The Beeb runs a story on a new report by research consultants Screen Digest on the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming (MMOG) market. The big headline in the report is that the MMOG market has now passed the $1 billion USD revenue mark from subscriptions worldwide. While big revenue is to Read more…
One of the most traumatic events for the fledgling field of IT Law was the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001, when the artificially inflated electronic commerce market suffered a re-adjustment and a crash to weed out all of the pretenders and irrelevant market dwellers, producing some of the Read more…
I’ve received one piece of blog comment spam, and as a matter of policy I deleted it. However, I have removed the links and I have felt compelled to keep it for posterity: “Welcome to our website for you World of Warcraft Gold,Wow Gold,Cheap World of Warcraft Gold,cheap wow gold,buy Read more…
(Valuable item from Ultima Online) (via Colin Miller) This is an old item, but I’ve just read it. According to Slashdot, eBay has caved-in to increasing pressure from the games industry and has de-listed all in-game items from its database. However, I’ve made a search and you still can find Read more…
In an unprecedented move for a large media organisation, Reuters is reporting that it will be reporting directly from Second Life. One should expect new reports on market values, the price of customised badger avatars and the latest gig in the Second Life archipelago. I find this piece of news Read more…
Courts in the Guangdong province of China have upheld a ruling against Yan Yifan, a 20 ear-old man accused of stealing passwords for a Chinese MMORPG and entering into the accounts to steal online currency and equipment that has only a virtual existence. Yan received a $620 USD fine as Read more…
(Via Terra Nova). There has been a lot of talk in online gaming circles about the gold farming phenomenon. Gold farming is the use of “virtual sweatshops” in which gamers from developing countries spend hours earning in-game currency, rare items or virtual property in order to sell it in exchange Read more…
Online gaming is still making headway into the mainstream by the release of Dungeons & Dragons Online, the new version of the popular pen and paper game. It seems like the online gaming market is heating up, with other large role-playing games set for release soon in order to compete Read more…
I have been looking at a very interesting proposal from fellow Costarican Jaco Aizenman about something called “Virtual Rights”. The idea is to create a set of rights that apply to all citizens, who will have the right to have (or to choose not to have) a virtual personality. This Read more…
(Thanks to Jo Gibson for the link) The news wires are replete with stories of the death of a Chinese MMORPG player apparently due to exhaustion after playing non-stop for 3 straight days in World of Warcraft (the news has made it even to Metro). The story comes with calls Read more…