Facebook is working on a redesign to its home page that will likely alter how applications spread on its developer platform. Considering that leading apps on the platform are social games, the changes are obviously going to matter to many of our readers on this site. So here’s a brief recap, with links to our in-depth coverage over on Inside Facebook.

We already know that Facebook is going to be introducing a new home page news feed that defaults to an algorithmically-determined feed of “Top Stories.” This is like what Facebook had before the March redesign. In the forthcoming redesign, the raw, real-time stream of updates will still exist, but it will be called “recent activity” and you’ll have to click on a button to see it on the home page.

In a document intended for brand advertisers that was published today, Facebook also says a wide range of other content will appear in the feed, including photos, events, and information from groups. Developers who find traffic coming in through pages should note that users will see when friends become a fan of a page both in Top Stories and in the recent activity stream.

No news on how prominent apps will be displayed in Top Stories, though. Based on previous screenshots seen by Facebook users, we just know that they’ll be in there. However, none of the new screenshots we’ve seen show the bottom navigation toolbar — so we’re not sure what’s going on with that.

Other new screenshots have also surfaced, showing the top navigation bar with new icons for users to access Facebook’s core communication channels, including notifications, requests, and messages. The number of unread notifications, requests, or messages appears in a red bubble in the header, just as notifications do now in the site’s application bar at the bottom of the screen. By mousing over any one of the three new icons, users can access unread messages in a dropdown menu. In screenshots of that dropdown, apps are clearly visible.

Over the past year, the gaming industry has witnessed the transformation of the iPhone into a full-blown gaming platform. In many respects, it mirrored what’s been happening on Facebook and other web-based social networks. And just this past week, Apple allowed developers to incorporate virtual goods into their free-to-play apps, allowing them to come one step closer to the flourishing business model on the web.

By the looks of things, iPhone games developer ngmoco — creator of the social platform Plus+ — is wasting no time in taking advantage of the announcement. Shortly after Apple’s commentary, company chief executive Neil Young confirmed, through Twitter, that its upcoming multiplayer-only first person shooter, Eliminate(slated to release later this month) would be free-to-play. Furthermore, the app will incorporate in-app purchases. Though we don’t have all of the details yet, ngmoco has said that the virtual items in question will be what is called “energy packs.”

These packs will allow players to earn additional credits that are used to upgrade equipment as well as level up. As one might assume, the more you play, the more said energy is consumed; working much like stats such as stamina in role-playing games on Facebook. Like such stats, however, energy slowly replenishes over time. In effect, this prevents players from playing continuously – unless, of course, they wish to spend a little extra cash.

What is most interesting about this announcement, however, is that Eliminate is one of the first apps to test a virtual goods business model on the iPhone. Back in March, Grey Yardley, CEO of Pinch Media (a company that tracks stats for iPhone apps) noted that only about 20% of users continued to use an app after the first day, and after 30 days, less than 5%. Granted, that was a little over seven months ago, and those numbers have changed, but the overall market for the iPhone has not (at least not that drastically).

According to Yardley, the average app sold for approximately $0.70 with the average number of plays for a free app being around 80. Primarily, free apps garnered their revenue from advertisement, meaning that with one ad per game session, a developer needed a CPM of $8.75 to make any serious money. That’s a difficult task due to decreased advertising spending (because of the overall economic recession), and as such, the conclusion — then — was that it was better to charge a small fee for an app rather than rely on advertising revenue alone.

Unfortunately for developers, the next month brought new refund policies from Apple, which allowed users up to 90 days to “return” any application purchases. Under the policy, developers had to not only return the cost of the app, but Apple’s 30% commission as well.

Suffice to say, monetization on the iPhone, while possible and lucrative, has been quite difficult. However, with the virtual goods market predicted to be worth around $1 billion in the USalone by the end of 2009, this latest move by ngmoco may prove to be one of the boldest ones we have seen yet, but in turn, may yield a rather high pay-off — for them and for the social space.

To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

Café World, Zynga‘s new virtual restaurant game, has hit 20 million users as of today, according to our AppData service. It added almost 10 million in the last week, alone — it only launched at the beginning of the month, so this the fastest growth we’ve ever seen from a social game. And, of course, the app came in at the top of our list of the 20 gaming apps that gained the most users last week on Facebook.

