Gamer shells out $100,000 for virtual property

Real money for unreal goods

Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com 26 Oct 2005

A gamer has paid $100,000 for a virtual space resort in the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Project Entropia.

Mindark, the Swedish developer of the game, sold off the 'real estate' in a three-day auction.

Project Entropia is known for its commercialisation of virtual goods in the game. Most MMORPGs, such as Everquest, discourage the sale of their virtual goods for real world currencies.

Everquest and others rely on monthly subscription fees of around $15 in addition to the purchase price.

Project Entropia, however, is available as a free download and instead relies on the sales of virtual goods for real world currencies.

The game sells tools and weapons that players use in the game for Project Entropia Dollars (PEDs). One US dollar equals 10 PEDs.

Items such as a 'Lesser Teleport Chip' go for 40.59 PEDs and a 'Garcen Lubricant' costs 24.39 PEDs.

The $100,000 sale of the space real estate beats the game's previous record of $26,500 for a virtual island.

Because gamers are allowed to convert PEDs back into dollars, the purchase could turn into a lucrative investment for the buyer, a gamer going by the name of 'Jon Neverdie Jacobs'.

He is entitled to the revenues from renting out the apartments and space in the shopping mall. He also gets to collect hunting and mining taxes and can rent out advertising space on billboards.

The space station comes with a 1,000 unit apartment complex, a shopping mall, sports stadium and night club.

"Designed as a pleasure paradise, the resort built on an asteroid is a monumental project aimed at being a primary destination for entertainment in the known virtual universe," according to the developer's property description.

Project Entropia claims to have had registered 299,359 players since its inception in 2002. They have created a collective economy of $150m so far this year, the game's maker claims.

The rise of real economies in online games means that game developers have to deal with some new real world problems such as crime.

Last August authorities in Japan arrested a Chinese gamer for robbing players in the game Lineage II. He did not commit any real world crimes, however, as there are no laws protecting virtual properties inside games.

In June a Chinese man was reported to have murdered a fellow player of the game Legend of Mir III after he sold a virtual sword without the owner's consent.

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