Space Club Worth Much More Than Earth Cows
posted Sunday Nov 21, 2010 by Jon Wurm
The concept of spending real money on virtual items isn't anything out of this world. Millions of people already do that in FarmVille, but in Entropia Universe cows are so much more than just a few Mac Worlds ago and so much less expensive.
Hit the break to find out just how many and just how much so.
For those of you not familiar with Entropia Universe, it is a very immerse and detailed MMO game on such a ridiculously large scale that you do stuff like create planets, space stations, space night clubs and why not, an avatar too. All of which is incredibly detailed and time consuming. Another notable characteristic of the game is the in-game economy that allows you to earn Project Entropia Dollars which can be exchanged for real money.
A British entrepreneur Jon Jacobs who is well known as "Neverdie" in the game has managed to achieve some very lucrative and real results almost by exclusively virtual means. Back in 2005 he mortgaged his house and invested the entire $100,000 in a virtual asteroid. Which he then developed into a night club over the course of the last 5 years. It became so wildly popular in the game that he was able to sell it in 2010 for a staggering $635,000. The original plan was to sell everything for $500,000 but selling off pieces of the asteroid proved to offer better results. The largest portion of the sale went to one person in the amount of $335,000, making that the largest virtual purchase to date.
Maybe all you FarmVille and WoW addicts should rethink your life if you do spend 8 hours or so a day playing those games. Losing money on online games and MMOs is so like 1^10+23 Mac Worlds ago. Fair warning though, the amount of work it takes to make your space club or whatever, worth some real money is indeed egregious.