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0 pointsnemo161813y ago0 comments

That's a good point. I hadn't really thought about virtual economies like WoW or Eve as similar to the Fed in that they can essentially print money.

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saraid21613y ago

Only for their given domain. Blizzard and CCP are free to make as much gold and ISK as they want (and they do; it's a faucet-drain economy, and the faucet does not get shut off). But the quantity and buying power of said currencies change its value in relation to real world money.

So saying they can print money is not really true; they can control the value of a particular good that isn't intended to be a good.

swombat13y ago

But if their virtual economy is stabler than a real world economy, this changes, right? I'd rather own ISK than Zimbabwean dollars. Even if it's not strictly stabler, the ISK reflect a certain amount of wealth that's retained in the virtual economy.

Taking another contrived example to make the point obvious, if Eve players basically controlled the equivalent of a trillion dollars, and they all decided to shift half of it to dollars (e.g. Because CCP has decided to print more ISKs), this would have a very real impact on the real economy.

Those are all contrived examples, so regulation shouldn't be based on them, but they show the question is worth considering.