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Entrepreneur Makes Millions Selling Virtual Land

Posted by Soulskill on from the expensive-patterns-of-electrons dept.

kkleiner writes "How much would you pay for a piece of imaginary real estate? Anshe Chung has made millions renting it. Today, Anshe Chung Studios has 80+ employees managing thousands of rental properties, helping design new 3D virtual chat rooms, and making tons of money on virtual to real currency exchanges. Anshe was the first person whose virtual property exceeded a real world value of 1 million dollars, and Anshe Chung Studios is perhaps the single largest third party developer of virtual property ever."

17 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Buy virtual realestate with bitcoin now! by kotku · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do two scams cancel each other out?

    --
    The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
  2. Imaginary space for empty minds by jimmydevice · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A new paradiem for the declining economy.
    When I was younger, we called it castles in the sky.

    1. Re:Imaginary space for empty minds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      When you're older, you'll call it a paradigm.

  3. Call now and SAVE on Virtually Nothing! by toygeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hey look, these are your VERY OWN 1's and 0's! We are taking painstaking measures to make sure that absolutely NOBODY ELSE has this same arrangement of 1's and 0's. Sure, we could randomly generate them and then check them by md5 sum against all other files in our database, but NO, we design them JUST FOR YOU!

    Hurry now and we'll throw in not just one set of 1's and 0's, but we'll sell it at HALF PRICE! That's right call now and only pay $1999.99, that's 50% off the normal price of 3999.98!

    But wait, there's MORE.

    Call within the next TEN MINUTES and we'll give you not just one set of 1's and 0's, but TWO sets for the same price! That's only 999.995 EACH! Yes, that's 75% off each set of 1's and 0's!

    They are virtually PRICELESS!

    --
    Nobodies Prefect
    Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
    1. Re:Call now and SAVE on Virtually Nothing! by Serious+Callers+Only · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hey look, these are your VERY OWN 1's and 0's! We are taking painstaking measures to make sure that absolutely NOBODY ELSE has this same arrangement of 1's and 0's. Sure, we could randomly generate them and then check them by md5 sum against all other files in our database, but NO, we design them JUST FOR YOU!

      A great painting is simply an arrangement of inexpensive paint on canvas, a great novel is simply familiar words rearranged on a page, great music is simply the same notes rearranged, and great software is simply 1s and 0s (NB *never* a random collection of bits). Yet somehow all these things are valued above mediocre paintings, novels and software, and people are willing to pay for certain arrangements of 1s and 0s, not because they are stupid, and all 1s and 0s are the same value, but because particular arrangements of information are valuable.

      As we move the boundaries of our world to encompass more of the virtual than the real, information will become increasingly valuable, not less valuable. Digital information is also easier to copy than real-life encodings of information, which forms an interesting counterpoint, but that doesn't mean that 1s and 0s are inherently value-less or that any arrangement of them is the same as any other. Quite the reverse - it is becoming more and more clear that information (or order if you prefer) in and of itself has value, entirely independent of the physical world.

    2. Re:Call now and SAVE on Virtually Nothing! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You might as well argue that a painting is just some oil on a canvas, a digital photograph is a string of 1s and 0s. Creative works have value because they require effort to create.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Call now and SAVE on Virtually Nothing! by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

      Throwing some paint in front of a fan at a canvas is unlikely to create anything unexpected, but if the name of the artist is right, people will pay millions for it.

      You're talking absolute Pollocks.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. I'm conflicted by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've never been into Second Life, or World of Warcraft, or any of those online games that've been known for people using real money to buy pretend stuff in the game - but, on an individual level, it's never bothered me. I figure it's those folk's money, so they can spend it however they want... just like I might buy a decent bottle of Scotch.

    But somehow, in the aggregate, this bothers me. I can't really put my finger on why, exactly; but it just seems like a sign our society is going down the toilet (or something equally dire). It's probably just because I'm older than most of these people, I suppose.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:I'm conflicted by wvmarle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually it doesn't really bother me, let them just go ahead.

      Many real-life games come with expansion packs as well. Settlers of Catan was (is?) a very popular one where people could buy extras to play with. It enhanced their enjoyment of the game, so they put down money to buy more parts for it - no problem with that, is there?

      Magic the Gathering is another game that has many expansion options. Many cards are there, some are becoming increasingly rare and have become collector's items. People pay a lot of money for it - even though it's basically just a piece of printed paper. There surely are people trading in this kind of cards, whether they make a living out of it I don't know but it will be possible.

