There has been a bit of a kerfluffle about this incident, where an EVE exploiter broke the system and released the dogs of war.
I’ve seen more than one commentator use this as an excuse to whine about RMT, considering that the pirate in question was able to translate his ill-gotten gains into subscription time via the GTC-ISK translation. (Buying subscription time with in-game currency.)
I’ve written before that making time and money fungible in a game economy allows for more players to buy into the game, because they can do so on their terms. That’s the nature of a real economy, and giving players options in line with that makes for a more robust game population as well as a more interesting in-game economy. Puzzle Pirates, for example, can be played to its fullest without spending a dime. Other players subsidize parts of the game by buying doubloons, and other gamers can trade the in-game currency for those doubs. You can either pay with time (and someone else’s money via the doub exchange) or with money of your own. That flexibility is excellent for the user, and Three Rings still gets money for doubloons, since someone had to buy them.
No, the real villain of this little morality play is the exploit. Taking advantage of a loophole in the game code to generate disproportionate wealth is against the game rules. What is done with that money is a completely separate concern, and as far as CCP is concerned, the GTC-ISK trade function is completely legitimate.
Exploits are one thing, and economies are quite another. There are certainly exploits in economies, but in this particular case, the game bug that became the currency fountain is the problem (as well as those who exploit it), not the “RMT-lite” ability to buy game time with game currency.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
If I were able to pay ingame gold for WOW time, I would have never left the game. By the end I was getting quite good at the economic side of WOW and had no problem generating an average of 3-5k gold per month from doing nothing but camping the AH. The only problem I had was paying 15 dollars per month for a game that I only played 10 hours out of the month-at one point it was much much more 😉 –
Kudos to EVE for allowing players to pay their sub this way. Shame on the turd who exploited the system.
Indeed.
Puzzle Pirates has dual currency servers (doubloons) and subscription servers. Players can actually buy doubloons via the blind auction from other players using in-game Pieces of Eight (PoE), and turn around and “spend” those doubloons on subscription time. It does mean playing on two different servers, but I know of many players who “farm” doubloons that way to pay their subscriptions. It’s a beautiful thing, since it keeps skilled players playing on two different servers, and Three Rings gets cash for every doubloon. It also means skilled players don’t ever actually have to spend cash on the game… but they often do anyway, because of the social ties they build becoming skilled.
The key is that someone has to buy doubloons, but it may not necessarily be the same person who actually “spends” them in the game. Giving players the ability to trade those doubloons opens up a lot of options.
If I could do the same thing in WoW, playing the auction house like you describe, I’d do it. If they went a step further and set up a dual currency model and eliminated subs, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
“No, the real villain of this little morality play is the exploit. Taking advantage of a loophole in the game code to generate disproportionate wealth is against the game rules”
True, but on the other hand…. serves them right imo! MMO companies constantly release so much buggy stuff onto us, it makes me feel all warm and tingly when it comes back to bite them in the ass.
Indeed, it’s hard to be very sympathetic when they can’t catch a bug that’s been the source of significant ISK for FOUR YEARS. I’m merely pointing out that the ability to buy time with that money isn’t related to the exploit itself. 🙂