Entropia becomes a bank

 Posted by (Visited 14162 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Mar 212009
 

Ars Technica reports that Project Entropia and MindArk are in the process of getting an actual banking license.

…a Swedish video game developer has been granted preliminary approval for a real banking license by the Swedish Finance Supervisory…

…the game itself has proven to be incredibly successful, having generated over $420 million last year.

Now, though, MindArk’s going to be just like a bank in the real world: it will be backed by Sweden’s $60,000 deposit insurance, offer interest-bearing accounts for its clients, feature direct deposit options, let players pay bills online, and apparently will offer loans to customers.

And another long-standing prediction among virtual world watchers begins to come true: that virtual worlds would eventually become fiduciary institutions.

Worlds.com threatens

 Posted by (Visited 7627 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Mar 112009
 

The headlines kind of say it all:

This is in tandem with the recent news that Worlds.com was recently awarded a third patent which is a continuation of the earlier two.

The specific things that are being cited in the articles about it reference solutions for scalability.

EU says games good for kids

 Posted by (Visited 9043 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
Feb 122009
 

A report from the European parliament concluded yesterday that computer games are good for children and teach them essential life skills.

via Video games are good for children – EU report | Technology | The Guardian.

Saw it via a Tweet from Steven Johnson this morning. I asked him, “Do you think our books were read as part of the debate?” Or those of Jim Gee, Marc Prensky, etc… The article does say experts in games were brought in from numerous countries, so maybe.

There is discussion of the issue of stimulating violence, but the conclusion was that legislation was not warranted.

More interesting in terms of online, which is poorly regulated right now, was the notion of a mandatory way for users to report online games to PEGI:

The growing market for online games needed to be better controlled, the MEPs said, and online games should include a red button on the screen which children or parents could click to disable the game.

Manders said the button could also be linked to the administrators of the Pan-European Game Information age rating system, so that when a game player presses it, PEGI is informed and can investigate potentially disturbing games that are available through the internet.

Europe’s security recommendations for VWs

 Posted by (Visited 5866 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Jan 232009
 

Spotted on Metaverse Law that

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) released an interesting position paper on some of the concerns associated with virtual worlds.

A summary of the position paper’s recommendations:

  • Governments and policy making bodies:
  1. An industrywide forum for sharing of info on security vulnerabilities
  2. Fund work on clarifying legal issues around IP and personal info in VWs
  3. Encourage independent dispute resolution for player-to-player issues
  4. New financial procedures to prevent item theft using chargebacks
  5. Investigate the issues around conflicts between legislation & common carrier status for VWs
  • MMO/VW operators:
  1. Deal with item duping, end-to-end secuity, and DOS attacks
  2. Clear privacy policies
  3. Charge a token returnable fee for for all ODR complaints (to prevent false complaints)
  4. Improve user authentication
  5. A standard set of governing documents and terms, built with user input
  6. Provide bootable CD images for critical operations such as online banking
  • Awareness and research
  1. Run campaigns on account theft detection, how to handle bad behavior, in-world property risks, etc
  2. Research future trends with security concenrs, such as content filtering, security and reliability of open world formats, etc

The taxman cometh, part umpteen

 Posted by (Visited 6262 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Jan 122009
 

By one estimate, about $1 billion in real dollars changed hands in computer-based environments called ‘virtual worlds’ in 2005. … IRS employees have been unable to respond to taxpayer inquiries about how to report transactions associated with them. Economic activities in virtual worlds may present an emerging area of tax noncompliance, in part because the IRS has not provided guidance about whether and how taxpayers should report such activities. To improve voluntary tax compliance, the National Taxpayer Advocate recommends that the IRS issue guidance addressing how taxpayers should report economic activities in virtual worlds.

— from the report summary (PDF) of this year’s recommendations from the national taxpayer advocate.

Via Kotaku, Slashdot, WaPo…

The whole thing is large, if you want to read about everything else beyond virtual worlds.

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