Law & Games Seminar

Dave Birch writes,

Something you may not have noticed, but there was another milestone passed on the road to the future of banking a few weeks ago, when Project Entropia auctioned banking licences for its virtual world. In fact there were five licences sold, with the highest bid at $99,900 going to “Yuri”, an undoubtedly fit and proper avatar. Financial services follow the money, even when it is virtual. Last year, a player set up a bank in another science fiction game, EVE Online, but that one was unsupported and unregulated by the game’s operator, CCP hf of Iceland. The player tried to abscond with the deposits, but CCP froze his account before he could sell them for “real” money. EVE Online has been attracting more interest, this time from the Financial Times, which picturesquely calls a galaxy far far away where rampant capitalism held sway, free from the restraints of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, SEC inquiries and European Commission investigations. Where there are “large-scale scams, widespread corporate espionage, military-industrial alliances and interplanetary wars”.