IMVU & myYearbook Exchange...

caleb68 · Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 3385 Location: USA - WA

I feel this effects Developers and I'll explain why, which is why I'm posting here in the content creator forum....

Most of you have seen the ad's here to earn credits from myyearbook as well as the ad's for the currency exchange for myyearbook.

myYearbook has what they call 'lunch money' to buy virtual gifts and page decorations for your pages and friends pages at their site. It kinda works like IMVU's credits except there are no 'dev tokens' or 'promo credits' and, in all honesty, they dont seem to have any real dollar value.

Now.... here's how this effects you...

the user Joe desides to convert 10k credits over into myYearbook Lunch Money, after Joe is done over at my yearbook, he finds that he's sent twice as many credits over to myyearbook then he needed to....

So Joe desides to convert the 5k worth credits he didn't need to send over to myYearbook back over IMVU credits. He fills out the forum and submits the lunch money to get his credits back....

This is where Joe notices he didn't get 5k Credits back, instead Joe got 5k Promo Credits. Even though when Joe originally sent them, they were Credits and not Promo Credits, joe ended up with Promo Credits....

So now when Joe buys a product instead of the Developer getting credits, he gets 1 DevToken instead because of the Currency Exchange system.

so... I'm wondering...

If you have to send 'Real Credits' to get 'Lunch Money' wouldn't it be fair to allow you to recieve 'Real Credits' for 'Lunch Money' instead of 'Promo Credits' ?

So you dev's who are sitting on top of a bunch of Credits ... If you want to throw them away, you could always convert them over to lunch money at my yearbook then convert them back to IMVU and you'll have a ton of worthless predits!! yippie!!
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Goldilocks · Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 3143 Location: USA

Wow! I didn't know this. That doesn't seem fair. It would be no different if someone purchased from our catalogs with promo credits and then wanted a full refund with real credits. I think it's on par with that. Both don't seem fair.
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MolotovCupcake · Joined: 06 Mar 2008 Posts: 1479 Location: Canada

Seems a bit of a fraud really.
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LiiN · Joined: 31 Dec 2008 Posts: 1854 Location: Sweden

Isn't it worse that they can just fool around on mYb for a day or two and then go cash in on IMVU? Money investment: 0.

LadyElegantBloodK · Joined: 23 Aug 2007 Posts: 5364 Location: USA

For one there is very little reason to transfer credits into LM for yearbook its so easy to earn LM over there you don't really need to transfer credits over. IE people can make more then 14 million LM in less then a couple of hours.
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gaf210 · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:58 am Post subject:

i think they made it this way because of what ladyEBK said, if its easy to make lunchmoney then imagine if they could convert it to real creds... can be really nasty Shocked

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neo1471 · Joined: 22 Jul 2005 Posts: 3632 Location: United Kingdom

what do u meen can be?

iv not looked into it but i sure as hell hope theres a small limmit on how much can be transfered across, its all well and good needing real credits to buy ur friends something, but when u just tell ur friends how to scam the system it becomes pointless, flooding imvu with more predits, woho
-walks off before swearing starts between predit influx and advertisments being thrown at us-
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Polystyrene · Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Posts: 20036 Location: Australia

Yeah maybe it's a bit dodgy that real credits would turn into predits.....but I'd rather that than have people turning lunchbox thingy whatsit into real credits.

But either way.....I don't like things that are adding more predits to the system.
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Notorious · Joined: 02 Jan 2006 Posts: 18427 Location: USA

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=314968

I've been concerned since this began....so have many others...
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caleb68 · Joined: 15 Jul 2006 Posts: 3385 Location: USA - WA

thanks for the link nortorious

Far as lunch money, it depends on the individual there to if they can earn them.

lunch money exchange is a higher exchange, its not like you get 1000 credits for 1000 lunch money, the exchange is alot higher, and it is because of people being able to earn tons in a few hours.

The point im making is if someone exchanges real credits, then exchanges back, they should get those real credits back, and any additional lunch money exchanged at that point would be for predits.

