Selling Your Loot: When Virtual Worlds Meet Real Cash

It's only been two hours. Maybe three, at most. The next level can't be more than a few kills away, and you didn't really have anything else to do tonight, did you?

Sound familiar? Massively multiplayer online games swallow time like nothing else on earth. Perhaps, like many players, you're wondering if there's a way to turn some of that investment of time into cold, hard cash. Or perhaps you're tempted to skip all the tedious "grinding" to level up your character, and you'd rather buy a ready-made powerhouse?

Buying and selling items, characters, or currency is an attractive option for many gamers - but it's one that carries the risk of sanctions from publishers who assert their ownership of all in-game content. World of Warcraft creator Blizzard has taken a particularly hard stance against the practice, even threatening legal action against participants in a recent news posting.

While the size of this "secondary market" in items, currency, or even fully outfitted characters is hard to measure, it's not difficult to find content for even the newest games offered for sale on auction sites or specialist online retailers. IGE is the largest dealer in MMORPG content -- we spoke to its newly appointed president Steve Salyer about the company's activities.

Salyer is keen to dispel the impression that IGE is a shady, fly-by-night organization. He describes himself as a seasoned industry executive, with credits ranging from helping launch the original Dungeons and Dragons PC game, Pool of Radiance, to six years as a senior VP at Electronic Arts. More recently, he joined Ubisoft in 2000 as president of business development. "The Clancy products, the Myst products and the Prince of Persia products were all acquired under my tenure," he explained. "I have a long history in interactive entertainment."

His new employer doesn't have quite such a spotless reputation. IGE, and companies like it, have long been the subject of rumors that suggest they're running overseas sweatshops full of wage slaves farming MMORPG gold and items. Salyer was quick to refute these allegations, saying, "This is completely factually inaccurate. We have no employees anywhere in the world that are playing games to acquire inventory for resale. We have never done that." While IGE employs over one hundred people, and many of them are based in Hong Kong, Salyer told us they're mainly customer service representatives.

Another frequent criticism of IGE's brokerage operations is that it encourages players to seek ways to exploit games -- creating money or items without going to the trouble of finding them legitimately. Salyer dismisses these allegations as unfair. "We absolutely do not approve of the use of bots or exploits, hacks or cheats," he said. "We don't do it, and the message we are discussing with publishers -- as we speak -- is that we recognize that the secondary market needs to self-regulate, and we are happy to champion that."

One important unresolved issue hanging over IGE's head is the question of exactly who owns the content players find and generate in online games -- whether it's gold, weapons, or even the characters themselves, their legal status is far from clear. All players agree to Terms of Service before creating characters -- terms that typically include language asserting the publishers' ownership of all in-game content. How much legal weight these terms carry isn't currently clear.

"We believe that the publishers' claims are legally inaccurate, and that we do not need a license to do what we do," Salyer explained. "Having said that, I'm a businessman, and I believe that markets are best served if we can enter into normal business agreements with publishers."

In fact, Salyer's already working on it. "I have taken the time to meet with most of the premier publishers since I joined IGE, and there is a very strong indication that it will evolve along business solutions rather than litigation," he said.

"IGE and the publishers have the same goal: To increase the number of people worldwide that participate in the online game industry," he continued. "The secondary market has emerged very quickly and addresses the same customers as the publishers' games, so it doesn't surprise me that there is some level of tension."

So if the publishers don't own the items, as they claim, then who does? "I honestly don't know. Like you, I look forward to seeing how it all shakes out," Salyer said. "I know that emotionally, today, the players feel they own their character and the items of their character in the game."