Entropia Universe is a popular online game launched in 2003 by a Swedish developer – MindArk. Basically, it acts exactly like a real worl with its own monetary system (Project Entropia Dollars), some kind of Monopoly with real money though. PED can be bought with real cash by players and redeemed at a certain point, when you feel you have made a good profit.
But what can be defined as a good profit ? Let’s take for example a player named Jon Jacobs a.k.a Neverdie. He bought an asteroid in 2005 for $100,000 (real money !), he transformed it into a luxurious resort called Club Neverdie and he sold it recently for a whopping sum of $635,000. Now that is an incredible profit for 5 years, isn’t it ?
The interesting fact is that actually the gamer earned back his investment in 8 months by selling small pieces of real estate on his asteroid and selling rights to hunt and mine, exactly like in the real world. You can call it a virtual landlord without hesitation, right ? This is not the first time a very expensive item is sold on Entropia Universe ; in 2009, a player named Buzz “Erik” Lightyear bought a space station for $330,000, of course, a virtual one.
Entropia Universe is getting more and more popular these days with all the headlines announcing big transactions and huge profits. It is very similar with World of Warcraft – a fictive world, creatures, trades, planets exploration and so on. But in the end, who has ever heard about a profit of $500,000 from playing WoW ?