1. History

2. Controversy over secondary markets for MMOGs

3. References

GamePal is an online platform for players of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games to buy, sell and trade digital assets such as in-game currency, items, accounts, and power leveling services. The site is a neutral marketplace that supports player-to-player as well as direct selling for popular MMOs.

History

GamePal emerged in June 2004 as a multi-feature platform for MMORPG players interested in digital asset trading. The buying and selling of in-game assets such as virtual currency is also a practice known as "real money trading" or RMT.

In June 2005, GamePal launched virtual account rental services for gamers who can now rent a high-level character and play as long as they like, then return the character for a different one or for a character in another game.^[1]

GamePal worked closely with companies such as IGE expanding their options to virtual account trading allowing the buying, trading and selling of accounts.^[2] In 2007, IGE received numerous disputes and sold their company^[3]

Controversy over secondary markets for MMOGs

The RMT or secondary market for in-game MMOG assets has been controversial for a number of years, with many games such as Eve Online^[4] and World of Warcraft^[5] forbidding trading that violates their End User License Agreements (EULA). Other publishers such as Sony Online Entertainment previously forbid the sale of virtual goods until 2005 when it opened a new service called Station Exchange^[6] allowing the sale of virtual goods. In 2010, the Supreme Court of South Korea ruled that virtual currency is the equivalent of real money and legalized real money trading.^[7] In 2011, Blizzard Entertainment changed their decision to outlaw the sale of virtual goods and implemented real money trading (RMT) to their game Diablo 3 allowing users to sell items at an official auction house in exchange for real money.^[8]

Current research estimates that approximately $3 billion (US) dollars^[9] of virtual goods are bought and sold by players around the world every year. Other research estimates that approximately 30% of all gamers purchase virtual goods.^[10]

References

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