Austin GDC: Mike Morhaim urges companies to avoid financial incentives for games
During his Austin Game Developers Conference keynote, Blizzard president and co-founder Michael Morhaime urged companies to avoid giving real-world financial incentives as they have negative implications for video games.
“What happens if there is a financial reward for doing something? You’ll find a lot of people going out and doing that thing,” said Morhaime.
While an increased player base may sound exactly like what any game developer wants, Morhaime cautioned that these financial incentives could also lead to gold farming, account stealing, credit card fraud and similar problems that Blizzard currently has to deal with in World of Warcraft.
Morhaime further emphasized that Blizzard thinks these practices are most harmful to legitimate players who just want to play. “We do whatever we can to try to minimize the financial rewards from behaving in this way and exploiting the game like this,” said Morhaime. “This is our game. We have to be able to protect our players.”
Via GamesIndustry
During his Austin Game Developers Conference keynote, Blizzard president and co-founder Michael Morhaime urged companies to avoid giving real-world financial incentives as they have negative implications for video games.
“What happens if there is a financial reward for doing something? You’ll find a lot of people going out and doing that thing,” said Morhaime.
While an increased player base may sound exactly like what any game developer wants, Morhaime cautioned that these financial incentives could also lead to gold farming, account stealing, credit card fraud and similar problems that Blizzard currently has to deal with in World of Warcraft.
Morhaime further emphasized that Blizzard thinks these practices are most harmful to legitimate players who just want to play. “We do whatever we can to try to minimize the financial rewards from behaving in this way and exploiting the game like this,” said Morhaime. “This is our game. We have to be able to protect our players.”
Via GamesIndustry
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