Howdy!

Okay, I want to first of all clarify that by PSA I mean Public Service Announcement with the objective of raising awareness of, and changing public attitudes and behavior of... something. In this case: I am talking about private deals.

I know my blogs are normally about Stardoll content like floors, forgotten items, and overall nostalgia galore, but I really felt the need to address this issue. I also want to note that while this is my opinion, it's also strongly anchored in facts and the One-Stop-Rules of Stardoll, so it's not just speculation. I'm going to be doing my best to be objective and simply present the facts and possible solutions. I'm a simple blogger, I'm not a member of the Stardoll Staff, so it's not up to me to change the system or tweak it around. Nor can I foresee if changes will be made before or after this blog is published.

Now, I want to begin by quoting the One-Stop-Rules, the fifth and ninth clauses under the category of SAFETY.

"Do not make private deals, trade, buy, or sell items for more than 600 Stardollars."

 

"Do not sell Starcoin items for Stardollars."

 

I have highlighted the words 'Do not.' Against the rules or not, trading and making private deals is a pretty common practice among Stardoll players. Reasons can vary: I'd rather give you an item because I don't have any SD, I'd rather get five bucks for an item than get SD... stuff like that. Sadly, using the SD on a gifting account to pay for an item also falls under this category. And by "sadly," I mean because it's a way of payment used by free-players mainly, since we all know how well surveys work and how many SD you can earn. Every kind of transaction that falls outside of Stardoll's available tools to buy or sell, is labeled as a private deal.

Selling for USD or other real-life currency.
Trading one item for another (often, dolls use the term 'swapping' for this behavior).
Selling for more than 600 Stardollars.
Selling Starcoin items for Stardollars (and vice versa).

If you have no idea how these private deals happen, we can imagine a little role play. Imagine that I am a seller, and you wish to buy this DKNY Scuba Dress for example. I guess. It's a rare SC item (I know it was released as a freebie), and you want to add it to your collection. But I want more than 600 SC on this dress because it's rare, old, and from a real-brand. And I ask you to pay me, let's say one thousand SD for it. Now, a sensible player would report me immediately, but let's say you accept. For you to buy that dress, you'd need to buy two 'junk' items, for 600 and 400 SD respectively, to cover the price. But to avoid getting scammed, I'm not going to reserve the Scuba Dress for you for 2 SC as agreed, until you buy the items. 

The scenario can go in two directions:
1. You buy the items, I get my SD and you get your dress.
2. Since I haven't reserved the dress, I could decide to keep it when I see the SD stored neatly in my account and go to find another naive player, leaving you with a 1000 SD hole in your transactions and a metaphorical busted lip.

But there's a reason why this clause is under the SAFETY category. You might catch a player who would hold their end of the deal, but chances are you might NOT. There are scammers that use the facade of players that normalize private deals and then scam others. And the point is, you never know who's the bad apple in the basket. You could see them actually selling items for their correct price, or get referrals or whatever, but you have no idea if they're real or not.

The herd mentality makes you think it's okay to do something unsafe if you see someone else doing it, even if you know it's wrong, and that's dangerous. 

You might come to saying 'But Alex, it's a simple dress-up game."

Exactly. It's a dress-up game. A game that should be fun, enjoyable and safe for everyone to play and relax. Not a place to be on constant alert checking for scammers, harassers, and a lot of people have forgotten that the pixels in their wardrobes are just that: pixels. Meant to be worn by your doll or be sold to someone else for money to wear other pixles. In other words, they're simply not worth losing your account, patience, nerves, or actual money over, and it overall drains the fun out of the game. If your account is also full of rare items... please. Nothing is worth that hassle. There's a difference between just collecting flashy stuff, and almost giving up a leg for it. I'm exaggerating, I know.

It's getting long, so I'm going to wrap it up soon. I have also seen speculations about how the SD and SC cap played a role in perpetuating the private deals and pretty much making them common. It's true, I'm not denying it. Unlike other games, there's no safe method to trade either. But for now, there's nothing we can do. Even if I complain about it, the cap still stands, and no new features have been implemented, so all we can do is stay safe until changes are made.

The purpose of this blog is to raise awareness of what is happening around the game. I did my best to be objective about it and I think managed to try to see most points of view regarding this matter. But, I'm open for a debate. I mean, unless the rules are changed, they're kind of set in stone, but we can talk about possible ways of actually fixing the system to make it fair for everybody. In a perfect world, nobody breaks the law because nobody has to. Unless they're greedy, but that's a different matter.