5 Comments

eBay Pulls All Virtual Goods/Property Auctions

Jan 27, 2007
by

“For the overall health of the marketplace” was the main explanation. In a story from Slashdot. Personally, this is bad news, and yes, I’m one of the people who have actually done a ‘real money transfer’ (RMT), having bought a mmorpg game character online, more than once. More at TechMeme.com too.

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Mr. Hani Durzy, speaking for eBay, explained that the decision to pull these items was due to the ‘legal complexities’ surrounding virtual property. “For the overall health of the marketplace” the company felt that the proper course of action, after considerable contemplation, was to ban the sale of these items outright. While he couldn’t give me a specific date when the delistings began, he estimated that they’ve been coming down for about a month or so. Mr. Durzy pointed out that in reality, the company is just now following through with a pre-existing policy, as opposed to creating a new one. The policy on digitally delivered goods states: “The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner.” Given the nebulous nature of ownership in online games, eBay has decided the prudent decision is to remove the possibility for players to sell what might be the IP of other parties via their service. Mr. Durzy made it a point to say that initial listings of virtual property would not have punitive actions. Their assumption, he said, is that most users break with policies because they’re unaware of them, rather than maliciously. Initial infractions will result in a delisting of items, and an attempt to educate the user on the policy. Persistent disregard for the policies, of course, will result in a removal of the seller’s account.

How will this effect Second Life, or do they have their own auction system? Who will be the next auction marketplace to open and take all of this business? Right now I wished I owned an eBay clone, that’s a lot of money left on the table.

Filed under: Internet Strategy
  • http://www.jangro.com Scott Jangro

    You can’t keep this sort of thing down.

    I’ve purchased virtual property myself, a little gold boost for WoW. The buying experience for this sort of thing is fascinating, and a little creepy, almost cloak and dagger.

    This is great news for the other auction sites.

  • http://www.revenews.com Jim Kukral

    Yeah, you’re right Scott, which is why I wonder where the new auction place will be. I once bought “keys” back in the original Asheron’s Call days. You pay online, then meet in game and get merchandise, it is, pretty weird, but I have never been scammed, yet.

    I have bought two online characters through eBay as well, one for WOW recently and one for the old AC.

  • http://www.revenews.com Jim Kukral

    A wise mentor of mine who's super successful online once told me "people come to the web for two reasons: pleasure & problems".

    Games fit that example perfectly. I find enourmous pleasure in gaming, and I hate spending tons of time "gaming" to achieve a "level" (problem). So both are solved by me when buying virtual goods.

    Azuresong Sam? What, are you some type of history teacher or something? :)

  • http://www.cumbrowski.com Carsten Cumbrowski

    Some people make serious income selling virtual goods. A friend of mine did not work a regular job and 50-75% of his income was generated by selling this stuff he got while playing online games every day for hours.

    Somebody will jump right into this quickly and has the opportunity to make a lot of money. I am not a huge online gamer, but I could imagine that offering services beyond the auction would be good and increase the chance to get the market secured quickly.

    Escrow services for example to prevent fraud like in the domain trading industry. You just need to have a character in the online world (that is protected by some strong players that get compensated for their protection services. Something like that.

    It’s not my passion so somebody else can grab the idea and make a fortune. Just sending me a nice thank you postcard (if it works out) will do :)

  • http://www.revenews.com Wayne Porter

    I love the fact we outsource our game time to others. sweet irony.