Planet Calypso player pays nearly $70,000 for virtual egg

with all seriousness, best of luck with your gambling

I would laugh even harder if it hatched into a tiny npc that followed him around singing "you got rick rolled" sucker

I asked myself the same question, so I am downloading it right now.

That sums up my limited experience as well :)

Watch "Idiocracy", it could always be much worse... =P

First - the guy above me : clearly payed viral poster.

Second. I can help but take all this entropia/calypso news with a bit of skepticism.

I mean. Can we really track down and prove this money was actually spent?
Or maybe it is just fake news to encite people in spending money. Cause if a alleged player payed 100.000$ and is now making living from it. That means its a real good investment...

But is it?

Its like for example Ethiopian government posting news that a man bought real estate in Ethiopia for 100 million dollars. And is now making big money from it.
A great way to invite investors...

Suspicious.

And even posting the news that you can not back up. Giving free advertisement for a virtual scam...

You should be more carefull

Actually, I am not. Those guys aren't what you would call 'typical'. The first, like I said, plays on and off. He put in about $20-$40 when he wants to play, and then plays. Since the game is an open market, he can sell what he buys back then extract the cash right out, if he wanted to. The only expense there is is maintaining on the items, and yeah, that can get pricey, but his character is skilled enough to make that money back from hunting.

The second guy? A minor mining mogul, or some such. I only played the game a month, as I said, so I don't understand everything. Apparently, mining is an expensive thing to do in game, so most of what he makes goes back into keeping his work going. He sells land when he wants to extract, I think. There is quite a bit of business in land with the way mining apparently works.

As for me, I really do want to try getting back into it. I played for a short while, but really did think it was fun, in its own way. The community really is that good, though. When everything you do, and any transaction you make, no matter how small, has real money value, people tend to try and be more polite as to not get ripped off. And yeah, old hats can make a lot of PED off of helping new players.

And they did update their engine, I hear. I have seen some stills, and it looks very nice. I think its Cryengine 2, maybe? Or maybe the original Cryengine? Either way, it really does look pretty stylish.

Also, Ebay does not lie. Several things have gone up on Ebay for real money. Its pretty common for smaller things, like parts in bulk to go up on occasion since there is a constant value for PED to USD(10-1, if I recall). The night club and the space station made massive splashes. Gaming websites, forums, actual news sites, and some mainstream media went crazy over hearing that. Thats why you only have heard about those. It's not everyday something sells for $100,000 on Ebay, and most certainly not everyday that thing happens to be lines of code. Obviously, people paying that much are going to make use of their investment and treat it like a business. Thats how guys are making money off these things. They are actively trying to make the best of them.

This Ebay story. It makes no sense

Company that runs Entropia/Calypso must make profit. There for virtual items in game are sold for ingame currency. You buy ingame currency with real money.
But its not 1:1 - since they are taking small tax on conversion.

This is how they make money.

Now if you sell things on Ebay. They make no profit. And it might not bother them for small stuff.

But 100.000$ who knows how much profit they loose on that transaction?

Why would they allow that ?