Virtual Currency

For the over 800,000 subscribers to Sony Online Entertainment's Everquest II game, life in a virtual world follows a familiar pattern: Take your character around massive landscapes, kill stuff, loot bodies for useful new items, use said items to improve your virtual character, repeat. Starting in late June, however, Sony will allow players to replace swords and other virtual booty by using their credit cards through the game's new Station Exchange service. The Exchange is an official intermediary for transactions between players: real-life cash for in-game items, characters, and currency—plus a small Sony service charge.

If you don't have time to spend hours playing the game, you can buy other players' items and currency to boost your character, or simply buy a preplayed powerful character to begin with. Sony estimates that the market for such virtual goods—typically sold on eBay-style auction sites or by game-playing corporate entities like IGE—has reached $200 million in yearly sales.

"The secondary market is something most online gaming companies are turning their backs on," says Chris Kramer, a director of corporate communications at Sony. "Every company is trying to wish hard that it goes away. But it's not going to. It's entrenched. What we're doing is attempting to legitimize the secondary market a little bit, and hopefully by shining a light on it, we'll clean it up to a certain extent." Time will tell.