Computer games have become an important socio-economic phenomenon. Millions of people play online games and game vendors' revenues are increasing. As a new emergence, virtual (i.e. in-game) goods are traded for real money. However, not much research has yet been conducted on the monetary effects of virtual economies. Therefore, we present the theoretical background and a study of how the monetary value of virtual goods is influenced by game vendors. The study is based on a large dataset gained from web shops that we monitored for a period of several months and is analyzed in order to find out whether effects known from real economies apply to their virtual counterparts. We not only present our findings, but also discuss them and derive directions for future research.

Majchrzak, T. A. and Hildebrand, K. F.: Game Vendors' Influence on the Monetary Value of Virtual Goods. In: Proc. of the 2011 ACM Symp. on Applied Computing (SAC), ACM (2011)