Following in the footsteps of games like Team Fortress 2 and Second Life, Sony Online Entertainment has announced that it will soon allow users to make money off of virtual item sales with a brand new service powered by user generated content.
The new program, known as Player Studio, will allow users to create their own items for games like EverQuest and EverQuest II, and then sell those items for real-world money.
When the service goes live, users will be able to download sample geometry from SOE and craft their own unique virtual items using third party tools such as Maya or 3DS Max. If their submissions are approved by SOE staff, those items will appear on the SOE marketplace, and the company will take a 40 percent cut of each users' net sales.
While the Player Studio will only support the mainline EverQuest titles at launch, SOE says it will eventually allow users to create items for other titles such as Free Realms, and Vanguard.
SOE hasn't confirmed when the program will be up and running, but users can learn more about creating their own in-game items on the official Player Studio website. At launch, Player Studio will only be available in the United States.
SOE's new program is very similar to Valve's Steam Workshop, which allows players to create and sell new items for games such as Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2.
And while it doesn't allow users to create items from scratch, the Auction House in Blizzard's Diablo III also allows users to sell virtual items for real-world currency.
This is promising if they can balance it with the game economy. This is, of course, the hard part. Further, if the underlying game economy is not stable, I don't see how they can balance this. Once you achieve a balanced game economy then all sorts of super cool things like this become possible.
Unless of course, like Valve, this is for cosmetic items only...which I think is likely the case. It probably has no additional damaging effect on the economy if the items are functional yet mere duplicates of other readily obtainable functional items (again just cosmetic benefits are for sale).
