MMO Item-Trading Corporation Buys Rival

madgeorge writes "According to a Waterthread post, MMORPG item trading businesses Yantis and IGE are now one and the same. I'm definitely in the wrong business." The specific press release mentions that "Internet Gaming Entertainment, Ltd, the worldwide leader in the market for buying and selling virtual property used in multiplayer online games, announced today that it has agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of Yantis Enterprises, Inc.", and notes: "With more than 80 employees and thousands of suppliers, IGE is the largest provider in the world of virtual currency exchange and game-enhancement services to players of MMORPGs. The company provides 24x7x365 customer service and tech support from its state of the art operations center in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong." We've previously discussed IGE and its relation to alleged 'MMORPG sweatshops'.

Comments

Big money

[Silicon Mike]

There's big money in this, unfortunatly. There's alot of people who think Yantis is the scum of the earth, but there are quite a few people who have claimed he's bought EQ related web sites for 5 figures, and if you read FOH (one of the better known everquest guild) message boards @ www.fohguild.org, people are claiming he's gotten over 10 million for the company. 10 million for selling virtual property is insane.

Re:Big money

[wizarddc]

You say selling virtual property is insane, but isn't that exactly what content producers are doing? What's the difference between selling text, audio, and motion pictures and selling some virtual currency or some loot? In the end, it's all just bits, and what makes those bits valuable is who wants to get a hold of them. Most people don't see buying movies, cd's and books as insane, only because we're used to it. And in the end, isn't this what "Intellectual Property" is? Just some virtual creation that you say you've layed stake to? How can you differentiate between the bits that make up Lord of the Rings being a solid investment and the bits that make up Enchanted Sword Of Slaying +8 being just silly? It's your oppinion that matters, but it only matters to you. And the people selling it, I guess. If no one had the opinion that it was worth paying real money for fake money, no one would be selling it.

Economics

[eyeball]

Would it be weird if an item trade company became so profitable that they could buy the game company itself? What a weird economic machine that would be.

Re:Economics

[missing000]

Or how about the game company itself (We are talking Sony here BTW), starts selling items itself and undercuts these people selling worthless shit.

I think that would be more likely.

Re:Economics

[stoolpigeon]

It would make more sense - and lead, possibly, to some really interesting court cases.

Risky

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Yantis would be well advised to keep the sale price a secret; he's wide open to a lawsuit and I'm surprised he hasn't gotten one. It's what prevented me from going heavily into the business.

As for IGE, how hard would it be for the game companies to shut these guys out. I mean they could probably get volunteer GM posses watching for suspicious behavior. I sold on Ebay, but what these guys do is ridiculous.

One step closer to being mainstream?

[SuperMo0]

Now that companies like this are going through full-blown corporate mergers, is it just a matter of time before selling property like this to gamers becomes a viable business model?

Or will we have to wait for a "The Sims" of MMORPGs that appeals to a very broad audience for something like this to happen?

Or will this not happen at all...?

I honestly believe that it will be a viable format for business sometime in the near future, but the companies that have gotten a foothold already will be making a killing later.

Should it be stopped? Can it be stopped?

[obeythefist]

Now, I'm all for computer gaming in general, I think if people played more computer games there'd be a lot less unpleasantness in the real world.

I used to play MUD's a long time ago, I even donated to the admins in exchange for "wishes" that increased my power in the MUD. The wish money was used for beer for the admins, paying the co-lo costs for the server, upgrades, and so on. It was a fair deal, I had fun on the MUD and these guys got rewarded for all the work they put in to the "Free as in beer" MUD.

But the MMORPG economy phenomenon (say that three times fast) is something remarkable and a little disturbing. I can't say that these people are advancing humanity by building new bridges or painting great works of art. So these are obviously "B Ark" people (along with used car salesmen and telephone sanitisers). Shouldn't resources be allocated somewhere more useful?

That, I realise is completely academic, despite Sony's attitude. People want to do the things they want to do, and if it doesn't hurt anyone else it's generally left alone (the exception is civil liberties in the USA, americans aren't allowed to use drugs, have privacy, etc etc).

They have a competitor

[dr_leviathan]

gamingopenmarket.com opened recently in December. They are still small and not moving much EQ money or items, however they allow you to transfer wealth between games. Ready to cash out of the old treadmill and move to a new game? Their market pages are formatted to look like regular stock price histograms, complete with tranaction volume. The busiest market (hence the one with the most interesting plots) is for Second Life (secondlife.com).

Re:Should it be stopped? Can it be stopped?

[ReyTFox]

Don't forget that in addition to people doing the "real work" in any business or industry, there are also middlemen like distributors, retailers, etc.. You can't say that these middlemen contribute anything particularly great, but at the same time they are necessary to facilitate the well-being of the economy in lieu of, say, technology that would put them out of the picture.

In MMORPGs, the middlemen could lose their business in the blink of an eye if the game's owners decided to provide their own system facilitating the use of real money in virtual trade. I would call it a "high-risk" business on just that standpoint alone.

In addition, insurers probably also don't offer policies for "loss of virtual items due to crash."

My question

[MarkusQ]

My question:

Did IGE pay cash for Yantis?

Or gold?

Or did they give them some really hard to craft items?

-- MarkusQ