Like it or not, redeem keeps the cash flow of the game.
I have never, ever, in more than a decade, ever been close to being convinced by anyone, anywhere that this is the case.
Then you don't understand simple economics, supply and demand. I however have a degree in economics, and also redeem literally 1000's of set per year, so I will explain a bit of the symbiotic relationship between MTGO prices and redemption. Without redeemers sucking the cards out of the system and creating price stability for these mythics, the supply of them will outpace the number of players by huge amounts, when you take into account that only a percentage of people online have ANY interest in owning these cards for constructed play, it only exacerbates the problem (problem being the amount of any given card available online). Lets take a single card and make an example, Sphinx Revelation, one of the highest priced Mythics in RTR. 100's if not 1000's of copies of this card are being taken off the system on a weekly basis, that is at the absolute least 25 play sets per week, but probably more like 250 PLUS play sets (if I am redeeming 100 per week, other bigger stores must be doing even more, could be wrong, but I can guarantee you it is a minimum of 100 because I personally redeem that much on any given week). Eventually and very quickly I might add, the supply of Sphinx Revelation will overtake the amount of constructed players that actually want the card to play with, once everyone who wants the card has it, the demand drops, bots supply of Sphinx Revelation starts to overflow, they need to look to redeemers to prop the price up, but redeemers can't make money because of the $20 extra dollars in fees that have now been added, Bots have to start paying less as price drops, eventually they have to STOP buying the card alltogether because there is no demand and they can't make money off of it. Now the most precious card that you could open in an RTR draft (and make no mistake without drafting MTGO dies immediately) becomes worth very little, maybe even impossible to sell, you can't sell it to fund other drafts, you have to spend out of your own pocket to buy more tix, packs, or whatever else you may need to draft. This is where redeemers come in, we can sell the product in our store at a profit, but we aren't going to buy product that we will lose money on. We buy sets in huge amounts, create a demand for the card that has nothing to do with its playability or demand in game, and create a price floor for the cards you draft, when the cards get cheap enough that we can buy them and make money, we do, when we can't, we don't and the price of cards in those sets suffer. If you want some history, take a look at sets that have run out of stock in the store and become unredeemable, it has happen with ZEN, M12, and several others. During the time those sets were unredeemable the price took major hits and in the case of ZEN was absolutely demolished. The prices of your cards that you draft will lose value, until they get to the point where redeemers like myself and other stores can step in and start buying them to create stability.
Well said.
I'm sure they are monitoring this thread as it progresses. It would hurt to shoot them an email regarding this matter. The email link on the news link will lead to an "unkown author" error. Here is a link to email them to express concerns wizards.custhelp.com/app/ask
The $5 redemption fee was due for an increase. Jumping right to $25 is going to be a shock to the MTGO economy. I won't stop redeeming, but I will be redeeming that much less from now on. Hopefully, the increased supply of cards in the system will push card values down enough to were it makes up for that $20 per set increase in redemption fees.
Like it or not, redeem keeps the cash flow of the game.
I have never, ever, in more than a decade, ever been close to being convinced by anyone, anywhere that this is the case.
Then you don't understand simple economics, supply and demand. I however have a degree in economics, and also redeem literally 1000's of set per year, so I will explain a bit of the symbiotic relationship between MTGO prices and redemption. Without redeemers sucking the cards out of the system and creating price stability for these mythics, the supply of them will outpace the number of players by huge amounts, when you take into account that only a percentage of people online have ANY interest in owning these cards for constructed play, it only exacerbates the problem (problem being the amount of any given card available online). Lets take a single card and make an example, Sphinx Revelation, one of the highest priced Mythics in RTR. 100's if not 1000's of copies of this card are being taken off the system on a weekly basis, that is at the absolute least 25 play sets per week, but probably more like 250 PLUS play sets (if I am redeeming 100 per week, other bigger stores must be doing even more, could be wrong, but I can guarantee you it is a minimum of 100 because I personally redeem that much on any given week). Eventually and very quickly I might add, the supply of Sphinx Revelation will overtake the amount of constructed players that actually want the card to play with, once everyone who wants the card has it, the demand drops, bots supply of Sphinx Revelation starts to overflow, they need to look to redeemers to prop the price up, but redeemers can't make money because of the $20 extra dollars in fees that have now been added, Bots have to start paying less as price drops, eventually they have to STOP buying the card alltogether because there is no demand and they can't make money off of it. Now the most precious card that you could open in an RTR draft (and make no mistake without drafting MTGO dies immediately) becomes worth very little, maybe even impossible to sell, you can't sell it to fund other drafts, you have to spend out of your own pocket to buy more tix, packs, or whatever else you may need to draft. This is where redeemers come in, we can sell the product in our store at a profit, but we aren't going to buy product that we will lose money on. We buy sets in huge amounts, create a demand for the card that has nothing to do with its playability or demand in game, and create a price floor for the cards you draft, when the cards get cheap enough that we can buy them and make money, we do, when we can't, we don't and the price of cards in those sets suffer. If you want some history, take a look at sets that have run out of stock in the store and become unredeemable, it has happen with ZEN, M12, and several others. During the time those sets were unredeemable the price took major hits and in the case of ZEN was absolutely demolished. The prices of your cards that you draft will lose value, until they get to the point where redeemers like myself and other stores can step in and start buying them to create stability.
