My first Rant thread; hopefully to make the community think.

[gundamsone]

[LIST][*]Selling gold/plat/levelled toons/game items/for prepaid phone credits/real money. These aren't scams. They're real and can deliver. I have an idea of how they do it, most are probably done in questionable ways. I'm not sure of the percentage of successful transactions vs scams but it's being done. Again, most from my nationality. One of the reasons claimed that it's done is to help those who can't attain the items. I believe this isn't true by doing so, they just deprived the player of money on a free to play game by violating the TOS which in turn could get the player banned. I would say that isn't helping, that's taking advantage of someone for their own personal gain.

Why the game devs don't allow this is potential of scamming.
This is the reason that everyone is made aware of but if you dig deep down and think of STS as a business, the business side to it is you're selling something that doesn't belong to you.
It's their game and their rules so you really have no ownership over your gold/items or account.

Aside from all of that, and to warn all you paypal users out there who are thinking of doing this
Paypal forbids virtual transactions as they prefer most transactions to be in the form of a service or goods and pixels are neither.
Paypal will ban you permanent if you get caught, and you will have a lightyears worth of troubles setting up another Paypal account.
Since we now live in the e-world it's more beneficial to not have your name on Paypal's blacklist.
(this is from personal experience so i'm not making up this stuff)

And depending on which country you reside in (especially the more developed ones), these so called transactions will have to be reported on your yearly income tax sheets. They are considered 100% profit and if undeclared, you're risking the chances of getting caught which you will be heavily fined or jailed (in the worst case scenario) depending on how much was you've netted in...+ your credit rating will go down the drain so GL getting a loan from the bank or applying for a credit card.

So basically don't sell stuff for real money it's not worth it really.