RE: Some thoughts on multiaccounting in Steem Monsters and online poker.
I am very well aware of skins. They still exist today on certain networks but are not as abundant. As you pointed out sites have ways to deal with not allowing two skins or two clients on the same network to be opened at the same time thus stopping MOST from doing it. But as with everything there are several ways around that in which I won't mention. I use to be fairly deep into the poker world with owning and MOD forums and being in back ends of the poker sites themselves.
To an extent SM has implemented this as well. For anyone who has tried to open their account in a second window they will run into some minor problems such as in the original window you opened your saved team list is empty and will stay that way after each battle until you refresh the page.
The merge network use to be my favorite. Back in the day they had a promotion where you could make a " first time deposit " of $10 and be entered into fourteen $500 freerolls. This network had well over a dozen skins .... and likely way more then that.
To further expand on my opinion on multi-accounts on SM..... I think today double accounts are needed as they help with making sure games are steady available in our smallish player base. However we 100 % at some point need to move away from allowing multi-accounts as the game won't survive or at the very least become stagnant if someone with deep pockets can afford the best team multiple times over and is allowed to take all the top rewards. I think bots are a bigger issue atm .... But that is another discussion ....
While our points are similar our opinions vary slightly. I think the poker community and the SM community have very similar values. I believe this will be more apparent once SM player base grows bigger. In fact I think that SM should copy the poker model with their user interface. Have a lobby with Sit N Go SM games ..... tournaments ..... have a support email and employees filtering the emails and addressing questions ... forwarding the important ones to the higher ups. ..... its all possible and proven model that works.
While this may be true in the broad sense, I see a big hangup in how casually poker players take confiscation of funds by centralized authority. And without that, how you disallow multi-accounting and other potentially undesirable behaviors is beyond me. Poker sites haven't been able to stop multi-accounting, or botting, or anything else, they just make it expensive enough that the problem is kept small.
Paid for how? No rake, because no gambling. Can they pay a support staff purely based on pack sales? Especially when they're committing large chunks of those resources to prizes?
Similarly, how does a Sit & Go work without buyins? You could have on-demand small tournaments, I guess, but it's not at all the same.
We are on the blockchain ..... Everything is visible. I am sure we could catch a good number of multi-accounting players if we wanted. Not 100 % as that would be impossible regardless of what system is used to stop it. This goes back to having a team specifically for doing just that. Plus the community itself would help police just like the poker community does.
When the GFL got stole yesterday the whole situation is almost a mirrored image of what happens and has happened multiple times in the poker community. Someone said during the witch hunt that individual cards can be rendered useless. If this is the case ....... limiting multi-accounters won't be hard to do and can be done in a similar fashion as the poker community does. With the key difference of being .... you destroy their cards instead of their log in account. This is only one way of many that can be thought up.
Yes No Rake ..... for example .... A SNG would work like the below.
10 Man Sit And Go :
Buy in : 1 Alpha Card
Seats : 10 ( Starts when full )
Prize :
First : 5 Alpha cards
Second : 3 Alpha cards
Third : 2 Alpha cards
Yes I think they can pay a support staff. Not only do I think they can / will be able to but I think it is going to be a necessity at some point if SM keeps growing.
$600,000 In Alpha packs sold + thousands in Beta ..... + Kickstarter and starter packs. I would say they have enough for an official support email person. As a poker player yourself you know these support emails are not the best and mostly send copy and paste responses. I bet SM could even find someone willing to do it for some packs or recognition at first with the promise it turns into a paid gig if they grow big enough.
I think " rake " would work also. Burn X Beta card to enter a tournament worth $100 ..... Burn X Alpha card to enter a tournament worth $250 and so on or ..... send x card to x account to enter this tournament. Governments don't recognize SM cards as currency. Legally ... no gambling will be taking place. Using crypto ( SM cards are crypto ) is how some poker sites can allow US players and avoid gambling laws.
Sadly, this isn't true. Trivial example: Bryan Micon was prosecuted for running Seals With Clubs. More generally, for obvious reasons gambling laws don't limit their reach to only things that are currency, or they'd be completely ineffective.
Anything that has a buyin and a prize will end up considered gambling.
Ah yes .. how could I forget about Seals With Clubs. In any case its highly unlikely the government dings us with gambling for using SM cards as rake. Crypto been used to skirt gambling laws for years. But I suppose the risk is still there.