Let Loose the Dogs of Real-Money Trade
The Virtual Worlds, Real Profits blogs has the news (which I spotted via Raph) about a new player-to-player real-money-trade service called Sparter that has fortuitously launched just after eBay started pulling all game-related RMT from its auctions. The new service is notable for two reasons, and could spell the beginning of the end of the wild-west atmosphere that currently holds around virtual item sales — though conditions will probably get more messy before they get neater.
Why is Sparter important? First off, it’s gamer-to-gamer. Where sites like IGE.com do business by brokering trades (i.e., holding a large volume of currency, buying from one party and then selling to another so that the end buyer and seller are not actually transacting business with each other), Sparter will use an escrow system to facilitate direct player-to-player transactions, and charge sellers a fee of 10 percent only when the sale goes through. The second reason this is interesting is that it’s backed by some heavyweigt venture capitalists, the people at Bessemer Venture Partners, who have backed a number of winners not just in tech but in a range of industries. That doesn’t necessarily spell success for Sparter, but it indicates that a more serious breed of investor is looking at the space these days. The current state of affairs can’t stand, where RMT is concerned. It looks to me like this is all ultimately headed toward legislation; while game companies would probably rather avoid that, they’re going to start throwing their weight around to try to keep control of the market, which means lawsuits and attention on a broader scale. Interesting.
Feeds
The thing that makes me think this will fail is the economy of scale involved. Sparter is already courting the larger websites selling gold, bringing them into their “peer to peer” trading network. Most of these sites already give 10% or more to affiliates, so what bonus is there to Sparter to run this service, and deal with the customer service headaches involved? Sparter says they want to bring the consumer the best prices, but IGE has consistently had the highest prices in the business because they can control the majority of providers.
RMT Going Mainstream?…
There’s another company looking to fill the void left by eBay pulling their virtual world auctions. It looks like this one actually has some money behind it, and some experienced business leaders.
Virtual Worlds, Real Profits has the story.
Spar…
[…] I agree completely, as I believe the changing audience demographics of virtual worlds/MMORPGs make this inevitable. Mark Wallace of 3PointD (and a new Terra Novan as well) believes the launch of a Sparter “could spell the beginning of the end of the wild-west atmosphere that currently holds around virtual item sales — though conditions will probably get more messy before they get neater.” An excerpt: Why is Sparter important? First off, it’s gamer-to-gamer. … The second reason this is interesting is that it’s backed by some heavyweigt venture capitalists, the people at Bessemer Venture Partners, who have backed a number of winners not just in tech but in a range of industries. That doesn’t necessarily spell success for Sparter, but it indicates that a more serious breed of investor is looking at the space these days. […]