Virtual Trading In A Real World

Wired News: Sony Online Entertainment, the developer of massively multiplayer online games like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies, is the first major U.S. publisher to facilitate the buying and selling of virtual goods.
Late Tuesday, the company unveiled Station Exchange, an auction site that allows players to spend real money on virtual weapons, armor, coins and new, high-level characters.
The service isn’t set to go live until the end of June, and will initially be restricted to the wildly popular EverQuest II game, which in five months has built a player base of more than 350,000.
If the service is a success, similar auction services will be established for Sony’s other online games, the company said.
The move is surprising because SOE has been one of the fiercest and most vocal opponents of MMO players who spend real money on virtual assets.
Like SOE, most MMO publishers ban the practice, making the traffic of virtual goods almost entirely illicit. Players are often cheated by shady traders who don’t deliver as promised or who rescind payment after getting an item. As a result, SOE claims its customer service staff is constantly bogged down with angry players who have been defrauded.
But virtual goods may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and there’s a lot of money to be made brokering the deals.
Sony Gets Real on Virtual Goods [Wired News]