Sony Online Entertainment has announced the formation of Station Exchange, an official auction site for the MMO games created by the company. Scheduled for launch in late June, the service will be the official, secure way for
EverQuest II subscribers to buy and sell the rights to use characters, items and coin in a player-to-player auction setting.
This is the first major move into the cash-based auction buying and selling market by an MMO company, since other rival titles such as Blizzard's
World Of WarCraft allow in-game item trading between players, but not any kind of cash payment system.
John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, commented with relation to this move: "The unsanctioned secondary market for online games is rapidly growing and more and more of our players are taking part in it."
He continued: "Not only are we answering the demands of a sizable portion of our subscriber base, but we are also set on establishing the standard for online game sales. SOE is in a unique position to help guide the industry, just as we have since we first opened the world of
EverQuest to the public six years ago."
In a separate letter to the community on the official
EverQuest II site, Smedley claimed: "Dealing with fraudulent transactions of one type or another takes up roughly 40% of our customer service people's time", showing another major reason for SOE to want to regulate.
As for the logistics of Station Exchange, when a player decides to auction the use of an item or character, that item is removed from the game world and is moved to a secure Station Exchange server. Once an auction is complete, the item or character will be placed in their account. Only some specific
EverQuest II servers will be Exchange enabled, and subscribers will be able to choose whether to play on them or not.
