History Main / RealMoneyTrade

* UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} is a huge example of this.

* Reselling UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} accounts online will result in legal action if the country has a DMCA type law.

* In ''LightNovel/TheLegendaryMoonlightSculptor'' this is one of the main plot devices. The main character is trying to pay for his grandmother's hospital bills and his younger sister's college education through RMT. He was inspired after finding his account for an old Korean MMO sold for about $3million (as part of a company's marketing campaign). When loan sharks come to take most of this money, he finds himself with enough to pay all of his family's expenses for about two years, just enough to train in martial arts and study the new hit VRMMORPG Royal Road. (Currently in Korea, RMT is very common, to the point that it was just recently made an official taxable source of income.) The main character plans on becoming a professional in RMT.

* In ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', Gun Gale Online, the primary setting of the Phantom Bullet arc, allows players to buy in-game currency with real-world money (and vice-versa), thus making it possible to buy equipment with real money, as well as sell it. Sinon, a student who has trouble making ends meet, can't use much of her own money, and has to admit that the prospect of selling Hecate (a powerful weapon and of great personal significance to her) is tempting. Meanwhile, it's revealed that the villain bought [[spoiler:a thermoptic camouflage cloak]] with the real money trade.

* In ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', Gun Gale Online, the primary setting of the Phantom Bullet arc, heavily features this, with it being possible to buy equipment with real money, as well as sell it. Sinon, a student who has trouble making ends meet, can't use much of her own money, and has to admit that the prospect of selling Hecate (a powerful weapon and of great personal significance to her is tempting). Meanwhile, it's revealed that the villain bought [[spoiler:a thermoptic camouflage cloak]] with the real money trade.

** However, while real money can be turned into credit money, the opposite is not possible. Money earned by selling items on Steam can only be used inside Steam and selling your accounts is forbidden by Valve; see the "Illegal" section for details.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' more or less enables you to buy in-game currency with real money, since nearly anything you can acquire from the local {{Microtransactions}}-based gacha (with the oddball exception, like Attribute Enhancer +10%) can also be sold on the in-game Player Shop for Meseta, the GlobalCurrency[[note]]This also allows players who don't spend money to acquire items that can otherwise only be obtained via {{Microtransactions}}[[/note]].

* One episode of .hack//Roots is dedicated to a side character's efforts to shut down a group of Real Money Traders.

* ''Videogame/LeagueOfLegends'' champions are bought with IP (earned in-game) or RP (BribingYourWayToVictory), both of which can be bought illegally on the web. In Dominion you may run into an AFK IP farmer - a summoner even more useless than the beginner bots, controlled by macros or a simple program, whose characteristic behaviour includes standing under towers and dying, standing in front of enemy champions and dying, and punching minions as you are horribly murdered nearby. Because your first victory of the day gets you a +150 IP boost, farmer bots [[EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce Only Have To Win Once]].

** The decade of 2010 went by, and Venezuela's economy tanked so hard -- literally only Weimar Germany has so far fared worse than Venezuela -- that Venezuelans had to take up farming Runescape gold and selling it online in order to not starve to death. The Venezuelan crisis eventually got to the point where one single unit of Runescape gold was literally worth several bolívares. This in turn led to one of the few defeats in the entire history of the Reign of Terror, in 2019, when they attempted to crack down on Venezuelan gold farmers; with their only source of food income being threatened, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans fought back, and ended up completely defeating the ROT clan.

* ''VideoGame/{{City of Heroes}}'' has been dealing with these, starting with the introduction of craftable Invention Enhancements. They usually advertise by creating throwaway characters with random strings of letters for names to send out tells and the otherwise barely-used in-game e-mail system. The makers of the game have tried to combat them with the /ignore_spammer command to streamline the process of reporting them, and by not allowing characters under level 10 to use the e-mail system.

[[AC:References to RMT]]

[[AC:Examples of Legal RMT]]

[[AC:Examples of Illegal RMT]]

** Everything started when Steam Trading came, allowing people to trade game items between them and not requiring the items to be from the same game. It also allowed people to trade games between them in the form of game gifts; if you buy the game as a gift, you can't play it, but you can gift or trade it to a friend, permanently adding it to his account.

