough, they won't "lose" money-- there isn't really anything to lose when the product you're selling is intangible and costs nothing to produce*-- but they won't be making money where they potentially could be.
*-- Beyond initial development time/costs. Point was, there is no physical material or cost that goes in to each unit, so anything gain after they exceed the development cost is pure profit.
I completely agree. My proposal does mean the potential loss of some of their "profit" on the UGC missions. And I'm not insensitive to that. In my proposal to dstahl I pointed out how they can change the variables to reduce that potential loss to be even less than 5%. But if you ask me... them getting 95% of the "profit" of our content is plenty--especially if they weren't thinking in terms of profit when making the UGC system for us.
I honestly don't see what's different between selling missions on the C-Store or including them as part of the subscription price, from a legal standpoint. Either way you're paying to play them and Cryptic is making money on them. The only thing their being on the C-Store would change is the fact becoming more apparent that you are paying for them.
And man... they'd have to be dirt cheap to make sense.
In my math the value of a 1-hour long mission to Cryptic is $0.25, or 20 C-Points. I think that's what it comes out to, anyway.
gotta love US law
If someone creates something...even if it is something using someone elses tool...that can be considered
a creative 'thing' the creator has certain rights.
The one in question is that nobody can SELL it, for money...without a release from the creator.
Now if you create something in a place designed for public sharing..fine....AS LONG AS nobody
trys to sell it.
Same thing with shareware..and such, anyone can use it, copy it, give it away, but....
huge 'but' here...if you take it and try to sell it.....BANG you can end up in court.
The law is written to prevent publishers, movie producers from stealing material
and making money on it...with the original writer getting nothing.
and it covers ANYTHING creatively made
stories
art
graphics
music
and UGC would fall under ... Stories
on the flip side, players could not sell them either
because it is based on a licenced product.
Copywrite law,,,,causing artists and producers to get grey hair for years
Oh one other note...what is created must be considered original
so if you slap red color on your ship...that doesn't count...it needs to be a story.
So even a large PvP arena would not make the grade...a full blown story with original
characters, storyline ect... yup that is considered intellectual propery of the original
writer...minus the star trek objects and copywrited stuff.
so cryptic would own the setting
the writter would own the story itself...if it is original
gotta love US law
If someone creates something...even if it is something using someone elses tool...that can be considered
a creative 'thing' the creator has certain rights.
The one in question is that nobody can SELL it, for money...without a release from the creator.
Now if you create something in a place designed for public sharing..fine....AS LONG AS nobody
trys to sell it.
Same thing with shareware..and such, anyone can use it, copy it, give it away, but....
huge 'but' here...if you take it and try to sell it.....BANG you can end up in court.
The law is written to prevent publishers, movie producers from stealing material
and making money on it...with the original writer getting nothing.
and it covers ANYTHING creatively made
stories
art
graphics
music
and UGC would fall under ... Stories
on the flip side, players could not sell them either
because it is based on a licenced product.
Copywrite law,,,,causing artists and producers to get grey hair for years
Oh one other note...what is created must be considered original
so if you slap red color on your ship...that doesn't count...it needs to be a story.
So even a large PvP arena would not make the grade...a full blown story with original
characters, storyline ect... yup that is considered intellectual propery of the original
writer...minus the star trek objects and copywrited stuff.
so cryptic would own the setting
the writter would own the story itself...if it is original
Uhm.. yeah. I understand all that. My point is that it doesn't matter if the mission is in the C-Store or just part of the subscription-based game. Either way Cryptic is making money on its presence.
To the system at hand, however... I'm sure we give up our artistic right to the missions as part of the EULA. We'd have to, else Cryptic is already illegally using our original works right out of the gate.
That's why I've never argued the creative rights laws to push my proposal; I know they don't apply since we're already giving up those rights as part of the agreement to use the tools.
Uhm.. yeah. I understand all that. My point is that it doesn't matter if the mission is in the C-Store or just part of the subscription-based game. Either way Cryptic is making money on its presence.
To the system at hand, however... I'm sure we give up our artistic right to the missions as part of the EULA. We'd have to, else Cryptic is already illegally using our original works right out of the gate.
That's why I've never argued the creative rights laws to push my proposal; I know they don't apply since we're already giving up those rights as part of the agreement to use the tools.
