The attack on online currencies
Via Slashdot, articles in Gamespot and in Eurogamer mentions that some popular games (Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft respectively) have cancelled many player accounts because of usage of third party software in the games. Such software can be used to mine online game currency and this, coupled with external sales of game currency is against many online games' rules. Blizzard (World of Warcraft) cancelled 59,000 accounts last month alone and stripped 22 million of game gold out of the accounts.
Expect to see more of this kind of thing....alternative currencies are spring up in may places on the Internet and games are just the easiest to use and most visible of the variations. It gets most interesting when, like these examples, there is a way to cash these virtual moneys in for coin of the realm.
Reading over this, I notice that I used the word "virtual" to describe these currencies, but really what is any country's currency based on these days? They're all virtual and Internet-based ones are just as legitimate if enough people believe in them. Of course, wide-spread adoption would play holy hell with any nation's economy.
Posted on July 28, 2006