* ''CtrlAltDel'' made a comic (and now a poster) describing "MMO Hell" with major offenders being punished ''Literature/TheDivineComedy''-style. Gold farmers and gold buyers are lumped together in the 4th circle; farmers are punished by being submerged in putrid soil and have to dig for gold coins that always slip just a little bit deeper into the muck, while gold buyers are weighed down by countless thousands of gold coins and have to crawl to buy their salvation from a vendor that is always out of reach.

** Everything started when Steam Trading came, allowing people to trade game items between them and not requiring the items to be from the same game, and also allowing people to trade games between them, more precisely, game gifts, if you buy the game as a gift, it will stay in your inventory and you can't play it, but you can gift it to a friend or trade it, and the other person can permanently add to his account allowing him to play it but never change the owner, but later...
** Came the Steam Community Market, allowing players to sell their items for credit money, Steam already had the option to add money to your account as credits that you can use later, but the market allowed everyone to sell their unwanted items for money they can spend on other items and on new games, people started financing their new games with money earned by playing games, getting items and selling them.
** On the games that support the Community Market, the most famous are: ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'', ''VideoGame/Dota2'' and ''[[{{VideoGame/CounterStrike}} Counter-Strike: Global Offensive]]'', all games by Valve, owner of Steam, but other games include ''[[{{VideoGame/DontStarve}} Don't Starve Together]]'' and ''VideoGame/BattleBlockTheater''.
** However, while real money can be turned into credit money, the opposite is not possible, money earned by selling items on Steam can only be used inside Steam, selling your accounts is forbidden by Valve, see the "Illegal" section.
** Also, not all items from the games can be sold for money through the Market, however, it is still possible to directly trade between players using Steam Trading and traded by Marketable items, also, some items can't be traded either, some items are meant to be yours forever, especially if they mean you achieved something other players didn't.
** Also, another genius idea by Valve was the Steam Trading Cards, essentially, virtual cards that you earn by buying games and playing them.
*** If a game has those cards, someone who buys it earns the right to get a few cards just by playing the game, how many you get, depends on how much cards the game has, a game with 6 cards earns you 3, a game with 8 cards earns 4, players can sell and trade these cards, making every game on Steam able to feature trading, even single player games and games with no such thing as an inventory.
*** After players get all the free cards, they can earn Booster Packs at random, Booster Packs are packs with 3 random cards, that the player can open or sell/trade, Booster Packs are granted as other users spend the cards crafting badges, see below.
*** If a player has all the cards on the set, he can craft them into a badge, the cards will disappear, and the player earns:\\
- A medal visible on your profile, that is mostly to brag. \\

- An emoticon that you can use in chat and a profile background, a wallpaper for your profile, those two can be sold on the market, and sometimes, buying cards, crafting them and getting rare emotes and backgrounds to sell them can be profitable, but that's a kind of gambling. \\
- And last, you can also get a coupon to buy games with a discount, considering that Steam has discounts and sales all the time, coupons are kinda worthless and easy to get cheap or even free, but on events like the Summer or Holiday sale, the coupon is replaced with a trading card of the event.
*** Of course, cards, badges, emoticons and backgrounds, feature images related to the game, like the characters, or locations or items.
*** Badges can only be crafted 5 times per game, they have 5 levels.
*** You don't need to own the game to craft the corresponding badge, you just need the cards.
*** There are also Foil Cards, that are much rarer than normal cards, the chance of getting a Foil instead of a normal is about 1%, Foil Badges can be crafted with those and you can only craft it once, but the prizes above are the same, Foil Cards can be more expensive than some games or the game that originated it, and they're just to brag.
*** Trading Cards are labeled as Steam items, cards from Team Fortress 2 aren't the same as weapons from Team Fortress 2.
*** When the market started getting overflowed with emoticons and backgrounds that no one wanted and became too cheap, discouraging players to craft badges, Valve introduced gems, unwanted cards, emotes and backgrounds can be converted into virtual gems, that can be used to create Booster Packs, sometimes, buying gems, creating Booster Packs and selling them is profitable, also, when Valve introduced the gems, they made an auction where players could buy limited copies of games with them, depending of who offered more for them.

