sam
Member
Posts: 90
Registered on: July 2016
|
Post by sam on Oct 28, 2016 10:45:57 GMT
Im stuck on what to do. On old gen I was driving arounc normally then I was respawned and had 19 million droped on me. Then i got a osiris for an event then transfered over and got 20 million (game gave me a free 3.5 million shark card) then went on a spending spree and later sold alot of those cars. Will i get banned as I only got legit money and some illegitimate stuff.
|
|
Tsupernami
Member
Posts: 1,414
Registered on: November 2015
Steam: Tsupernami
Social Club: Tsupernami
Discord: Tsupernami#6025
|
Post by Tsupernami on Oct 28, 2016 17:11:01 GMT
I'm going to address your points in the order you wrote them, correct me if I've misinterpreted anything. I think you're trying to say that there's a direct link between the in game inflation and modders pumping fake money into the game for themselves and others to spend. If we analyse that, we would need to create some sort of flow chart to show that correlation proves causation here. In essence, Rockstar must have known that modders were generation fake GTA$ (it was pretty obvious so we can all agree to that). Fake GTA$ reduces shark card sales, or at least reduces the likelihood of them being sold to those in receipt of the fake cash. Your suggestion is that Rockstar's solution is to bump up the price of in game vehicles to counteract this. It would indicate that they don't have a plan to deal with hackers/modders (or don't want to) and therefore are looking to recuperate their "losses" (or lack of turnover) by getting fair players to buy more shark cards or simply spend more time in game grinding for them. More time playing a game probably generates revenue by increasing brand awareness and share profitability, so it's a win/win scenario for Rockstar, all they have to fork out is on maintaining servers for this playerbase. In response to this point, I don't think it makes economic sense for Rockstar to raise prices because of in game cash inflation, but I can accept that it is possible but unlikely. There's no denying that the prices were raised by Rockstar and in all likelihood it was to increase shark card sales, the prices were not based on performance of the new content in comparison to previously available content. In comparison to real world economy, when there's a massive inflation in actual cash, the prices of products, produce etc does also rapidly increase, but that is when those who sell are different to those that create the wealth. If the government sold you your food and cars etc then I would agree that this is similar, but it's not. So in summary, I think that there's a chance that Rockstar did this to recuperate lost income, but I doubt it's the actual reason, I think it's because they're greedy buggers. Which goes onto your second point. I don't want to read their annual accounts, I do it for a living and am not fully interested it doing it in my spare time too. I'm happy to talk about the bits that you took out though. Dividends are just one way of paying directors/shareholders and senior employees. Directors and employees themselves can also receive their normal wage from employment, just like you and I. Directors these days will also probably not be paid directly. The amounts will be paid into some sort of Personal or Managed Service Company. The tax rate in the UK for company profits is roughly half that of high-salary earners, I expect it's similar in most countries (particularly if said company is based offshore like in Panama, where there might not even be a tax rate if it's so minimal). This company then pays the director in dividends subject to a much lower tax rate than normal earnings. (also in the UK it's a way of avoiding National Insurance, I believe in the US it's called Social Security?). You can also reimburse these people with shares or payments into a trust, one which they can take their money out of at another time, maybe when their income is lower or they have retired? They're probably paying lower tax again, but it's a little more complicated and my knowledge on this area is limited. But as you point out my original suggestion was that it's probably for shareholders benefit and not for the employees that actually create the DLC content. Shareholders will normally be remunerated via dividends based on the quantity of shares they own. But they can also generate self-income from purely the ownership of their own shares. By increasing the profitability of the business, this will generate interest from investors, raising the stock price. The higher the stock price, the more their shares are worth. Now as you point out the last dividends to be paid were back in 2008, but did you check what these were for Rockstar too? Were the shareholders and Directors of Rockstar the same for Take2? How are they compensated for their work/ownership of the entities? The shareholders won't want to have not received income since 2008, so it's more than likely the shareholders are also the directors who receive an annual salary. A salary that's a percentage of the profits or turnover. How do they increase their salary? They increase the sales, to increase the sales they need to sell the only thing they can now that almost every single person who might buy the stock game probably has. This thing they need to sell is shark cards, and to sell more of them they need to decrease their in game value.
|
|
|
Post by endersai on Oct 30, 2016 23:45:32 GMT
I think R* has been under Take2 since at least 1998.
And you're right about that underlying effect of inflation, but I think you're conflating market based economic inflation with what is really a centrally planned economy's inflation. R*, in my view, increased the prices because they were no longer selling as wide a range of shark cards because the illicit cash had flooded the market. In order to retain some semblance of value relative to average and mean cash balances of players. They probably understood a number of players wouldn't seek out illicit money, and those ones will still be hit by the FOMO urge for an impulse purchase or two (like this stupid new motorcycle they've added).
They haven't seemed to take steps to exercise some sort of deflationary control as yet, and yes I include their recent purge of ill-gotten funds, because they remain unwilling to confiscate assets bought with illegal cash. If they can remain this vigilant then I suspect, reasonably, that they'll average prices out a bit.
