File this in the ‘these guys haven’t been litigated out of business yet?’ Perhaps inspired by bad Capital One giveaways, Project Entropia has sold a virtual island to the highest bidder, for a sale of $26, 500. The winner plans to take that land, subdivide it up and resell it to other players for what he figures to be a net profit. Which just goes to show, there’s no place that can resist the encroachment of Levittown.

In-game auctions are, of course, nothing new, and neither is buying virtual assets with real cash – going even before Everquest, there were players buying items in the old games, with a rare item in Gemstone getting the old champ’s belt for more than $27K. What makes this story interesting is, of course, the fact that Project Entropia freely trades their in-game cash for US Dollars. Usually, here someone says “Only in America” , but they’re in Scandinavia. I blame the brownies.

Of course, here’s a good place to point out a difference between academics and developers. Academics look at this as an interesting experiment on the nature of online economies, and what it means for player ownership of digital object. Developers, on the other hand, will look at this and just have nightmares about what a dupe bug would mean.

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