Another Zynga title, Roller Coaster Kingdom, has also boomed. It actually launched at the beginning of August, and by Zynga’s standards had been growing relatively slowly. In fact, it was actually losing traffic in September, falling from a high of 4.45 million to as low as 3.84 million.

But earlier this month, something changed, and the game has since gained nearly 6 million users, including 4 million in the last week. What changed? We’re not completely sure, but on October 5th, Zynga added the app to its toolbar — meaning users playing extremely popular games like FarmVille will see it along with Zynga’s other apps in a panel at the top of the screen. Roller Coaster Kingdom came in at number three on our list this week.

		Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %	Developer
1.		Café World	20,059,325	+9,960,741	+98.6	Zynga
2.		FarmVille	60,322,759	+4,200,352	+7.5	Zynga
3.		Roller Coaster Kingdom	10,407,600	+4,074,512	+64.3	Zynga
4.		Bejeweled Blitz	8,715,030	+1,026,693	+13.4	Popcap Games
5.		Restaurant City	17,074,872	+874,468	+5.4	Playfish
6.		YoVille	19,768,369	+851,240	+4.5	Zynga
7.		Pet Society	20,281,917	+769,682	+3.9	Playfish
8.		(Lil) Farm Life	5,444,328	+706,635	+14.9	Greenpatch Inc
9.		Country Story	7,941,959	+516,180	+7.0	Playfish
10.		Animal Paradise	3,740,008	+429,416	+13.0	Rekoo
11.		開心農場	4,163,861	+402,817	+10.7	ELEX
12.		Brain Buddies	5,770,139	+391,908	+7.3	wooga – world of gaming
13.		Mobsters 2: Vendetta	3,306,320	+339,812	+11.5	Playdom
14.		Sorority Life	6,985,708	+331,167	+5.0	Playdom
15.		Texas HoldEm Poker	18,382,983	+290,384	+1.6	Zynga
16.		MindJolt Games	15,120,681	+289,720	+2.0	MindJolt
17.		Sunshine Ranch	2,295,587	+264,882	+13.0	Rekoo
18.		Icy Tower	347,158	+251,184	+261.7	Free Lunch Design
19.		Castle Age	1,447,758	+187,866	+14.9	Castle Age
20.		Forever Friends	969,366	+161,120	+19.9	Martin Wee

Speaking of FarmVille, it was at number two on the list, gaining 4.20 million to reach 60.3 million monthly active users.

But, despite Zynga’s success, there are plenty of other notable apps growing on the platform this week. At number four is Bejeweled Blitz, from Popcap Games — the company is a decade old, and has historically been focused on casual games. But it has spent the last year building social games, and raised its first round of funding ever only recently to try to push that effort harder. Bejeweled, based on the company’s casual puzzle game of of the same name, grew 1.03 million to reach 8.72 million monthly actives this past week. That’s is a good sign for the company.

Playfish, which has had a popular virtual food-vending game called Restaurant City for months, is also coming along well. Its app grew by 874,000 users this past week to reach 17.1 million. Yes, it got passed by Café World last week, but it is still hanging in there — and at number five on the list. Also, actually, Playfish’s virtual farming game, Country Story, is also doing relatively well. It grew by a respectable 516,000 to reach 7.94 million monthly actives.

Also notable this week are the successes of Asia-based simulation games. Animal Paradise and Sunshine Ranch from Beijing-based developer Rekoo each gained hundreds of thousands of users, as did 開心農場 (“Happy Farm”) by ELEX.

Friendster may be seeing users go to Facebook in its home base of Southeast Asia, but it is making a good move toward making more money. The social network says its going to start selling virtual goods, partnering with the payment provider MOL AccessPortal Berhad to introduce two currencies, dubbed “Friendster Coins” and “Friendster Chips,” for its upcoming Friendster Wallet platform.

Earlier this month, the company said its future included social games; although it previously was focused on making money through ads, virtual goods have proven to be a viable business model.

Most of Friendster’s Southeastern Asian audience does not actually have a credit card. This is where MOL comes into play. The Freindster Wallet platform is intended to be funded by pre-paid methods (like pre-paid cards) that will be redeemable for Friendster Coins. MOL will be responsible for the management of transactions and fraud prevention. It will also support PayPal and mobile payments.