A simple sql table can track these transactions as well as a simple call to that table to find out whats been sent back and forth

i.e table:
echangecredts
\-imvuname - name of individual on imvu
\-yeabookname - name of individual on yearbook
\-imvucredits - credits converted
\-lunchmoney - lunchmoney converted

A simple table like that could track the amount of credits sent to myyearbook, and the amount of lunchmoney sent to imvu.

this would also lock it to the individual avatar who 'sent' the credits, so that if someone else sent in lunch money for that 'avatar' they would not get reimbursed credits they would only recieve predits.

Also, the exchange does not allow for you to send predits to myyearbook, only real credits. if they allowed you to send predits, then that would be great, hell if they would allow us to cash in devtokens even that would be great (we all know we'd love to have another venue to get rid of devtokens) but they dont allow either, only real credits can be sent to myyearbook.
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Arezeon · Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 5000 Location: India

I think this is a mainly done to get real credits out of the system and bring promo credits in. Because promos are non transferable it would hurt the creator who gets it and not hurt Imvu economy in general or cause inflation. Wink

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Ayria · Joined: 21 Aug 2008 Posts: 1370 Location: USA

Wow, something else that makes no sense - go fig!?

...utter bull.

I think before IMVU makes any more big changes to the system that effect the "economy" here....they need to start incorporating our input on things FIRST......

BEFORE they're put into place...

instead of acting like (insert whiny voice here) ooooo I'm your savior - I'm going to fix all your troubles and woes - wear feathers for me.

I'm tired of it. I'm just...sick of it. I'm sick of the rhetoric.

IMVU's policy, according to what has been done for the last 3 or so years around here (can't speak for to anything else before that) is..........

Pull head out of sand, do now!, get bad feedback....then choose to actually SHOW an attempt of thinking later.

An attempt....for show....is all it ever is.

I have serious issues with their way of doing things. Period.
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AnakaTarren · Joined: 16 Mar 2006 Posts: 4449 Location: USA

My average promo credit percentage per day (vs overall sales) had been steadily rising since December, with about a 25% increase in February. But over the last week, the average has DOUBLED over last year ... with some days almost tripling. My overall sales have increased as well during these time periods, but not as dramatically.

My average promo rate has been low and fairly constant for the past 2 years, averaging 4.0 to 4.3% since my target audience is usually over the age of 18 (a group that rarely hunts promo credits). There were occasional spikes in promo credits in that timeframe, but never a long term trend. If this current 90-day growth trend continues, it could become a serious income hit. (Of course, it's hard to tell how much IMVU's new policy of paying promo credits for Peer Reviews is also part of this, hurting developers income and as well as impacting overall safety since it potentially entices for minors to lie about their age.*)

I hope IMVU quickly stops the new flood of promo credits. Even the best of devs only get a small fraction of the real $ we bring to IMVU's business anyway (taking into all IMVU fees, charges, and non-income "rewards", plus cash conversion losses). And hopefully the promo credit flood isn't a sign that IMVU has decided they don't need serious developers any more since the catalog is now so large.

* Much of the safety and promo pay issues of Peer Review promo credits is easily resolvable. For example, IMVU could pay REAL credits to the first 10 or so minors who report serious catalog violations (especially UFI) that are still actively sold, even if hidden. That simple change simultaneously clean up outrageous items in catalog plus offset the lure for kids to lie about age to earn credits through PR, improving overall site safety. Plus, the real credits paid to those 10 kids for each violation could be taken directly from the violator's account as penalty, a tiny charge per violation to the developer compared to the huge customer refund issues they may also be responsible for. (For example, if kids were paid 500 real credits for each confirmed reported violation, then 500 REAL credits * 10 kids = 5000 real credits per violation charged to the developer, a small cost to violators that makes cleaning up the catalog more enticing to kids than Peer Review).

** Edited for clarification.
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MrsGlamCartel · Joined: 12 May 2009 Posts: 121 Location: USA - NY

i don't use myyearbook. but tht does seem unfair
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jazzKat · Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 1577 Location: United Kingdom