Using the EULA would be fine for the basic, you make, we can give it a thumbs up or down
and players can play it..kinda thing.
They are not directly selling your adventure...so a basic legal spiel works fine.
And yes, they don't NEED to sell them, at all....just the promise of more content will bring in old and new
players....well mainly old players....it was one of the biggest complained about things in various
RAGE quit posts.
I think some of the posters...not you..have had some asperations as fan fiction writers and
have wanted to 'cash in' on it. So they try to direct the threads towards a "so we do this for
you, how are you going to pay us in return" kinda thing.
I will admit, it bugs me.
I have been wanting this feature since it was first talked about in beta..and I see
this 'demand for payment' as a problem that might delay it or even slow addtions to
it as cryptic now feels the need cover all the bases to prevent some legal issue.
I like to play for entertainment...not to make money.
I feel all these folks that want to make a buck doing this kinda thing should just go
over to second life and do thier thing there where it is allowed
Here's the thing. You are creating an original story using the Star Trek IP. Read the EULA and TOS.
If you don't want to give a story away for free, don't submit it. It's that simple. This is not a "for profit" feature, it is for fun and the enjoyment of other users. I may have issues with the entire concept of UGC being incorporated into the game, but if you want to be payed for designing missions for a game apply for a job as a game developer.
If you don't want to give a story away for free, don't submit it. It's that simple. This is not a "for profit" feature,
Incorrect. It's "for profit" as far as Cryptic's wallets are concerned. They make money on our UGC creations by requiring a subscription to play them. That's the crux of the problem. Cryptic is making money on the creations of the UGC authors and the UGC authors aren't getting anything. That's not a legal or EULA problem, but I do find it rather unethical.
Lets go back to my prior math. If you assume an average player plays 2 hours a day, 31 days a month, and pays $15/month for their subscription, that amounts to $0.24/hour. STO has to provide that person something to do for 62 hours. If, as an extreme but clear example, that players plays UGC for all of those 62 hours, that means that the authors of those missions just satisfied the content needs of that player and that player's $15.
Effectively player-authors gave the game the content needed to keep that player playing and to keep that player paying Cryptic. For that month, those authors earned $15 for Cryptic. That's very "for profit".
All we're asking for here is for Cryptic to trickle down some of that profit to the author, by way of C-Points or other currency. If C-Points, the math for the reward puts the value at $0.0125/hour. So where Cryptic would earn $0.24/hour, $0.0125 of that passes down to the appropriate author(s). That comes to a 5.2% "commission". Completely reasonable, if you ask me, considering Cryptic gets 95% of the profit of the missions being present. That's profit they didn't have before the system existed.
I could see your point if UGC missions where being sold in the c-store, that would be a no brainer they were making a profit off of it, but otherwise I think it will be an extremely tough sell otherwise to prove there is a corralation between UGC and Cryptics profits when it finally hits.
Suppose for a minute that they do cave in and marketing allows this, but with a catch.
UGC now comes with a price since they have to pay players, then what?
Players are then expected to fork over even more money on c-store items to compensate for losses of
potential future revenue and current revenue they could have made on c-points?
Will players be expected to pay more for their subs to offset the cost?
Suppose no one can play a UGC mission without first buying UGC mission points from the store, with soo many points buying you soo many play tokens for UGC content.
If an arguement can be made that they are making a profit somehow on UGC then I could also see them making an arguement to raise prices on c-points, c-store, and or sub fees to cover their loss of potential revenue.
Also, in order to cover all the loopholes and abuse avenues to prevent people from cheating the system, your looking at imposing a pretty solid amount of restrictions to cover it all.
From my experience players do not like a ton of restrictions for content they are paying for and if you impose too many just to cover the issue of people getting paid in a fair way then your looking at a potential bomb for UGC preventing UGC from ever seeing its full potential with soo many players turned off by all the restrictions imposed on it just to prevent people from cheating ( insuring all the money that is made stays going to a select couple of fleets).
In the spirit of UGC, I still think it should be about having fun, nothing more.
Comments
This has already been addressed by limits on how time is incurred.
How so? They didn't seem to have any problem when they gave everyone a batch of C-Points shortly after launch. C-Points aren't a legally recognized currency. Tax law doesn't apply. You can buy them, you can be given them... they're effectively used for internal bartering.