Notice, however, that MOL will only be dealing with transactions as they apply to Friendster Coins. That is because this is the actual currency users can buy. The other universal currency, Friendster Chips, is actually being introduced as a virtual currency that can be earned through advertising offers. Chips will only be available as part of advertising promotions conducted by Friendster partners and/or given away as offer rewards.

We’ll continue to cover Friendster’s virtual currency integrations as they evolve over the coming weeks and months.

Zynga’s Sehgal, on creating Café World — My former colleague Dean Takahashi over at VentureBeat has taken a closer look at how Café World has grown to more than 17.7 million users since launching a few weeks ago. Roy Sehgal, the general manager of Clubhouse Studios game design group in Zynga that built the app, explains how they focused on graphics, game mechanics and virality — and he argued against the notion that it is a clone of Playfish’s virtual dining game. “A clone of Restaurant City? Not at all,” he tells Takahashi. “I would compare it to Diner Dash or Cooking Mama. It’s about cooking and running a restaurant, while Restaurant City is built around a trading mechanic. These games are only related on the surface as food-related games.”

EA’s breast cancer awareness fundraiser football jersey — The gaming company is selling black and pink football jerseys in its PlayStation Home EA Sports Complex for $2 apiece. The uniforms feature the name and number #9 number for New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who has established Brees Dream Foundation for breast cancer awareness. More on Kotaku.

China online gaming revenues keep going up — They reached 6.18 billion RMB ($906 million) in the second quarter of this year, according to research firm Analysys International. That’s up 39.5% from the previous year. A Reuters article on the matter also quote an industry regulator” who thinks yearly growth will come to between 30% and 50% over last year, for 24 billion-27 billion RMB ($3.5 billion-$4 billion)

Ice-T comes to IMVU — The rapper and his wife, Coco, will be running a line of goods in the virtual world that includes “street weapons” and virtual lingerie (for those over 18). IMVU already offers millions of virtual goods, most of which are user-created. Virtual Goods News has more.

[Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Matt McAllister and Jaini Shah of Offerpal Media. The article addresses issues that developers should consider when implementing virtual currencies. It focuses on the tradeoffs of how to manage two types of currencies within a game.]

Virtual economies are quickly becoming as complex as real ones. As more and more developers monetize their games by selling virtual goods and services, they face many of the same issues and challenges that leaders of real-world economies must deal with every day—inflation and deflation, balance and disparity, supply and demand, security and fraud prevention—plus other challenges that are unique to the online environment.

Some game and virtual world developers, such as Gaia Online, have gone so far as to hire full-time, professional economists to help them navigate the murky waters of creating a virtual economy, so important is it to their monetization numbers and overall revenue.

One common way many developers have chosen to deal with these issues is to implement a dual-currency system. In these cases, one type of currency is typically earned within the game by completing tasks or missions, and another currency can be purchased directly, either with real money or by completing advertising offers. We refer to the former type of currency as “in-game” currency, and the latter as “Real Money Transfer” (RMT) currency.

Why Two Currencies?

When implemented correctly, there are a number of advantages to creating a dual-currency system: it can help you balance the game economy and manage inflation, track and reduce fraudulent behavior, create a more level playing field for your users, and so on.

But the primary reason to adopt a dual-currency system is to engage and monetize the two distinct sets of users: paying and non-paying. Paying users are willing to fork over a few bucks, cents, or in the case of completing ad offers, a few minutes of their time in order to get premium items within the game. These typically make up between 5 to 15% of your overall user base. The non-paying users, on the other hand, just want to play your game for free. Paying users are valuable for obvious reasons. However, even though non-paying users might not generate direct revenue for your company, they can often be equally valuable, because:

• their mere participation creates value for paying customers
• they contribute to your word of mouth growth
• their visits and page views create advertising opportunities
• they might eventually turn into paying customers.

RMT currency is for users who are willing to pay real money for virtual currency instead of spending a lot of time in the game trying to earn it, whereas the in-game currency is for non-paying users who are willing to spend time playing the game in order to earn virtual currency but are not willing to spend real money on it. Having multiple currencies in a virtual economy thus helps maximize revenue and engagement across both sets of users.

