HELP, sanity check before posting a suggestion about bitcoin

[ancore]

Hi

There is this awesome online RTS game i'm awaiting to be released, Novus Aeterno http://www.novusaeterno.com/
Now they haven't decided on a form of monetization yet, and they are listening to user input. So i thought i'd mention bitcoin as an alternative for accepting low cost subscriptions or micro payments without having huge transaction costs or implementation costs

problem is my post turned into a rant and i got cold feet, does the following make any sense? are there any serieus problems i forgot or things that are just plane wrong. Just a newby wouldn't want to spread nonsense

So what about low-cost subscriptions? Lets say only $4.50/month, tempting isn’t. But are they really that expensive to implement with up to $0.50 in fees per transactions? Not necesarilly. I present to you Bitcoin, the online currency. Please bear with me.
Accepting bitcoins, you don’t have to pay any transaction fees. All you need is a bitcoin client, opensource, free, software, that can run on any modern desktop with a internet conection or even a online wallet with a third party will do.
Implementing this could be as easy as having a user create a account to play (already there) and let the user specify a public bitcoin address with wich he wants to pay. Now all NA has to do is check in their bitcoin client when the user pays and activate the user account.

So two problems remain:

1.  Taitale studios doesn’t want/need bitcoins, but dollars to pay for operating costs. Two solutions: Taitale can either use one of the existing bitcoin payments processors sush as bitpay or paysius charging 1.70% and 1.60% per transaction to have the bitcoins exchanged to dollars at a daily guaranteed price and delivered to Taitale’s bank account without worries. They can also trade their bitcoins directly on the exhange market but this would probably require an extra employee.

2. How do users get bitcoins since they are forced to use bitcoin? Well some users will already have them, bitcoins are usefull for all kinds of stuff. There are a variety of ways to get bitcoins be it local trading for cash(example: localbitcoins.com), there are a variety of e-currencies or vouchers like Ukash that can be traded for bitcoins. There are of course the online exchanges like Mtgox. Others won’t mind to pay a third party(maybe a friend who also plays the game) a premium to get them easy. Each options has it’s own cost and ease of use depending on the person using it. The beautiful thing is that users have a role to play in the total cost of paying for their favourite game. For Taitale its as easy as proclaiming they accept bitcoin and showing a public address. So it’s transparant for the user where the extra cost goes.

thanks for help

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[DannyHamilton]

I'd probably go with something more like the following, but it you are welcome to send whatever you like.

Have you given any consideration to accepting bitcoin payments?

Bitcoin provides several benefits to a provider/merchant and yet carries very small setup costs.

Bitcoin allows for extremely fast electronic payment.
Additionally bitcoin transactions are not reversible which eliminates your chargeback risk.
Just as importantly, there are no merchant fees with bitcoin, and the user fees are minimal (transactions frequently have no fee at all).

This reduced risk and reduced cost would allow you to provide significantly reduced subscription costs to users who choose to pay with bitcoin, while maintaining the same (or better) revenue.  This lower subscription cost would act as an incentive to your users to consider switching to bitcoin as a payment method, further reducing your costs and risk.

Given this significant reduction in risk and cost, you might even consider bitcoin as the exclusive payment method accepted.

The technical aspects of integrating bitcoin as a payment method could be left up to third party experts such as BitPay or Paysius.  I believe those companies may even be able to provide a guaranteed daily exchange rate depositing your local currency into your bank account so you don't have to actually handle bitcoin at all.  There may be a small fee for the exchange and deposit of local currency, I think it might be 1.7% for BitPay and 1.6% for Paysius.

If you have the technical and programming expertise, you might choose to reduce costs further (eliminating the fee I just mentioned) by integrating bitcoin as a payment method yourselves.  You would need to download the free open-source software that can run on any modern desktop.  You could use the published API with this software to generate a unique payment address for every transaction allowing you to keep track of exactly how much each payer pays and exactly when.  If you don't want to keep your profits in bitcoin or pay your expenses in bitcoin, you would need to regularly transfer the acquired bitcoin to a bitcoin currrency exchange to convert it to your local currency.

Note that Wordpress has already determined that having bitcoin as a payment method is a worthwhile effort (I believe they worked with BitPay for the integration), choosing to adopt this modern and growing solution would help you to stay ahead of any current or future competitors in both pricing and payment options.

[ancore]

hey

thanks for answering, I guess your post is more neutral and well worded.
I do think there wouldn't be much incentive to accept bitcoin alongside something else, if they already implemented something else. It wouldn't give them much of an edge

Do you think it would chase normal users away if BTC was the only payment option? even after they launch with a f2p or initial cost so the users would already be familiar with the game

[Mike Christ]

It would be good business to use BTC with other currencies, simply because not everyone uses BTC.

[DannyHamilton]

. . . Do you think it would chase normal users away if BTC was the only payment option? . . .

Yes.  This early in the adoption of bitcoin, I think there are many people who would decide that bitcoin is a hassle that they don't want to deal with just to play the game.  Offering bitcoin at the same cost as other payment options might draw a few existing bitcoin users as new players who like the idea of being able to pay with their bitcoin.  Offering a discounted pricing to those who choose to use bitcoin would probably encourage additional players to look into bitcoin, giving them the incentive that they need to overcome their fear or frustration with learning about a new currency.

[ancore]

thanks again to you both

I posted an edited version of DannyHamilton's post.
you made me realize I was contradicting myself by pleading to use bitcoin so users can have a say in the total cost and at the same excluding other payments types.

I hope they will consider it, I'll post favorable replies here, don't expect them soon though