Live Gamer

Live Gamer Inc, (www.livegamer.com) today announced its introduction as the premier provider of a publisher-supported, secure platform for real money trading of virtual property. Live Gamer is partnering with top massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) publishers and virtual world operators worldwide, including Funcom GMBH, Sony Online Entertainment, 10TACLE STUDIOS, Acclaim, GoPets LTD, and Ping0 Interactive Limited.

Interesting. Very, very interesting.

(The rest of the press release is entertaining reading — don’t miss it. Those young go-getters with their unique mix of talents from Wall Street and gaming! Their Wall Street-developed platform has GOT to be good! And safe!)

8 thoughts on “Live Gamer

  1. Maybe I’m missing something, but paying hard-earned, real dollars for some virtual property sounds like an awfully bad investment to me. On top of the fact that you don’t actually own any of the property you’re purchasing, how cool can you really sound talking about your virtual goods?

    “Hey dude, check out this sweet car I bought! Only it’s virtual!”
    “I have the coolest house ever, but I can’t live in it because it only exists within the pixels!”

    Like I said, maybe I’m missing something.

    On the other hand, if this “service” allows you to purchase in-game currency for games like *cough*WoW*cough*, then I could see it being beneficial for some people. I don’t see that ever happening, but I’m sure there are other examples and games where it could be a very real possibility.

  2. while purchasing virtual money with real money for me would absolutely be a bad investment, there are people out there who have the time and desire to turn 1000g into 20000g just playing the AH or whatever.

    i raid. all my gold goes to consumables (if i can’t beg any off my crafter guildies) and repair bills. i don’t even have an epic flyer (and have never actually seen anywhere close to 5000g on my person). if i started spending real money – more than my $15 p/mo pay-to-play fee – on my wow habit, there would be absolutely no return on my investment.

    if, however, some of those genius wow traders who sit in the AH all day long, and probably have their walls covered in pie charts or whatever, started up with enough purchased seed money, they could trade it back for real currency and actually turn wow into a profitable job.

    i feel bad for the chinese gold farmers though. if everyone who wanted to suddenly had a place to sell their earned gold for real cash, the CGF would stand to lose a ton of business.

  3. I don’t see Blizzard making gold available for $$$ any time soon, but making money from the additional services is acceptable to almost anyone and “free” MMORPGs that get easier to play when you sink few dollars into them are OK too.

    That is why i don’t see any need to merge these two billing methods, simply because if the game’s design doesn’t take all of this into account, economy will turn into a bad joke.

    Of course, if the companies think they can undercut farmers, they will be pretty much forced to give it out for free because the farmers won’t leave the market anytime soon. And we could see some funny moments like farmers taking over certain aspects of the game (think farming every possible fire elemental, moving 500 chars to Orgrimmar just to crash the server and other “funny” things)

  4. It’s just IGE under another name, they will try and approach gaming companies to get this in the door but most of the western MMO market is pretty much against it, although allot is being bought currently I think the general consensus is that buying items with real money to gain an advantage sucks.

  5. Funcom has said No for Age of Conan and a tentative maybe for an upcoming “casual” venture (which I somehow doubt would be The Secret World).

    Without the biggies, I don’t think this will fly very far.

  6. Blizard makes over 300+ Million now with 9+ Million subscribers how many people out of those 9 million would be willing to pay 25-50 dollars for an Epic Flying Mount? Even a small percentage would be a serious boost in revenu. And in case some people missed it, folks have been spending real cash for Fake gold for a very long time and those people who have been providing it have made a lot of money.

  7. Well, you have to put it under another perspective. Many don’t want to pay real cash for virtual items, but think it the other way around:
    If you don’t want to pay for virtual items, why you pay to play the game?

    The reason? We want to have fun at our spare time.

    Now even for people who ear $10 an hour, spend $10 for 1000g is better than spend 20 hour for 1000g, you do the math.

    Many people play the game with friends (me included), for me that brings back the college years. But none of us has college time any more. Where do you get all the Gold?!!
    My bot earn about 20 to 30g an hour, but that is just not enough. If Blizzard can provide a way to buy gold for people who play less than 10 hour a month, I will be happy to give up my bots.

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