14 DAY TRIAL // A player built space station hosted inside the Entropia Universe MMO has been sold for the in-game sum of 3,300,000 PED. The Crystal Palace Space Station in the Calypso Planet has been sold via auction and, in real world money, the creator of the content has pocketed no less than 330,000 dollars.
The new owner is Buzz “Erik” Lightyear and his fresh property, although virtual, can generate some real world money through the purchases made there and through licensing rights for hunting.
Entropia Universe is being developed by MindArk, a Swedish company, and the game client is being distributed for free to all those interested in playing it. The company is relying on a micro transaction-based model to sustain the MMO, allowing gamers to use real world money to buy Project Entropia Dollars, which can then be spent in the game world and even redeemed into dollars if the player manages to make a profit.
Twice, in 2004 and again in 2008, the game got into the Guinness Book of Records for videogames by hosting the biggest monetary transaction in a virtual world. It might just be that it will be setting a new record in 2009 with the sale of the Crystal Palace Space Station.
The topic of how real world money is being used in MMOs is a hotly debated one. The biggest MMO in the world, World of Warcraft, does not allow players to gain in-game advantages by using money and neither do most of the big names in the industry. There are rumors that The Old Republic, the BioWare Star Wars MMO, might allow for some microtransactions when it is released. Meanwhile, a host of smaller projects are implementing the free-to-play model coupled with real money used to attract people who do not have a lot of time to actually play.