The purchase or sale of online game equipment, currency, or even powerleveling services for real money to a third party without the involvement of, and in the majority of cases against the wishes of, the game's publisher (which is the difference between this and BribingYourWayToVictory). A common plague of [[MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame MMO[=RPGs=]]], and the reason why good ways of making money in-game are often nerfed by the publisher after some time. Some game operators may offer a legitimate channel for players to buy and sell virtual items from each other in order to stem some of the more negative elements of restricting such trade to the black market such as spam, fraud and cheating by use of automated bot. A rare but growing few have built their worlds entirely around player-to-player RMT where the company makes money by taking a cut as a transaction fee, or even open content creation to players so aspiring artists and technicians can sell their work on the open market.

** RMT is also a big problem for Square's second Final Fantasy online game, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. [=RMTs=] will usually spam shouts with links leading to their sites for people to buy gil. When players started to turn off the shout feature, [=RMTs=] then started to spam people through tells (private messages) and the even more aggressive RMT may send friend requests to unsuspecting players so that anyone who blindly accepts the request will have their inbox flooded with spam. Square did try to combat the situation by adding filters to screw up an RMT's ability to advertise, but [=RMTs=] fought back by just altering their spam messages that composed of what looks like a computer trying to learn how to be human. While RMT is still a big problem, Square attempted to RMT-proof future content by making it where RMT can't get an advantage, such as Triple Triad cards not being tradeable with players.

* ''CtrlAltDel'' made a comic (and now a poster) describing "MMO Hell" with major offenders being punished DivineComedy style. Gold farmers and gold buyers are lumped together in the 4th circle; farmers are punished by being submerged in putrid soil and have to dig for gold coins that always slip just a little bit deeper into the muck, while gold buyers are weighed down by countless thousands of gold coins and have to crawl to buy their salvation from a vendor that is always out of reach.

*** Cards of course, feature images related to the game, like the characters, or locations or items.

*** If a player has all the cards on the set, he can craft them into a badge, the cards will disappear, and the player earns:\\\
- A medal visible on your profile, that is mostly to brag. \\\
- XP points for your Steam level, which gives some advantages like being able to have more friends and customize your profile with showcases # can show achievements, your badges, you favorite games, and so forth. \\\
- An emoticon that you can use in chat and a profile background, a wallpaper for your profile, those two can be sold on the market, and sometimes, buying cards, crafting them and getting rare emotes and backgrounds to sell them can be profitable, but that's a kind of gambling. \\\

A medal visible on your profile, that is mostly to brag. \\\
XP points for your Steam level, which gives some advantages like being able to have more friends and customize your profile with showcases # can show achievements, your badges, you favorite games, and so forth. \\\
An emoticon that you can use in chat and a profile background, a wallpaper for your profile, those two can be sold on the market, and sometimes, buying cards, crafting them and getting rare emotes and backgrounds to sell them can be profitable, but that's a kind of gambling. \\\
And last, you can also get a coupon to buy games with a discount, considering that Steam has discounts and sales all the time, coupons are kinda worthless and easy to get cheap or even free, but on events like the Summer or Holiday sale, the coupon is replaced with a trading card of the event.

*** If a player has all the cards on the set, he can craft them into a badge, the cards will disappear, and the player earns:
*** A medal visible on your profile, that is mostly to brag.
*** XP points for your Steam level, which gives some advantages like being able to have more friends and customize your profile with showcases that can show achievements, your badges, you favorite games, and so forth.
*** An emoticon that you can use in chat and a profile background, a wallpaper for your profile, those two can be sold on the market, and sometimes, buying cards, crafting them and getting rare emotes and backgrounds to sell them can be profitable, but that's a kind of gambling.
*** And last, you can also get a coupon to buy games with a discount, considering that Steam has discounts and sales all the time, coupons are kinda worthless and easy to get cheap or even free, but on events like the Summer or Holiday sale, the coupon is replaced with a trading card of the event.