If that were true then the problem would exist already and regardless of this reward system. If the IRS doesn't have a problem with the system already, my compensation system shouldn't cross any new lines.
I'm still curious how a legal problem could exist.
Cryptic gave a batch of C-Points to everyone shortly after launch. If they're going to legally be seen as currency because you can buy them for dollars, then logically that would have been seen as Cryptic giving a "gift" or "payment" to all players. And as far as I know there was no legal reaction to them doing that.
By farther extension, if C-Points are recognized as having a real monetary value, so must all of the items you purchase in the C-Store with them. So when Cryptic offers you the means to get an item in-game that you could otherwise only get through the C-Store, isn't that also Cryptic giving you something of monetary value through their game?
It just seems to me that if there were a line of legality, Cryptic would have already crossed it a long time ago.
Cryptic cannot cross any line that gets close to an employer/employee relationship by paying a player in exchange for providing a valuable labor to Cryptic.
If I understand a part of the argument here is that Cryptic is getting something of value from the player in the form of the user designed content and thus it would be good to reward the player for this. To the extent that this reward is direct and has real value is the line they don't want to cross. Of course if the content has no value to Cryptic there would be no issue, but then why reward the player for doing what they enjoy doing.
I don't make a judgment on whether any ideas would cross that line, but I think a good question to ask is whether any player would endeavor to design content for a "financial" benefit to be received from Cryptic in exchange for doing so. Mere recognition is easy - cash payment in direct exchange for developing content is easy - things in between the two, not necessarily so easy but I doubt they'll want to get close to any line.
Also, tax laws generally care less whether you are paid in currency or in kind, only whether they have taxable value. Enforcement however becomes much more difficult in barter situations.
If you could sell C-Points for money then obviously there would clearly be a problem.
But the only thing you can get with C-Points is what Cryptic is willing to give you. Nothing in that exchange is taxable. For that matter... I'm not even sure if the purchase of C-Points is taxable, given the purchase is often crossing state lines; I never pay tax for the stuff I buy on Amazon.
Definitely a gray area, if anything.
...
What?
I don't understand your argument. Please explain what you mean.
This seems possible, but you're going to need to substantiate it. Please link some evidence, whether it's in the form of a dev post, or some tax law, or something else.
Depends what you consider "real value".
Personally I don't consider uniforms and ships "real value".
On the other hand credits and gold in MMOs seem to have "real value" if people are willing to go to third-party agencies to pay real money to get it illegitimately. By that logic even in-game credits have "real value"... which would make the exchange a market that someone might feel should be taxed.
Intent and reality are two different things. Cryptic might have added this simply because people asked for it, or they might have added it as a means to get more content in the game, or they might have added it with the thought that us creating content is cheaper than them hiring level designers. Regardless of their intent, content is being put into a game that Cryptic charges access to.
The end result is that they are making money off the presence of what we create. That will be true for as long as people have to pay to play it.
I agree that UGC for $$$ will fail. UGC for something else, though? No reason it can't work. Just have to find where the line is of what they can do. And judging by what we've seen them do already, they can do quite a bit.
of C-Store credits to be earned by publishing a mission. Very similar to LOTRO
where you get store credits for various things...I think DDO gives them
for earning faction.
They can do that..no problem. Its basically an award system.
Now if you want them to sell UGC missions in the store and basic C-Store
credits based on its sales...............get the legal team out.
Then you have Joe Writer filing legal papers against cryptic for cheating him/her
out of royalties...ect...ect..ect..
To be safe, the points awarded need to be automatic, and either equal or based on
a scale of some sort..AND cryptic can't sell the UGC missions.
And that can be abused by a group of players publishing simple missions - playing yhrough them quick tio get the minimum number of plays needed to make them 'fully published' - get the C-Point reward; unpublish the mission; then rinse repeat, effectively making Cryptic loose money in that it becomes a way to generate 'free' C Points.
Hardly. If you've looked at pretty much every Cryptic post on the subject they say that missions need to be APPROVED. A mission isn't instantly available when you make it. Besides which, even if that weren't the case, playing at a rate of 1 CP per unique character/account playthrough is not farmable. Who here has so many unique characters or even accounts that they can literally farm themselves 10 CP? Let's pretend there are people who would do this, ok, so then you have 10 CP. Now what? You can't do anything with such a piddly little amount. Most people only have three characters as that is standard. Buying more character slots to farm 1 single lonely CP is insanity. It's not even a real world money sink it's a losing process.
