BI just released a post regarding server monetization and allowance of product placement, donations, selling in-game goods etc.
This is a big step for large communities to legally support themselves with sponsors.
This will let the community breathe again. The whole application part will be good for ARMA I believe.
Could I have a second opinion on if allowing the cosmetic items for donators is against these rules? I was thinking about it the last time Bohemia created a post like this. I think having cosmetic items is a good idea, because they are only cosmetic. But I don’t want Bohemia to bring down the hammer on us. (As low as the chance may be)
Good point. We’re not selling goods, but providing them to donators exclusively, which in the light of the announcement is not legal. Instead we could sell the access to the goods (as cosmetics) with the addition of donator/premium/subscriber tag attached to the purchase. That’s at least how I legally see it. I guess some of the NCO’s will need to answer that.
Yeah, it is a really tricky question. If we do that, then it is not a donation according to PayPal anymore, so the fees go up because it has to classed as a ware or service I believe.
According to the CNTO documentation, donators are already allowed to equip things that others are not (headgear), this feature could make this official. I wonder what kind of negative things we’re going to see from this change, there’s already a lot of whining on reddit about it.
As stated in the BI post:
"Accepting donations is allowed, but to avoid any doubts: not providing donations must not prevent anyone from accessing the content."
So we can "sell" the access to those goods, but we can’t grant them to donators only.
Yeah, its pretty tricky as Anarchy stated.
Oof, that sounds like a lot of lawyer wizardry to me. Somehow, I doubt we’ll actually be affected, though.
If we grow, we will eventually be noticable, and its better to avoid legal conflicts.