The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: February 28, 2010

Official News page 8


REAL LIFE NEWS: VIRTUAL ISLAND SELLS FOR A FORTUNE

by Hazed

How much is virtual property worth in real dollars? In Fed2, a slithy tove equals $5 but nobody has put a value on such things as a spaceship, or a planet, a cartel, or a character. It's not that kind of game.

But in other online games, virtual property has a value outside of the game itself. Some people make a living working hard to bump characters up the ranks, or to gain treasures, weapons, armor or other valuable items which they then sell for real life money.

An Australian graduate student has just taken this to extremes, paying £26,500 for a virtual island in the game Enropia. According to Guinness World Records, that makes it the most valuable virtual object.

This might seem crazy, but he now runs the virtual island as a rare game preserve and taxes hunters on his land - bringing in more than $100,000 in real money per year.

Incredible!

Pugwash wonders how much someone would pay for the Rigel system... a fiver, maybe?

You can read an article about the profits to be made from virtual goods here.

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