eBay Virtual World Delisting Skips Second Life 42
As a follow-up to last week's eBay delisting story, CNET has the word that Second Life content is exempt from this decision. Mr. Durzy, speaking with CNET, specifically cited Second Life content as exempt because of the uncertain role of the virtual world. As the company (and the rest of us) are uncertain whether to label Second Life as a game in the first place, player-created content is still sellable via eBay auction. A perfectly fine explanation, but GigaGamez takes things a step further, pointing out that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar became a major investor in Linden Labs in 2004. It's uncertain if this constitutes a conflict of interest, because confusion about what exactly Second Life is persists pretty much everywhere. Just the same, it's interesting to note. Their article on the subject also has a few words of commentary from Edward Castronova, the well-known commentator on all things RMT.
The Big Difference... (Score:5, Insightful)
Second Life encourages the sale of ingame assets and the secondary market that has sprung up around it.
If Blizzard said it was OK to sell the Sword of a Thousand Truths on ebay for real cash dollars, I'm sure Ebay would allow it to be sold.
Re:It's not a game.... (Score:2, Insightful)
RMT?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so after searching Google for acronyms matching RMT, I worked out that in this context it means "Real Money Transfer" or "Real Money Trading", but seriously... and I normally can't stand posts that bitch about the editors... but seriously... and I'm usually happy to look up any acronym that I SHOULD know about, unless it is really FUCKING obscure... but SERIOUSLY... WOULD IT FUCKING TAKE YOU SLASHDOT EDITORS TWO SECONDS TO EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK RMT MEANS?!?!?
Re:It's not a game.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, just make it stop.