Image: Gareth Cattermole / Amazon Games / Kotaku (Getty Images)
Last week, New World’s patch notes indicated that taxes on Trade Post transactions would improve from 2.5 p.c to a whopping 5 p.c. What’s humorous about this case is that the MMO is printed by Amazon Games, which is owned by Jeff Bezos. Last 12 months, ProPublica reported that Jeff Bezos paid a real tax fee of 0.98% from 2014-2018. Which implies that if you wish to commerce on Amazon’s MMO, you’ll be paying 5 occasions the tax fee than Bezos.
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New World is an MMO the place you’re stranded on a magical island. Magical beings need to kill you, and it’s a must to craft your method into sustainable civilization. Trade is an enormous a part of the player-driven economic system. Which is a disgrace, as a result of this recreation retains operating into economy-breaking points like free gold, a deflation disaster that led to the rise of bartering, and pausing the economic system over gold duplication cheats. So presumably, the builders want to forestall any sort of financial meltdown earlier than they will occur.
Here’s why gamers are paying extra taxes: A neighborhood supervisor says that New World has been getting extra gamers and extra coin is being poured into the economic system. To compensate for these adjustments, the tax fee for utilizing the Trade Post has been elevated. Lost Sack of Coins have had their contents decreased to 250, they usually can not be present in elite chests. Iron Hides may also drop half as steadily with a purpose to improve their gold worth inside the economic system. Though you could possibly additionally argue that these adjustments are right here to make sure that gamers are grinding for even longer durations of time.
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Of course, Bezos isn’t personally rubbing his little goblin palms collectively as he cranks the online game tax charges forwards and backwards. But it’s humorous that the builders care so deeply about balancing faux taxes whereas the richest man on this planet thinks that he’s above petty issues comparable to “the public good.”
Billionaires don’t play by the identical guidelines as the remainder of us. According to ProPublica, Bezos’ fortune elevated by $127 million from 2006 to 2018, however he solely reported $6.5 million of it. So he solely paid $1.4 million in private taxes to the feds—which is successfully 1.1 p.c.
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Both New World and the Real World are alike in a single respect—the system is designed to maintain employees at acceptable ranges of poverty. At least the MMO is trustworthy about it.