Doing the mission ten times over? Theres no incentive to the actual player to redo someone elses mission for them; let alone on any significant scale. Like any other mission their rewards will likely be greatly reduced after the first completion to say nothing of the time it takes to simply do it.
This is practically exactly like the weapons and items that come on C-Store ships. The Constitution, for example, you can sell several pieces on it for about 25 credits. You can then throw away the ship, reobtain it for free, and sell the new parts for 25 credits or so. Cryptic basically scoffed (as they should have) at the notion that this is abusable or farmable. They basically said 'if they feel like wasting all that time for nothing, let them' because the gain is **** poor. You could make more than that just by picking up one single drop (that isn't food, of course).
It's not cheating Cryptic out of money.
The whole point is that players are getting something to do. Their intent is irrelevant. If they're playing the missions they're playing the game and they're paying Cryptic to play the game and the author is getting a reward relative to how much those players are playing the missions.
The only way they'd be cheating the system and cheating Cryptic would be if they're somehow generating C-Points for authors without playing the missions. But that's impossible, since the reward is directly proportionate to mission play time.
And again, we're talking 1cp per 1 hour of gameplay. What's a "simple" mission? Something that could be done in 5 minutes? People would have to play it 12 times to earn the author 1cp. And if they institute per-character-per-mission time caps of 30 minutes, it'd take 2 people 6 times of 5 minutes or, if they idle it, 2 people 2 times of 30 minutes.
Regardless of motive, if they idle, etc., the value of the mission to Cryptic will always be higher than the value of the reward given to the author. There's simply no way to abuse this. Another way to look at it is that the value of the reward isn't determined by the players directly; it's determined by the value of the mission to Cryptic. That's why I referred to it as a "commission" before; the author only ever gets around 5% of the value Cryptic is getting.
Yep.
On the one hand it's incredibly hard for anyone to game the system to a notable degree. It would take a concentrated effort of many people to earn an author any notable reward.
On the other hand it doesn't matter if they do. Here's my math example that I wrote up for dstahl:
Our subscription fee allows us to put a dollar value on the time we play. We can also put a dollar value on the C-Points rewarded based on amount of time spent playing specific missions. Comparing the two we can see, and make sure, that this system always makes more for Cryptic than it makes for the author. And so long as it does, Cryptic profits.
You spend real-world currency for C-Points. You spend C-Points in game to purchase goods and services. Buying C-Points is currency conversion, albeit one-way. If I coud spend $CAD to buy $USD, but not the other way around (not going to happen in real-world economices) it's still currency conversion. Something every first year economics student will learn.
C-Points may be considered money as they are a product of currency conversion. Not to mention it's opportunity cost to Cryptic as well. :rolleyes:
By that logic your $15/month is currency exchange for a month's worth of play time, but there's nothing legally preventing Cryptic from giving us free time. Same applies here. In both cases we're trading real money for some sort of product that Cryptic controls the distribution of, and in neither case can we reverse the trade to get real money back.
C-Points cannot be considered money. The most they can be considered is having monetary value. Any service or product we pay for has monetary value... the law doesn't consider them money.
I was not saying one player could do it. It would take a group, but again, if automated, say:
A Mission takes 10 'plays' to be approve and the C-Point reward given; and the ****ion published.
The mission in question ends up being 'destroy one enemy squdron' - usually 1 - 3 ships.
You get 10 people each cycling through each others mission; and they get published and everyone in the group gets the C-Point reward.
They ALL then unpublish the missions; and republish them; rinse repeat.
You could rack up free C-Points pretty quickly this way. Yes, the end result would probably be Crytic banning accounts; which in the end hurts the game's bottom line and creates more people wanting to spread bad word of mouth about STO.
In the end, the negatives and risxks outweigh the positives. There's no real reason for Cryptic to reward users in any type of STO currency; as that breeds incentive to exploit the currency generation system.
