Mark Jacobs, the CEO of Mythic Entertainment (The Dark Age of Camelot) has blasted Sony's Station Exchange, which will allow EverQuest II players to securely buy and sell items from the game. He makes fair points, among them that games should be kept as just that: games, as opposed to turning them into profit-making enterprises.
He also points out that the new service might backfire against Sony by providing new resources for unofficial trading sites:
"Rather than discouraging companies such as IGE [unofficial site for trading MMORPG items], I believe that by this decision, SOE will probably create dozens of small IGE and IGE-like companies who may view SOE's servers as the 'Virtual Gold Rush of 2005.' At the same time, this decision will reduce the costs of IGE who now can use SOE's own customer service, billing and bandwidth to complete these transactions quicker and easier than they can do under the present system."
Mythic Rips Into SOE Over Auction Site
Station Exchange website
Sony's new venture comes under fire from boss of rival MMORPG firm
Slashdot | Mythic Rips SOE a New One
Sony Announce EQII Station Exchange (20 April)
Wired: Sony Gets Real on Virtual Goods
Discussion >>
Add Igniq.com to your MySpace Friends
