Yesterday’s seminar was a great success, thanks to all who participated. A video recording of the presentations is now available through here.

One of the themes was what creates demand for virtual property. For MMORPGs, Professor Sang-Min Whang showed us data from Lineage that linked property value with time required to obtain it. In the social virtual world Habbo Hotel, Sulka Haro told us how Sulake time-limits the supply of certain items to create valuable rares. Sulake does not profit from this directly, as they sell the to-be rares at a mere 4 euros when they are available. However, it makes Habbo’s “economic game” of barter exchange more interesting and raises prices in the budding secondary market.  Read more

Next Tuesday’s (Sept. 26) next mini-seminar on massively-multi user services and item payment revenue models will be streamed live over the web. Those watching the stream will be able to take part in the discussion using a chat interface. After the seminar, the video will be available for download.  Read more

Greetings from the Nordic Game conference in Malmö, Sweden. About 600 delegates from game companies, public bodies and research organisations showed up for two days of talks and workshops on a variety of topics – including virtual economies.  Read more

Time: Tuesday, 26. September, 13:00-16:00 (GMT+3)
Location: Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (6th floor), Tammasaarenkatu 3, Helsinki.  Read more

About a month ago, IGE bought a Korean RMT mediator, Itemmania. It is not the biggest player but its share in RMT transaction is considerable, around 35%. Hard to believe fact was the price of the company, 4.7B KRW(1000KRW is around 1 USD). It was really under-valued price considering the size of the Korean RMT market. Many suspected that there might be another secretive option in the contract.  Read more

I am happy to announce that the Virtual Economy Research Network website is now ready for action. Welcome!

The purpose of the website is to act as a platform for communication and knowledge dissemination regarding real-money trade of virtual property and related phenomena. In practice, the website has two main features: 1) a bibliography and 2) a blog. In addition, VERN also has an email discussion list.  Read more