Again, it boils down to:
If the idea that a misson you do may bring a new sub to the game for Cryptic; and increase STO's revenue generation;while you get nothing of 'monetary value' in return doesn't sit well with you, DON'T create anything using the Foundry. Continue to play STO as you had been before the Foundry system; and hell, play napproved and published missions you like made by players who don't mind using the Foundy for no STO currency reward (be it C-Poits, EC, Marks, whatever) . That way you don't lose anything and you don't feel cheated.
If that's how they want to spend their time, then that's how they want to spend their time. It doesn't matter. The value-add to Cryptic will always be more than the value of the rewards given to the author. The author would only ever get 5% of the value. It doesn't matter how or why people play the missions.
At least that's the case with my system in which it comes down to simple play time.
If the system is based on the mission play count, then yes... very abusable.
The value of the reward is measured in time relative to the value of the mission that's measured in time.
5% of X will always be 5% of X, no matter how X is determined.
Except that you compare this "scoffing at the idea" of people selling Connie parts and reacquiring it to get energy credits. Cryptic doesn't sell energy credits, so they lose nothing by allowing this. The same can't be said for C-Points.
my main point here is, it doesn't matter if players can exploit set awards or what not,
the issue and point of the above post is that cryptic cannot and will not sell player created
UGC in the C-Store...never happen, can't happen without opening up a lawsuit.
or
requiring a release signed in ink...witnessed and prob noterized.
just plain old awards for doing, ya they can if they like and I have guessed on how they
might or might not do that, but on farther thought...don't care. They can do that however they
like. I am personally more interested in having fun making stuff.
I don't get your point regarding the Connie. I've made no such comparison. But now that you mention it... if you can sell C-Store purchased items in-game for credits.... that's sort of messed up. It basically does give people the ability to buy credits with C-Points, and a monetary value passes down to those credits. There's simply a couple degrees of separation. I'd wager the parts sell for so cheap that it's not worth exploiting, though.
To the notion that Cryptic would "lose" money on my proposal, no they wouldn't. At worst they'd simply make less money. It's a commission to authors. It cuts into profits (by about 5% of the mission's value-add) but it's not money coming out of their pocket. And then that's only true if the author would have purchased C-Points otherwise.
Sorry, my mistake, Ezhno said that not you. And it's not the whole connie, it's just weapons/items it comes with, which are mark 1 I think and worth very little.
And fair enough, they won't "lose" money-- there isn't really anything to lose when the product you're selling is intangible and costs nothing to produce*-- but they won't be making money where they potentially could be.
*-- Beyond initial development time/costs. Point was, there is no physical material or cost that goes in to each unit, so anything gain after they exceed the development cost is pure profit.
I honestly don't see what's different between selling missions on the C-Store or including them as part of the subscription price, from a legal standpoint. Either way you're paying to play them and Cryptic is making money on them. The only thing their being on the C-Store would change is the fact becoming more apparent that you are paying for them.
And man... they'd have to be dirt cheap to make sense.
In my math the value of a 1-hour long mission to Cryptic is $0.25, or 20 C-Points. I think that's what it comes out to, anyway.
I completely agree. My proposal does mean the potential loss of some of their "profit" on the UGC missions. And I'm not insensitive to that. In my proposal to dstahl I pointed out how they can change the variables to reduce that potential loss to be even less than 5%. But if you ask me... them getting 95% of the "profit" of our content is plenty--especially if they weren't thinking in terms of profit when making the UGC system for us.
gotta love US law
If someone creates something...even if it is something using someone elses tool...that can be considered
a creative 'thing' the creator has certain rights.
The one in question is that nobody can SELL it, for money...without a release from the creator.
Now if you create something in a place designed for public sharing..fine....AS LONG AS nobody
trys to sell it.
Same thing with shareware..and such, anyone can use it, copy it, give it away, but....
huge 'but' here...if you take it and try to sell it.....BANG you can end up in court.
The law is written to prevent publishers, movie producers from stealing material
and making money on it...with the original writer getting nothing.
and it covers ANYTHING creatively made
stories
art
graphics
music
and UGC would fall under ... Stories
on the flip side, players could not sell them either
because it is based on a licenced product.
Copywrite law,,,,causing artists and producers to get grey hair for years
Oh one other note...what is created must be considered original
so if you slap red color on your ship...that doesn't count...it needs to be a story.
