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In a good video laying out several challenges and pitfalls of building and maintaining an online RPG with an economy of perilous scale, Chris Wilson – co-creator of Path of Exile, co-founder of developer Grinding Gear Games, and now head of his own small studio Light Pattern – argues game integrity is king, no matter how tempting the short-term gains you might reap by compromising it. In an interesting footnote, he also apologizes for a screwup during an old Path of Exile expansion launch.
Wilson spends a lot of time championing "economic integrity" in such games, which he defines as "the ability for players to fairly earn progress and items through in-game actions on a level playing field without outside influence or cheating" and without letting other people "unfairly get ahead of you." He pays especially close attention to the seasonal format that so many games have adopted, with players racing to climb leaderboards, reach max level, and so on each time there's a new update. These soft or hard seasonal wipes essentially create micro economies, and these, too, need protection.
He encourages online RPG devs to prioritize this integrity by, in so many words, making progression feel meaningful and deterministic. Progress and prestige should be "earned through gameplay and skill, not purchased, botted, exploited, or obtained by socially engineering a studio's customer support department," he says in the video description.
Protecting this integrity may manifest as policy that stops paid spokespeople like streamers from gaining unfair advantages, just to pull an example out of a hat, but it also covers tools and systems to prevent and respond to cheating, real-world trading, and other exploits, up to and including rollbacks meant to preserve the economy, Wilson says.
If there is an issue requiring a painful solution like a rollback, Wilson suggests offering vestigial rewards as compensation like "credits for in-game cosmetics" rather than progression items which could compromise the economy. And if you have customer support staff on hand to field player-reported issues – which you should – empower them to weed out false reports from players hoping to game the system. Beating bots and cheats is a neverending arms race, but you can still arm yourself, basically.
On cheaters and exploiters specifically, Wilson urges a near-scorched earth approach: don't just ban or suspend offenders; delete their accounts or ill-gotten items, too. "It's worth taking the time to clean up every account, even the ones you think are banned forever," he advises. Again, the consistency and reliability of the economy, the yardstick players use to measure their efforts and the health of a game, is paramount in his mind.
Monetization can also pose a threat to economic integrity, of course. (I've seen some people read the timing of this video as a dig at Path of Exile 2's perceived economy woes, both in and out of the cash shop, which isn't an unreasonable read, but Wilson is not at all hostile nor does he single out GGG or any specific dev or game.) Wilson acknowledges that pay-to-win junk "clearly makes money in the short term" but warns it also damages a game's integrity, and he seems to clearly value good will and longevity over a cash shop bump.
Paying for advantage includes buyable progression like instant items or XP as well as premium early access periods, and here Wilson has a shiny "oops" trophy to share with the class. During a previous Path of Exile release – he doesn't specify which expansion, only saying it was around four years ago – launch queues got so bogged down that "a couple hundred thousand" people, including many streamers GGG had paid to play the game on release, ended up in staring contests with login screens. Wilson decided to let the streamers cut in line to get the show moving, and immediately regretted his decision.
"I didn't consider the economic advantage this would give those streamers, putting them ahead of the other players because of a real-world privilege, and how that would be unfair," he says. "We were rightly called out on this, and I instantly realized the mistake I had made."
This example puts a fine point on how even unassuming offers or extras may chip away at a game's economy, with little concessions piling up like white lies until you've got a real problem on your hands. "This was a valuable lesson in how even an hour of headstart was an inexcusably large advantage to give people who had not done an in-game action to earn it," Wilson concludes.