4 Likely Scenarios

Two important questions that must be asked when first considering a dual currency economy are (1) whether you want to allow your currency to be converted from one type to the other (RMT to in-game currency and vice versa), and (2) whether players should be allowed to trade or transfer currency with one another. Allowing conversions and transfers opens up a slew of challenges that make it more difficult to balance your economy and prevent fraud, so many developers tend to go the safer, easier route of prohibiting both conversions and transfers. Let’s therefore begin by examining this type of economy first.

Scenario 1: Prohibiting Conversions and Transfers

Overall, this model is the least risky of the four because the game economy is completely under the control of the developer. The major advantage of this model is that it allows the developer to focus their efforts on one type of user – paying vs. non-paying – or the other depending on where they stand in the user lifecycle. For example, in order to motivate non-paying users to pay, developers may introduce a premium item that can only be purchased through RMT currency. In contrast they may also introduce certain items that can only be bought with in-game currency in order to motivate users to engage more deeply and spend more time in the game. The downside of this model is that you must give up potential virality and monetization, as we’ll see in the other scenarios.

Scenario 2: Prohibiting Conversions, Allowing Transfers

This scenario is commonly found in poker and other card-playing games, where the function of players transferring their “chips” to other players creates a powerful viral channel, such as when one poker player invites several friends and offers a few “chips” to get them started. However, this scenario creates many loopholes that can easily lead to crippling amounts of fraud if the economy isn’t closely monitored and managed, and most developers decide that the risk isn’t worth the reward.

Scenario 3: Allowing Conversions, Prohibiting Transfers

This scenario is mostly found in Role Playing Games, where many developers prohibit transfers but allow users to gain in-game currency in exchange for RMT currency at a fixed exchange rate. They may also let the paying users earn the in-game currency faster as compared to non-paying users when they use RMT currency. This model is less risky than scenario 2, since it helps keep the currency flow in check and also keep the developers in control of the game economy. It also supports monetization efforts by creating more reasons to purchase RMT currency.

Scenario 4: Allowing Conversions and Transfers

When player-to-player currency transfer is enabled, users can transfer either of the currencies (in-game or RMT) from one player to another, whether in a developer-controlled marketplace or through external methods like eBay. Found in applications such as Fish Wrangler, Fallen Sword, and Mouse Hunt, this type of system can often increase monetization by driving up demand for your RMT currency.  Currency trading is specifically useful if the sinks (uses) for both currencies are different. For example, if there are certain premium items or special features that can be unlocked only through RMT currency, and there are certain activities or items which require in-game currency, then both types of users can benefit through currency trading. However, allowing player-to-player currency transfer can be risky and may lead to issues such as fraud and gold farming.

Tips for Implementing a Dual Currency System

Okay, so you’re ready to build a dual-currency system into your game. Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you do so:

1. Engage first, monetize second

Promote your currencies based on the users’ life-cycle. First engage them in the game through some in-game features and currency before promoting the RMT currency and driving them to the payments page. If you push RMT items before the users are fully hooked, you risk turning them off and losing them for good.

2. Balance your sinks

Maintaining a balance between the sinks for both currencies is very important. If there are a lot of sinks for in-game currency but very limited sinks for RMT currency, then it might affect the value of the RMT currency. In the same way, if there are limited sinks for in-game currency, then users may get stuck at some point and not engage in the game at all. Try to balance the RMT-only sinks with an equivalent number and type of in-game-only sinks to appeal to both types of users.

3. Offer multiple sources

For in-game currency, make sure there’s more than just one or two ways to earn the currency, or your users will quickly grow bored. For RMT currency, make sure you offer enough payment options – not just credit cards and PayPal but mobile billing methods, offline stored-value cards, and offer-based payment methods – to effectively monetize a broad set of users across different genders, age ranges and other demographic profiles.

4. Spell it out

Dual currency systems, by their very nature, are more complicated than single-currency systems, and therefore must be explained more thoroughly. Use all of the tools at your disposal – FAQs, customer support, in-game feedback and notifications, etc. – to explain the differences between your two types of currency and erase any confusion that might occur for your users.