      These virtual items I don't think are that different. It's a game, people enjoy it, and are willing to pay extra money to enjoy it even more. Some (probably most) of these traded items may be available to anyone playing enough, others may be created one-off by the game designer, whatever. But not everyone is willing to do all that work, they just want to buy the finished product. And as long as they're not scammed (i.e. they get what they pay for) it's fine with me. Let them go ahead.

  5. You can sell what others pay for by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    It is that simple. A piece of linen cloth with colorful specks arranged in a certain pattern is called a painting, and if it happens that someone named Gaugin or Degas left those specs on the linen it's worth millions. Why? It's just some pigments on linen.

    You don't pay for the pigments and not for the linen. You pay for the arrangement. Likewise, you pay for the arrangement of those 0s and 1s.

    Is it worth that? If you ask me, no. But for some people it seems to be, and as long as there are people willing to pay real money for certain arrangements of pigments or pixels, there will be a market for them.

    Hell, some people pay me to tell them how to get their IT infrastructure secure. I don't even give them pixels or pigments, I only give them information without a carrier medium (ok, not entirely true, it's most of the time also encoded in 0s and 1s). But by the logic expressed in most other postings here, I shouldn't even get a dime for what I'm doing, yet there are people willing to pay thousands of dollars per day. Because they want it, because they're willing to pay for it, and because I'm willing to sell that information.

    Welcome to the market economy.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:You can sell what others pay for by Egor_but_no_hunch · · Score: 2

      It's not even market economy, it's just perceived value, and that's been going on since mankind could only talk in grunts, and cave women traded sex for food.

      Why is gold valuable? Its not good for anything, I don't think it's even particularly pleasant to look at, Silver is much prettier. It however retains significant value due to its relative scarcity, and the value people place on scarcity.

      ((I'm ignoring the digital issue, where anything digitised has effectively infinite quantities, because we seem to buy into allowing artificial scarcity to be created... which I don't get at all))

      Virtually everything is worth something to someone, so why is this actually so surprising? Would we be shocked if the story read "Man makes millions selling dung / water / himself"???

  6. But this is normal by furgle · · Score: 2

    Maybe I'm strange, but I spend my days managing websites. Which are essentially virtual newspapers / magazines/ posters/ directories/ whatever. So what if it is a online designed 3d room, its just a online facility people pay for.

    I feel a strange separation to my work, because I know in 1000 years from now, no one will ever no I was alive or a person. There won't be an antiques roadshow describing how wonderful/shit my work was, my work wont exist it will be simply gone. Ancient potters, blacksmiths, artist, or architects don't have this problem, part of their work can survive. Something physical something real.

    I would love to listen to the future documentaries describing how "clever" we are with our "Internet" and "condoms" and our "iPads". But how simple we were for not realising that we should really have a centralised computer attached to our brains, that can simply kill all the sperm in a man's body before we have sex, by analysing our thoughts and electro-shocking our testicles.

    I'm kinda sad that I wont see the future.

    1. Re:But this is normal by dadioflex · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To be fair 99.999% of people will pass and be largely forgotten within 3-4 generations. Probably 99% of potters, blacksmiths and even architects toil in complete anonymity and their work will be effectively unattributed within their own lifetimes. Don't sweat it. I used to get angry at all this virtual malarkey, then the economy tanked and I realised it was all virtual.

      I find your testicle-shocking vision to be intriguing, please tell me how to sign up for your newsletter.

  7. Re:Oooold News by White+Flame · · Score: 2

    It sounds like Anshe is trying to regain some spotlight here. It never claims that she's actually "made" millions, just that she's got holdings of "millions of dollars worth of online real estate". That's a completely different thing, and if she were to liquidate, I doubt she would walk out with 7 figures.

    This is just the singularity hub going along with nearly 10-year-old "wow, people can like own 'virtual property' on teh intarwebz!" typical Second Life garbage hype, I'm guessing at her behest.

  8. This is the best second life thing ever. by AnotherShep · · Score: 4, Funny

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RedLyae4b2s&t=28

  9. Those were the days... by F-3582 · · Score: 2

    Anyone remember this?

  10. What an old story by TraumaFox · · Score: 2

    Really, this article is years behind. Anshe Chung hasn't been relevant in the pantheon of virtual land barons for ages.