Path of Exile co-creator: online RPGs must protect their economies, even if it costs developers cash

Path of Exile’s co-creator and co-founder of Grinding Gear Games, Chris Wilson, has some strong advice for developers looking to make online RPGs with their own economies. He shared his two cents in a recent YouTube video titled “Protecting Your Online RPG’s Economic Integrity.”

Wilson left GGG towards the tail-end of 2023 and currently runs a small independent studio called Light Pattern. In the video, he stressed that ensuring your game’s economy is fair for everyone should be your top priority, even if it means forgoing a quick profit.

He explained the idea of “economic integrity.” He said that players should procure loot and level up by playing the game, and keep everything on an even playing field, where no one gets an unfair edge through exploits, cheating, or buying an advantage.

This is even more important in online games that reset after every season, where each fresh reset creates short-term economies in which players grind to earn their place on the leaderboards. Wilson stressed that progression needs to be more skill-based, and not “purchased, botted, exploited, or obtained by socially engineering a studio’s customer support department.”

To ensure fairness in online games and RPGs, Wilson shared some opinions on how to deal with cheaters and exploiters. His opinion is a bit harsh, as he suggested that developers should go beyond the standard ban and delete cheaters’ accounts or their items. He explained:

It’s worth taking the time to clean up every account, even the ones you think are banned forever.

For even bigger hiccups that might affect a game’s in-game economy, developers should make some rollbacks but offer players cosmetic rewards as a form of compensation instead of buffs or items that bump up players’ stats.

He also discussed monetization and said that pay-to-win features, while they bring in money quickly, ultimately hurt the longevity of live-service or online games. However, he tried to call out specific titles in the video. He’s talking about Path of Exile 2, as PoE 2 players have been debating about the game’s economy and recent exploits.

Furthermore, Wilson also mentioned a personal mistake when greenlighting an expansion for Path of Exile four years ago. When the expansion went live, thousands of players were left in login queues, including paid streamers.

In a hurry, he let paid streamers skip past players who had been waiting since the expansion went live. Wilson explained:

I didn’t consider the economic advantage this would give those streamers, putting them ahead of the other players because of a real-world privilege, and how that would be unfair. We were rightly called out on this, and I instantly realized the mistake I had made.

Buy Game Economy Design on Amazon here.