Valve Prepares To Take Over The Virtual Banking World

(Via)

I hate posting about something twice in the row, but this proves how far ahead in the game Valve really are. Team Fortress 2 has had it's own economy for a while, using weapons and hats like stocks in a company with rates going up and down at a constant rate. Loads of articles have been written about the subject, but something has happened that we kind of saw coming at some point or the other: Valve has hired an economist.

Valve has signed up economics professor Yanis Varoufakis as their resident expert adviser to link game economies and solve virtual currency exchange problems. It's one smart move, as the deceptively titled 'free to play' model has started to take off in the games industry. The Team Fortress 2 transition to this model was a fantastic example, a title notorious for its homegrown economics. With titles like Diablo 3 starting to use real money auction houses for digital weapons; it makes sense for someone to keep an eye on things and report, but is it a good habit for games to rely on these ideals? Let's wait and see on how Valve uses Mr. Varoufakis' expertise to probably set an example to follow, again.