While gold farming is something most MMORPG's (MMO role playing games) have to deal with and this article does seem to suggest that they are adapting to this new economy (eg. by providing their own in-game auctions), other virtual worlds like Second Life and EVE Online have very different virtual economies. Recall that Second Life has their own currency, Linden Dollars, that can be exchanged for real-world currency.
EVE Online is an interesting case because the game is very intensely economy based, with it's own markets, industries, corporations, and banks. More interestingly, it condones actions that would be considered crimes in the real-world. I refer to two famous in-game events, the first a bank heist, and the second an investment scam (#7 and #1 in link).
In the first example, the Guiding Hand Social Club spent a year infiltrating the Ubiqua Seraph corporation, rising up the ranks of the corporation. In one fell swoop, they assassinated the CEO, emptied the accounts and all items owned by the corporation, and burned everything else, making away with the equivalent of $16,500 real-world dollars worth of items.
In the second example, a player started and ran the EVE Intergalactic Bank (EIB), and then one day just walked in and took 790 billion ISK, or about $170,000 in real-world dollars. He then "posted a 15-minute video bragging about how he got away with it, mocking his loyal employees at EIB, enemies who failed to stop him and the suckers who basically paid for a second job -- essentially paying for the right to have their money stolen."
EVE Online is an interesting case because the game is very intensely economy based, with it's own markets, industries, corporations, and banks. More interestingly, it condones actions that would be considered crimes in the real-world. I refer to two famous in-game events, the first a bank heist, and the second an investment scam (#7 and #1 in link).
In the first example, the Guiding Hand Social Club spent a year infiltrating the Ubiqua Seraph corporation, rising up the ranks of the corporation. In one fell swoop, they assassinated the CEO, emptied the accounts and all items owned by the corporation, and burned everything else, making away with the equivalent of $16,500 real-world dollars worth of items.
In the second example, a player started and ran the EVE Intergalactic Bank (EIB), and then one day just walked in and took 790 billion ISK, or about $170,000 in real-world dollars. He then "posted a 15-minute video bragging about how he got away with it, mocking his loyal employees at EIB, enemies who failed to stop him and the suckers who basically paid for a second job -- essentially paying for the right to have their money stolen."
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