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Virtual World, Real Banking
The Opposable Thumbs blog brings news about MindArk PE AB, a Swedish game developer whose MMO Entropia Universe has an in-game economy based on real money. It seems the company has been "granted preliminary approval for a real banking license by the Swedish Finance Supervisory. ... MindArk's going to be just like a bank in the real world: it will be backed by Sweden's $60,000 deposit insurance, offer interest-bearing accounts for its clients, feature direct deposit options, let players pay bills online, and apparently will offer loans to customers." An Associated Press report adds that "The economic activity in Entropia Universe was worth about $420 million last year, about the same as the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, population 110,000. The game has 850,000 player accounts, though not all of them represent active players."
Can you say, 'Money laundering'?
As we've all seen, the financial sector has thousands of man-years of experience playing games with other people's imaginary money. They should find this new line of business a natural fit...
I'm not even sure where to begin.
So what happens if someone hacks your player account and takes out a mortgage on your house?
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
(Well, actually, we don't, which is why you spy clueless doofuses still trying to set up shop there in some form of another. I wonder if the recession will aid in putting an end to such foolish waste...)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
How is this any different than having a mobile interface or a web interface? It's just a new way to access banking integrated into a virtual world.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
One of the problems when virtual currency = real currency is that people can now affect other people's money. When the whole BoB thing went down, I was just thinking of the economical impact that had on that corporation. If someone hacks the system or accounts, is that going to be considered theft? Will selling a fake item be considered fraud?
people making and losing real money playing computer games
What?
MindArk's going to be just like a bank in the real world...
... complete with the service charges!
Including a minimum withdrawal of 100 USD and a service charge of 10 USD (or higher) per withdrawal.
I've been wanting to try Entropia for a while now. My old PC was too far under spec to really run the game besides logging in and viewing a slideshow. My new PC easily meets the specs except..they don't support Vista O_O XP or below.. Which is quite sad since there are so few science fiction MMORPG's out there and even if only 100k or 200k of that 850k are active that's still quite a big enough player base to populate servers daily to warrant giving it a try.
Aw Frell this
Now I want to write a cypherpunk-themed MMORPG, and set up something like this as cover for connecting an cryptographically anonymous digital cash system to the real-world banking infrastructure.
If I wanted to play around with real money there's nothing stopping me from logging into my bank's online banking or doing some e-trading on the stock market. Since I don't really enjoy those things, why would I enjoy a game which is that tied to normal life?
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
So now if you manage to collect a bunch of money in a game you have to file an FBAR with the IRS.
This system is just open to so many flaws.. both technical and otherwise. Technical side of it, a bug appears, a user somehow managed to make millions in a matter of minute, and.. oh look.. he can just turn it into real money and run away never to be seen again. Otherwise-side of it, the company could easily use this to cover some unlawful transactions, with so many odd and seemingly pointless transactions and deposits, who would notice one rogue equally as useless transaction.. Another thing to note is, who will "own" the bank? Will the company be able to just take money off me whenever they want because it's "their game", dispute it been real money..?
Ahem... World != USA . So you keep your laws while we, the rest of the world, keep our laws.
(At least until you start an "War on Primitivism" against EU because of our lack of "Patriot Act")
During the 1930s depression, a little town in Austria called Worgl decided to print their own money, since the national currency was in such short supply.
It worked wonders, unemployment went from 30% to less than 5%.
What makes money worth something is the market. Is there a market for it? Since the Worgl money was produced by the local council and accepted for all council payments including taxes, there was a ready market for the money.
The utility of money is that it is readily exchangeable for goods and services.
You use cheques? You use credit cards? Debit cards? None of these are "official" money. They are not US dollars. They are credit, created and supplied by private banks. That credit is exchangeable into paper dollars as required. The current recession is caused by banks denying people access to that credit.
Credit is imaginary money (whereas paper is not) because it vanishes. Credit is created (from nothing) when you take out a loan. Along with the credit, there's a debt. The debt pays interest and the credit vanishes as the debt is paid. Hence credit is "temporary money". Also, there is far more credit than there is real money, about 95% of money is bank created credit, so if everyone went and asked for paper dollars, there wouldn't be enough to pay them all. This is the dirty little secret of banking. Banks don't just hold and loan out money. They create new imaginary/temporary money which they loan out to you.
So. Bankers are people who actually do create monopoly money. On a daily basis and on a massive scale. You now understand why they are always telling you that you "must have confidence in the banking system"?
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It was possible to make money in entropia universe (Then called Project Entropia). Hell I did it. I sold my account for a little over $15k USD when I got out of it in 2005. Bought a Delorean with the funds. :D
Now days it's pretty much just a glorified casino as others have mentioned. The only people who make money now are mindark, and the players that have been around since the beginning and have the highest skills and gear that isn't available anymore. 98% of the player base is going to lose pretty much everything they put into the game. My advice to anyone interested in the game is just treat it as subscription based. Set a monthly allotment of what your willing to spend and only put that in it every month.
I got bored with it mainly because nothing ever changed. It was just logging in and doing the same crap day after day. MA has also been promising a switch to a better graphics engine since early 2005.. I know as of a few months ago (last time I logged in) That still hasn't happened..