The Gold Farmer's Market

From the WSJ

Live Gamer Inc. is developing an online marketplace where players of Internet games will be able to safely trade in virtual goods, a business that is often plagued by fraud. In the biggest departure from current methods of trading in virtual goods, Live Gamer says it will only allow trading of items with the blessing of game publishers. Live Gamer is working with Sony Corp.'s Sony Online Entertainment division, Funcom GmbH, Ping0 Interactive Ltd. and other online-game operators to integrate its trading system with their titles.

And why are they doing this wonderful thing? To provide a service to gamers? Not quite....

Live Gamer has the support of publishers by promising to prevent the sale of goods by gold farmers, who are widely disliked because they tend to hoard game wealth without socializing with legitimate players. Live Gamers says players who sell goods through its marketplace will keep 90% of proceeds, with the remainder split between Live Gamer and the publisher. Sony, which allows the sale of virtual goods for its Everquest II game, said there is a need for an independently operated marketplace for virtual goods.

Strong parallels with the early days of online music then, when the majors tried to set up tame sales arms that control sales and hand them a share of the profits.

Thing is, I can already buy Linden dollars on eBay, so why won't a service like that (or eBay itself) do the job adequately enough, without the 10% tax?

(Postscript - In case it wasn't obvious from the title, by implication these sort of markets will be very attractive to Gold Farmers, for whom there is not insignificant demand....)