Hey, It’s Almost Legal! Let’s Invest Some Monies!
Rumors had abounded that venture capital had dabbled in the RMT industry before (specifically Goldman Sachs and IGE) but today comes the announcement of a new player: Sparter, funded by Bessemer Venture Partners.
TechCrunch, a dot-com zine, has some analysis:
eBay is one place where gamers currently try to trade virtual currency for real money, but the company started restricting the sale of virtual goods on the site earlier this year, and proactively removing listings that include virtual money and other items. Sparter is simply filling the void that eBay has voluntarily created, the company says.
Others note that eBay left the market due to trademark and other concerns. In particular, it is a violation of the terms of service of many of these services to exchange currency in this way. Whether these virtual worlds will turn a blind eye to Sparter’s activities, or attempt to fight it, remains to be seen.
The comments on the article are a bit, well, vehement.
This whole site is unethical and irresponsible, IMHO. And this article is too. ANY amount of research would have brought up any of these points, which either means you didn’t do any, or don’t care.