Virtual real estate specialist Anshe Chung Studios announced today that it is preparing to launch a cross-world “virtual financial market” that will allow direct investment across virtual world boundaries. The company, the business brand of Anshe Chung (the Second Life avatar of virtual entrepreneur Ailin Graef) said the venture is the first step toward an […]

The VC-backed start-up Sparter isn’t the only new entry in the real money trading (RMT) industry offering “peer-to-peer” trading. Iron Prairie, which launched in November 2006, also lets gamers trade virtual currency directly with one another and uses an escrow system to protect buyers and sellers. As with Sparter, much of the current inventory […]

When it comes to Warcraft gold, not all servers are created equal. In a detailed study of pricing trends on World of Warcraft servers, GamerPrice.com found a huge differential between the price of gold on game servers in the United States and those in Europe. The study, which was compiled by GamerPrice staff and students […]

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion about yesterday’s post about Sparter, the recently launched peer-to-peer exchange for trading game gold. The new exchange was the focus of a thread on Slashdot and also prompted discussion on blogs covering virtual worlds and real-money trading. Among the commenters was Raph Koster, who most readers will know […]

Sparter is a new entry in the real money trading industry that uses an eBay-like “peer-to-peer” approach for the buying and selling of game gold for World of Warcraft and other MMORPG online games. The company has received venture capital funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and its management includes executives with experience at […]

Power-leveling is attracting increased interest these days, according to an informative story by Daniel Terdiman of C/Net that mentions many of the sites featured in the directory of power-leveling services at Virtual Economies. The growing demand for power leveling services is driven by the expansion of World of Warcraft, which makes it even more […]

MMORPG hosting specialist Online Game Services Inc. (OGSI) has been acquired by long-term Global Netoptex Inc. (GNi) in a deal valued at more than $3 million, positioning GNi to provide “pay-as-you-grow” game hosting solutions to the fast-growing industry for massively multiplayer games.
“Acquiring OGSi is a natural progression,” said Derek Wise, GNi’s president […]

Guild Launch (www.guildlaunch.com) has launched a new guild hosting service incorporating social networking features. The service, which launched in mid-January, offers free ad-supported hosting with 10 megs of space and a subdomain, with additional features available for $5.99 a month. Guild Launch is hosted at FastServers, a fast-growing dedicated hosting provider with facilities in Chicago […]

Just posted by Zonk at Slashdot, confirming our earlier post on eBay’s decision to halt auctions in game gold, gamer accounts and other assets from MMORPG online games:
Mr. Hani Durzy, speaking for eBay, explained that the decision to pull these items was due to the ‘legal complexities’ surrounding virtual property. “For the overall health of […]

The market for virtual add-ons to online video games is slated for substantial growth, according to a study of console and handheld online gaming by ABI Research.
The study predicts that a growing percentage of gamers’ budgets will go towards the purchase of in-game virtual assets such as “maps, game related add-ons, casual game […]