[MUD-Dev] Newsweek prints an article reguarding the selling of virtual currency

[Chris]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6199780/site/newsweek/

This article also was printed in their monthly hardprint magazine.

My first reaction was "Wow, someone outside the industry is paying
attention?" Other than that I suggest reading it. Seems like the
hardcore lineage 2 farmers are making upwards to $4000 a month. Not
surprising IMO, also I'm willing to wager that the money is coming
from the NA servers but the player is not from NA.

Anyone want to comment on their business' attempts, methods and success
rates of controlling/moding the selling of virtual currency.

Chris "Diamonds" Stewart


<EdNote: Text below>

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		      Gaming the Online Games

	     A new breed of entrepreneur is collecting
	       virtual booty and  selling it for hard
		      cash. Is that fair play?

			  By Mark Russell
			      Newsweek

Oct. 18 issue - K. sits in front of his computers for 12 to 15 hours
a day, playing games for a living. He is a scavenger in the kind of
online games that involve as many as 200,000 players building or
battling in elaborate virtual worlds. His specialty is Lineage, a
medieval fantasy game, and he plays seven characters simultaneously
on four computers, seeking the spoils\u2014magical swords and the
like\u2014that allow victors to move up to higher levels. At 27, he
says he couldn't find a normal career out of university, so he
turned to this gray-market profession, earning some $4,000 a month
winning and selling virtual booty to other players.

Even the fanatic universe of game players is divided about trading
virtual goods. The buyers are paying to gain an advantage (a magic
weapon or whatever), and many consider this cheating, or just
stupid. Often, people are paying real money for play money, a deal
no sane person ever made on a Monopoly board. "Selling and buying
stuff online through games is just a crazy idea," says Kim Min Ho, a
university student. "I don't understand why people do it. There are
better ways to waste your money." Others say it's just capitalism at
work. Says 27-year-old office worker Kim Ki Woon, "It's great to
know that you can earn a little on the side while spending time on
your hobby."

Japan's game publishers used to be on top of the world. Now they're
losing out to U.S. and European rivals. What happened?

While selling virtual goods for real cash is not illegal in Korea,
it is against the rules of Lineage, and every other entry in the
class of "massive multiple player online games." Some game makers
encourage trading of virtual goods between friends, and some even
sell their own virtual goods for real cash. But none allow outsiders
like K. to take real money out of their virtual worlds. It's not yet
clear how the courts or the government in South Korea, or any other
nation, will resolve the disputes arising on this border between the
virtual and actual worlds. That's one reason why K. won't give his
real name.

South Korea is the world's most wired society, a center of the
online gaming craze and a main battlefield for disputes over who
owns commercial cyberspace. In 2001 the Korean government sided with
NCsoft, maker of Lineage, in a dispute over ownership of online
goods, but did not go so far as to outlaw trading in such
goods. NCsoft has since banned more than 200,000 players for buying
and selling virtual goods, but the practice thrives. There are now
more than 200 companies in the game, with total yearly revenue
officially estimated at between $83 million and $415 million. The
largest, ItemBay, has 1.5 million customers and up to $17 million in
monthly revenues. As for accusations that these trades abet
cheaters, ItemBay manager Chung Sang-Won says, "It is not illegal
and we are doing nothing wrong. We're just providing a service
people want and need."

Most countries are still struggling to figure out how to enforce
property rights online, and for now are leaning toward affirming the
right of a game maker to control commerce in its virtual world, says
Whang Sang-min, a gaming expert at Yonsei University in
Seoul. "Online-game worlds are becoming like the real world, and
each country accepts the online world in its own way," Whang
says. In China, courts have ruled that because players invest their
own time, they own the spoils of their effort\u2014apparently a
reflection of the communist principle that labor (not property) is
the source of value.

In a way, Korean online-gaming companies brought this mess on
themselves. In 1998 they began introducing currencies into their
virtual words, and selling those currencies for real cash. Soon
everything in the games had a price, and buyers felt entitled to
property rights. Recently, the Online Consumers Union sued NCsoft,
demanding a right to compensation for damage (say, if a blackout
wipes out their winnings).

Other real-world spats follow. South Korea is investigating rumors
that organized crime runs rackets in virtual goods. Syracuse
University information-studies professor Ian MacInnes says that as
online currencies spread, game makers will have to hire economists
to control inflation, speculation, the exchange rates between
virtual worlds, and someday perhaps even between the virtual and
real worlds. "Who's to say that the currency issued by the central
bank of Bolivia, say, is that good?" asks MacInnes. "Who's to say an
online currency is that bad?" Sounds almost normal, if you put it
that way.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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