"Please contact us if you would like to advertise, accept voluntary real-money donations or charge users for usage."
I read that as not making it unreasonable to charge in-game currency/assets/services for usage of a site or service built on the api. Is that deliberate or an oversight in the policy wording?
bumb, as that confuses me a lot and would like a better understanding on it
An email response I received from heather@torn.com states:
We do not ever allow the trading of anything with real money it results in your account being deleted and often times an IP ban. If you wish to discuss further additions to the API I can pass along the details to our devs along with your details and they can get back in touch with you.
Trading of Torn cash might be possible.
Best Regards,
Heather
And an unnamed individual at webmaster@torn.com states:
Hello,
How did you imagine accepting real payments?
The idea was really that this would be via Android / Apple application stores. Although the software would obviously be far more popular if it was free.
I don't see a problem with accepting Torn dollars for access.
Thanks.
Heather's response makes it sound like we cannot accept real cash money. But the "webmaster"'s response makes it sound like Torn money is okay, and potentially accepting Apple store or Google Play money is okay? Still not sure, but here's a little insight anyway.
However, I would object to this...
I am not trying to sell Xanax or armor or a gun in-game for real money... I'm trying to sell a real program and my real time for real money.
Honestly, legally, I feel we as developers should be able to collect real world money, as our creation and what we are selling has nothing to do with anything in the game. It utilizes the API, yes, but it does not involve any items or content from Torn itself.
My 2 cents... But it's not worth fighting for. As "webmaster" says, things will be more popular if they're free. And, while I understand it takes time, I can't imagine anything that uses the API will really be too terribly valuable in real world money.
i believe thats what the dev team was implying, that you can say to them about your app dev, and state that you are wishing to charge for it to pay for web hosting/time etc. since its not related to game items, and you are selling a product to aid the game, made by yourself that they will allow it, probably to a certain degree(some restrictions may apply probably based on the way you would charge, ie like that 2nd email said android/apple store is quite legit, while a basic html website with a paypal is a bit more sketchy looking if that makes sence)
obviously if you are selling ingame stuff for real cash its against the rules, but i dont see this circumventing this, although the emails dont really give a definitive answer
would we be able to accept optional donations? meaning the product is free but people are able to donate money if they'd like