Entropia Universe: Virtual economies distribute world wealth, attract real criminals

NotAdmin · Aug 14, 2012

The Voice of Russia has an article about gaming gaining more and more influence, and Entropia Universe is mentioned in it:

See, there's a game called Entropia Universe? It's a massive multiplayer online virtual universe - kind of like "World of Warcraft", but with less monster-slaying and buying something there will cost you real money. It's so-called 'free-to-play', - meaning that yes, you can play it without spending a dime but you would be limited in what you can afford - especially compared to those that dish out real cash. In other words, you have to purchase virtual currency with your hard-earned real dollars. While this seems like money-sucking scheme, think about it - here, virtual items acquired within the game Universe have real cash value. A gamer may, at any time, make a withdrawal of their accumulated in game money, called Project Entropia Dollars -PEDs back into real world currencies according to a fixed exchange rate, minus transaction fees. Basically - your regular currency exchange bank transaction. In World of Warcraft, this also takes places, but in a form frowned upon by the developer - it's called gold farming, with people spending hours maximizing virtual gold earning per hour and selling it on black markets for real dollars under penalty of having their accounts banned. Well, here in Entropia, it's legal. Actually, the game also happened to earn an entry in the Guinness World Records Book at least twice, for the most expensive virtual world objects ever sold. In 2009 a virtual space station set the record with a price tag of $330,000 USD. But in November of 2010 a virtual resort on a virtual planet was sold for a whopping $635,000 USD in chunks, with largest costing $335,000. According to MindArk, the Swedish company behind Entropia, " In 2010, the equivalent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Entropia Universe was 428million USD."
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Full article:

http://english.ruvr.ru/radio_broadcast/36172287/84927704.html

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