Actually, I understand it just fine - without an economics degree. I'm well aware of the demand that people such as yourself put on MTGO digital objects and i'm pretty well versed what the effects of pricing the redemption so as to make it unpalatable for people to redeem just to make a profit.
You definition is too narrow. That's like saying McDonalds has a monopoly because it is the only place you can get a Big Mac. There are several other companies that offer games, even CCGs online.
With a broader scope, you can also claim that gas is cheap, considering you can get a gallon for 10 cents or so in Wenzuela or Iran.
Actually, I understand it just fine - without an economics degree. I'm well aware of the demand that people such as yourself put on MTGO digital objects and i'm pretty well versed what the effects of pricing the redemption so as to make it unpalatable for people to redeem just to make a profit.
And I'm pretty fine with it.
MTGO proved that real world economics don't apply to it on numerous occasions, so a degree isn't necessary. Speaking from experience, market will adapt, no question about it. What is yet to be seen, how. A guestimate is that the biggest bot chains have enough market power to dictate prices down to a point where the redemption charge isn't an issue. This will most likely hurt the drafting crowd with lower resales value.
Wait, the whole worst-case scenario people are talking about doesn't make sense. How is it possible that both card prices will lower as a set by $20, and that overall redemption costs will get higher by $20, at the same time?
If card prices get lower, then it'll make the $20 increase in redemption not as bad, or even a wash, since the deflated demand for the overall singles will decrease the online set price. If the overall redemption costs get higher by $20, then it would suggest that the prices of singles doesn't change at all, not affecting any drafters.
If it's somewhere in between as it's most likely, part of the $20 costs will be eaten by drafters, and the other part by redemptioners, suggesting it's not as bad.
Overall, a new equilibrium will occur, but for some reason it's almost like people are suggesting that somehow the $20 increase will affect in full amounts both drafters and people who redeem at the same time, which wouldn't make sense as that would be a $40 shift in the market, not $20.
As someone who would redeem a batch of singleton sets every other year to build my cube, I am upset by this. Interestingly, building a cube via redemption got me back into paper Magic, to the point of going to some pre-releases & FNMs and making a couple EDH decks.
Previously, the cost of redemption encouraged this sort of "cross-pollination" in a way that ultimately got me to spend more on product than I otherwise would have even with higher redemption prices and, more importantly, get more invested in the game by meeting a play group.
Now, with the price increase, I know that after I get my shocklands from GTC that will be it for me and redemptions. I am happy that I got some paper cards out while I could, since now it is simply not attractive enough. I know from my own experience that at $25 a set I would not have delved back into paper at all (I originally played from 1994-1996) and it makes me question this decision as bad for the overall health of the game, economy issues aside. In a self-serving way, I would love to see them preserve this aspect in some way (e.g. up to X copies of each set per mailing address at a lower price) but do not expect it.
With regard to the economies (both paper and digital), however, I do not foresee the doomsday that has been discussed in this thread thus far. It has been stated that a complete digital copy of a standard-legal set goes for about $130. Paper versions of those sets are ~$250 from a popular gaming site. We can see why Wizards wants a cut of this action (Wizards rhetoric notwithstanding).
As long as there is money to be made redeeming and reselling, redemption will continue to happen; we don't need to be afraid of the economy tanking as others have mentioned. Comparisons to the V2.5-V3.0 fiasco are not relevant because then there was no redemption at all.
So who pays?
We all will. Resellers will lose some of their profit margin (resellers pay), though not the whole $20, since paper cards will go up (paper players will pay) and digital ones will go down (drafters will pay).
In the end, we all get bit by this redemption tax and I can see the day several years down the road when a similar post informs us that redemption is now $50 per set because of "continued increased popularity".
Redemption always seemed like an abuse to MTGO for the sake of paper to me. Especially now that I'm begining to see just how many cards are sucked out of the system and converted to paper. This bodes well for all digital constructed players, casual and competitive.
With a broader scope, you can also claim that gas is cheap, considering you can get a gallon for 10 cents or so in Wenzuela or Iran.
No, it is nothing like that. Analogy fail.
Magic Online Volunteer Community Lead. • Also assisting the Paper Magic area for the time being. I'm trying to make my official VCL posts in purple
You posted saying my thread was moved/locked but nothing happened. Spoiler:Show
Unfortunately, VCLs do not currently have the tools necessary to take moderation actions directly. VCLs submit their actions to ORCs, who then actually perform the action. This processing can take between a few minutes and several hours, depending on how busy/attentive the ORCs are.
If you see something that needs VCL attention, please use this thread (MTGO) or this thread (paper) to make a request and a VCL will look at it as soon as possible. CoC violations should be reported to Customer Service using the "report post" button. Please do not disrupt the thread by making requests of either kind in-thread.
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Redemption always seemed like an abuse to MTGO for the sake of paper to me. Especially now that I'm begining to see just how many cards are sucked out of the system and converted to paper. This bodes well for all digital constructed players, casual and competitive.
It's exactly like that. It's as ludicrous analogy as suggesting anything comes close to MTGO. An antique (the marking team will probably call it "vintage") client, history of underdelivered promises, failures and crashes nobody would bother if to was any other game.