Which is largely why I'm happy with their decision to remove the modded funds, frankly.
|
|
Kangee
Member
Posts: 55
Registered on: September 2016
|
Post by Kangee on Oct 31, 2016 8:01:12 GMT
They haven't seemed to take steps to exercise some sort of deflationary control as yet, and yes I include their recent purge of ill-gotten funds, because they remain unwilling to confiscate assets bought with illegal cash. If they can remain this vigilant then I suspect, reasonably, that they'll average prices out a bit. Which is largely why I'm happy with their decision to remove the modded funds, frankly. The inflation of prices can also be directly correlated to the ability for the average player to make more money. Prices went up after the Heists DLC because players had a quicker way to make money. With VIP, CEO, and MC players have even more ways to make money quickly, and the Adversarial Modes pay very well too. Add in the fact that higher level players increase the payouts for races. I do a lot of race testing, and running it solo a high level character makes 2 to 3 times the amount as a low level character. After the game has been out this long, even on PC, the average level of active players has increased, so even low level characters can easily find races with high level characters to increase the payout. I don't think there are any records, but I would guess that the amount of play time to earn enough money for the most expensive land vehicle prior to the Heists DLC was about the same level of effort it is today to do the same. Rockstar is in the business to make money, and if by taking away illegitimate funds they are able to convert a small portion of those who had gotten used to having money without having to work for it into Shark Card buyers, the effort was a success.
|
|
azxcvbnm321
Member
Posts: 23
Registered on: August 2016
|
Post by azxcvbnm321 on Oct 31, 2016 22:02:09 GMT
Inflation is definitely correlated to the ability to make money, which is easier than ever. $500k per hour is easily attainable so it's not unreasonable for Rockstar to release cars in the millions range. Four hours of play for a car that you keep forever isn't asking a lot. The housing is cheap in comparison, just one hour of play can get you a 10 car garage and apartment. I don't know why people are complaining, I have $14 million right now and don't grind anything. I currently don't see anything I want so I'm sitting on a pile of cash waiting for the Tron bike and Mystery Van to come out. I usually race with friends every night and make $100k from just racing. Since Rockstar releases new content only once in a month or so, I'll never go broke even if I don't do anything but have fun with friends and so forth. I don't find the system unfair at all.
|
|
|
Post by xInfamousRYANx on Nov 3, 2016 2:08:53 GMT
Rockstar is in the business to make money, and if by taking away illegitimate funds they are able to convert a small portion of those who had gotten used to having money without having to work for it into Shark Card buyers, the effort was a success. Highly unlikely to make those who sought out a modded account buy shark cards. Someone who never would buy a shark card and sought out a modded account is not going to magically become a buyer. If they wanted to buy into shark cards they would have initially. Also as to inflationary prices. This was done because of all the added money making methods not because of the modded accounts. When shark cards were released (because they initially were unavailable) Rockstar decreased mission replay payouts reduced money from jobs and made certain money making jobs harder and more time consuming. Two to three days of a few hours of mission grinding used to get you a Zentorno or an Adder. After heists, with a dedicated heist crew 2 million gta $ was possible in 4 days running just 1 pacific standard a night(an hour and a half to two hours give or take). So to adjust Rockstar started to increase the prices of in game items. Meh Rockstar may have made people throw away accounts or quit but they also increased the modded account makers' bank accounts because you can still transfer an account with money. So we will just keep modding on
|
|
|
Post by KoBo_043 on Nov 3, 2016 7:00:28 GMT
Even the people not buying SC's, OR glitching money, are valuable for R*, because they keep the game alive, and give the players who DO spend money on SC's a reason to keep playing.
|
|
ovakz
Member
Posts: 14
Registered on: July 2016
|
Post by ovakz on Aug 27, 2017 12:35:28 GMT
I got 1.3m taken away, still have 1.3m left tho. I don't play public lobbies and never noticed a suspicious increase of my money at any point while playing ... i did notice a difference in the income and expenses from stats but i thought it's bugged since the difference is so big, 61.5m in expenses and only 54m income.
|
|
|
Post by EDDI2142 on Aug 27, 2017 15:42:19 GMT
I got 1.3m taken away, still have 1.3m left tho. I don't play public lobbies and never noticed a suspicious increase of my money at any point while playing ... i did notice a difference in the income and expenses from stats but i thought it's bugged since the difference is so big, 61.5m in expenses and only 54m income. Several people (incl. myself) have gotten money removed by R*. The process doesn't seem to be over yet either, some people reported that their money was removed only just today.
|
|
|
Post by lordemperor on Sept 1, 2017 17:44:35 GMT
PC
I had $18,000,000 removed "adjusted" from my account. I've been playing on PC since release day and repeatedly victimized by modders but the last instance was in January 2017. That's an insanely long time to wait before "adjusting" the error if it's the root cause.
Now I logged on to my wife's account who exclusively plays with me in solo lobbies. She has never received money from modders and was also "adjusted" by $3,500,000. This is just ridiculous money grubbing right before the release of the plane DLC.
|
|