5. Test, Measure & Optimize

As with everything in your game, you should be testing and re-testing all variables affecting your engagement and monetization. Test your exchange rate. Test your price points. Test anything and everything involving your virtual economy. Keep in mind that small fluctuations can often have a large impact on your overall revenue. At the same time, keep an eye out for inflation, imbalance, fraud and other factors that could be detrimental to your efforts, and quickly squash these before they have a chance to grow.

Conclusions

Dual currency systems aren’t for all games and all developers, but as virtual economies continue to evolve, many developers are finding that the rewards of having two currencies far outweigh the risks. If you’re thinking of implementing a dual currency system, take a look at your game and the types of users it attracts, and decide how you want to handle conversions and transfers. Do transfers make sense given the game dynamics? Do conversions make sense given your users’ willingness to pay, or would they simply rely on conversions to gain large amounts of in-game currency without actually engaging in the game (which might actually cheat non-paying users)?

Since its 1.0 release back in March, OpenFeint has been helping to mitigate the distribution problems on the iPhone and its oversaturated AppStore. Already, the platform improved the lives of developers by providing a simpler means to integrate social features such as leaderboards, achievements and profiles as well as increase distribution through social discovery, friending, invites, and Facebook and Twitter integration. Now, OpenFeint is adding to its service with a brand new ”developer spotlight.” A feature that requires no additional sign-up, and will actually provide a little extra marketing by displaying games on the OpenFeint web site.

The company will choose games for the spotlight based on elements such as game play, presentation, and overall quality. Granted, the prospects of what makes a game “good” is subject to opinion, but the three measure, above, generally encompasses the most breadth. If your game is fun, creative, and looks/sounds good, then you have a chance of being chosen. Furthermore, the folks behind the highly popular RPG Aurora Feint: The Beginning will be directly involved in the selection process.

We spoke with Jason Citron, founder and CEO of Aurora Feint to learn more about the new addition to the OpenFeint platform. According to Citron, they are looking to feature spotlighted games relatively frequently – anywhere from weekly to biweekly – and will showcase them on OpenFeint.com with a case study on how OpenFeint was integrated. Moreover, Citron also told us that there may be other possibilities as well in the future such as paid ad placements, editorials in selected press, as well as possible contests and/or promotions. Of course, he added everything is subject to change, and they’ll be moving forward with what they feel is working best. Either way, a little extra marketing footwork is always handy, regardless of whom you are.

Already there are three spotlighted games: Fame, Finger Physics, and Must.Eat.Birds.

• Fame, developed by PikPok, is a rhythm, “finger-dancing” game based on the movie that has you tapping and sliding your fingers around the screen to dance music.
• Finger Physics, published by PressOK Entertainment, is a physics-based puzzle game. Here, players move around a myriad of different physics-enabled objects in order to solve over 80 puzzles.
• Must.Eat.Birds, developed by Mediatonic, is a faux-Japanese-style game that has you defending a picnic from invading birds as a bizarre looking… monster… thing….

Thus far, OpenFeint has over 250 titles live in the AppStore with another 500+ in development. Hailed by its users as a “30 Minute” exercise, the cost-free platform has grown greatly in the past eight months, and with yet another incentive to its merit, it is unlikely to stop any time soon.

Sometrics helps social and other online gaming companies optimize the ads and advertising offers that appear to users. Its analytics software shows which ads are most relevant to particular users based on activity and demographic information. Things seem to be going well, as the company has raised a second round of funding.

Specifically, $4 million in new funding, on top of a previous $1.55 million. The new investor is Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital affiliate of The Walt Disney Company. Steamboat managing director Beau Laskey has also joined Sometrics’ board of directors. Past investors the Mailroom Fund and Greycroft Partners also put more money in to the company.

Advertising offers have become a key way for many social gaming companies to make money: They allow users to sign up for other services, like Netflix subscriptions or ringtones, and in turn receive points to use in a game.

Los Angeles-based Sometrics works with social gaming companies like Playdom, but has also been signing up massive multiplayer online gaming sites recently, including Atlus Online, Ndoors Interactive and ijji.com.

Social Gaming Network was one of the first gaming companies on Facebook’s platform — but it decided to make a big push on to the iPhone last year. It has been successful on that front, touting that its games are on 1 in every 3 iPhones and iPod Touches worldwide, including multiplayer jet-fighter game F.A.S.T., SGN Golf, iBowl and Agency Wars; and, it has hired some big names. But the iPhone has not been a good place for the primary way of making money through many games: Virtual goods.