So even a large PvP arena would not make the grade...a full blown story with original
characters, storyline ect... yup that is considered intellectual propery of the original
writer...minus the star trek objects and copywrited stuff.
so cryptic would own the setting
the writter would own the story itself...if it is original
Uhm.. yeah. I understand all that. My point is that it doesn't matter if the mission is in the C-Store or just part of the subscription-based game. Either way Cryptic is making money on its presence.
To the system at hand, however... I'm sure we give up our artistic right to the missions as part of the EULA. We'd have to, else Cryptic is already illegally using our original works right out of the gate.
That's why I've never argued the creative rights laws to push my proposal; I know they don't apply since we're already giving up those rights as part of the agreement to use the tools.
Using the EULA would be fine for the basic, you make, we can give it a thumbs up or down
and players can play it..kinda thing.
They are not directly selling your adventure...so a basic legal spiel works fine.
And yes, they don't NEED to sell them, at all....just the promise of more content will bring in old and new
players....well mainly old players....it was one of the biggest complained about things in various
RAGE quit posts.
I think some of the posters...not you..have had some asperations as fan fiction writers and
have wanted to 'cash in' on it. So they try to direct the threads towards a "so we do this for
you, how are you going to pay us in return" kinda thing.
I will admit, it bugs me.
I have been wanting this feature since it was first talked about in beta..and I see
this 'demand for payment' as a problem that might delay it or even slow addtions to
it as cryptic now feels the need cover all the bases to prevent some legal issue.
I like to play for entertainment...not to make money.
I feel all these folks that want to make a buck doing this kinda thing should just go
over to second life and do thier thing there where it is allowed
just my take on it
If you don't want to give a story away for free, don't submit it. It's that simple. This is not a "for profit" feature, it is for fun and the enjoyment of other users. I may have issues with the entire concept of UGC being incorporated into the game, but if you want to be payed for designing missions for a game apply for a job as a game developer.
Incorrect. It's "for profit" as far as Cryptic's wallets are concerned. They make money on our UGC creations by requiring a subscription to play them. That's the crux of the problem. Cryptic is making money on the creations of the UGC authors and the UGC authors aren't getting anything. That's not a legal or EULA problem, but I do find it rather unethical.
Lets go back to my prior math. If you assume an average player plays 2 hours a day, 31 days a month, and pays $15/month for their subscription, that amounts to $0.24/hour. STO has to provide that person something to do for 62 hours. If, as an extreme but clear example, that players plays UGC for all of those 62 hours, that means that the authors of those missions just satisfied the content needs of that player and that player's $15.
Effectively player-authors gave the game the content needed to keep that player playing and to keep that player paying Cryptic. For that month, those authors earned $15 for Cryptic. That's very "for profit".
All we're asking for here is for Cryptic to trickle down some of that profit to the author, by way of C-Points or other currency. If C-Points, the math for the reward puts the value at $0.0125/hour. So where Cryptic would earn $0.24/hour, $0.0125 of that passes down to the appropriate author(s). That comes to a 5.2% "commission". Completely reasonable, if you ask me, considering Cryptic gets 95% of the profit of the missions being present. That's profit they didn't have before the system existed.
Suppose for a minute that they do cave in and marketing allows this, but with a catch.
UGC now comes with a price since they have to pay players, then what?
Players are then expected to fork over even more money on c-store items to compensate for losses of
potential future revenue and current revenue they could have made on c-points?
Will players be expected to pay more for their subs to offset the cost?
Suppose no one can play a UGC mission without first buying UGC mission points from the store, with soo many points buying you soo many play tokens for UGC content.
If an arguement can be made that they are making a profit somehow on UGC then I could also see them making an arguement to raise prices on c-points, c-store, and or sub fees to cover their loss of potential revenue.
Also, in order to cover all the loopholes and abuse avenues to prevent people from cheating the system, your looking at imposing a pretty solid amount of restrictions to cover it all.
From my experience players do not like a ton of restrictions for content they are paying for and if you impose too many just to cover the issue of people getting paid in a fair way then your looking at a potential bomb for UGC preventing UGC from ever seeing its full potential with soo many players turned off by all the restrictions imposed on it just to prevent people from cheating ( insuring all the money that is made stays going to a select couple of fleets).
In the spirit of UGC, I still think it should be about having fun, nothing more.