eBay Halting The Sale of Virtual Game Currency & Property, Second Life Products Are Still Allowed

Last month I took a brief look at Virtual Game Currency and its growing popularity. What I found was a large secondary market for game virtual products that has been operating mainly through eBay.

The auction items include virtual currency, accounts, characters and more. However, due to what they are now calling the ‘legal complexities’ surrounding virtual game property, eBay has chosen to pull all auctions and discontinue the sale of virtual property. All virtual property except Second Life products.

Speaking for eBay, Mr. Hani Durzy said that, “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.

As it turns out, Second Life seems to be the exception to the rule. According to another eBay spokesman Hani Durzy, “…think there is an open question about whether Second Life should be regarded as a game”. Second Life products will still be allowed on eBay. The virtual currency in circulation on Second Life is the Linden Dollar.

eBay offers some additional details regarding the new terms here,

“eBay policy doesn’t allow the sale of online virtual gaming items, including game accounts, game characters, game currency, game points or other similar game items. Although you may have sold similar items in the past, future listings of such items will not be permitted.”

This move by eBay should give a big boost to the secondary market web sites that buy and sell game currency in what is termed, RMT’s (real money trading). This is the marketplace where real cash is spent on virtual game currency or other assets and it is a multi billion dollar a year industry.

For some great examples of this trading visit Virtual Economies which is a guide to real money trading (RMT) in MMORPGs (virtual worlds). Here you will find everything from game gold, player accounts, and game assets, power leveling, and pricing data.