Apple has only let developers introduce virtual goods for purchase within paid apps, but not free apps. Today, that changed, when the company announced to developers that they can now include virtual goods within free apps.

So we caught up with SGN chief executive Shervin Pishevar, to get his perspective.

ISG: What are the implications of virtual goods now being available within free gaming apps?

Shervin Pishevar: HUGE IMPLICATIONS! I was running around the office screaming and shouting with joy. We made a bet on the iPhone when a lot of people said it was too small. They said it didn’t have virtual goods, in-app purchases… we made a long-term bet, and it’s paying off. Being on 1 in 3 iPhones right now is a good place to be.

We’ve been investing in high-quality games, all built with virtual goods, and in-app purchases in them. We have 100 people developing incredible games, and we were already planning to get some out for the holidays — now we have a new business model to take advantage of all of this.

ISG: But there’s no option for offering your own virtual currency, like what many apps do on Facebook.

SP: Now, you’re going to purchase actual virtual goods. On the iPhone, it’s seamless. On Facebook, you have to enter your credit card number, and go through the whole process. One click on the iPhone is all it takes, because iTunes already has the information. The part that created friction before was that you could only do in-app purchase only after you paid for the app. That was the big obstacle in creating a virtual goods ecosystem. Now, the iPhone is continuing its march across world — unit numbers keep going up. The way I see it, the iPhone platform is where the Facebook platform was a year and a half ago. As Apple makes moves like it did today, you can see the evolution happening, mirroring some of the things that have created this monstrosity [the developer platform] on Facebook. Overnight, Apple’s creating a huge marketplace.

ISG: That’s bullish. So, any number estimates on how huge that marketplace is going to be?

SP: Already, the majority of sales on the iPhone are games. That’s the major activity, and I’d be surprised if the actual app purchases number doesn’t cross $1 billion in the next year. Now, having in-app purchases, that creates a totally different situation — who knows what the number is going to be. And it’s the moment that we’ve been waiting for, to essentially build a social gaming-sized company on the iPhone now, because we can do free-to-play games.

This makes the bridge between iPhone and Facebook make even more sense. Now, it’s the same model on both. A user on Facebook, playing a game for free, can get on a train and play the same free game on the iPhone — then buy a virtual good. Or vice versa.

ISG: Wait, so how does this fit in with your Facebook plans?

It expands it even more, it allows us to scale up iPhone games, so we can have a larger number of users transacting and interacting with users on Facebook. It’s great validation of our strategy.

ISG: Did you have any idea this was coming?

I had no idea. Apple is very careful, there’s no way anyone outside of the company knew. But a lot of people, including us, have been asking for this. There wasn’t a huge gap between June at WWDC [when developers pushed the issue]. Now, in mid-October, that change has happened. In June, I had thought if it happened in the next year, “oh that would be great.”

We were in the middle of making a large pipeline of quality games, based on our 3D multiplayer software. We were planning to push out “light” free version, then hopefully get people to buy the app. Now, we can take the paid versions with in-app purchases and use this as a free-to-play model.

ISG: What’s a good example? F.A.S.T.?

F.A.S.T. is a prime example of a game that we didn’t even have a free version for, only a paid game. It still did really well. Now that we have in-app purchases, that changes the model. Up until this point, there was no ability to download FAST for free. Now, it’s like the Zynga model and the Playfish model on Facebook. It’s proven that you can build a big business here if you can get to a mass audience. The iPhone is going to grow from where it is today. We can grow along with it, because we have a platform that can scale — with a business model that is frictionless.

To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.

Yesterday, we announced the release of our new Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market, 2009 – 2010 research report, exclusively focused on the size and future of the virtual goods market in the United States. The big picture? We estimate the total 2009 US virtual goods opportunity at just over $1 billion.

Today, report co-author and partner Charles Hudson appeared on CNBC’s “Street Signs” to discuss the report and virtual goods. Here’s the video. Note: CNBC discusses the lack of virtual goods in free-to-play iPhone and iPod Touch games — Apple started allowing purchases in free apps today, though virtual currency purchases are still prohibited.