I always thought it would be sooner, with more options, and both ways. At least the real-world economy game Entropia Universe is finally making some moves despite its age.
If I’m not mistaken there was an attempt at this back quite a lot of years ago. It was however short-lived or it never came to be. It’s kind of funny always seeing the clash between old school real-world economy gamers and the newfangled NFTs apes and p2e models of today.
Many of the old school hate NFTS. They have been arguing for years on a bunch of different gaming forums that cryptocurrency is a scam that will soon be dead. They no doubt will not be happy about this even if it is just allowing people to pay using cryptocurrency. I however see it as breathing new life and possibilities into a game that should have been doing this for a lot longer by now.
For me, the question was always when and how they would permit it as far as Entropia Universe goes. This game itself has been hit hard over the years from PayPal to many banks flat out denying, removing support, and blocking payments to the game provider. I even remember once the bank I was using at the time declined my attempt at depositing which lead me to move onto another game.
Back in the day Entropia Universe even tried to become a bank. Since in-game items have a trade value that can be sold back to the game. Items have value. If I recall they even had a way to borrow the PED (Project Entropia Dollars) value against the item itself and later buy it back. It’s however been quite a few years and my memory of this is not the best. They were also denied by the powers to be to become a bank.
More often than not selling the item back to the game was a worst-case scenario. As items have a markup value. While a lot of items would just sell for 101% on the player auction which was not always worth it depending on auction fees. For quite a while the game had quite a healthy market and I even sold some items at 300-600% markup at times.
Unlike more modern-day “stable coins” PED was never such a thing. It had a fixed rate for deposits and withdrawals from the game itself. It was never on any “official external exchanges” and had a fixed rate of 10:1. For every $1 is 10 PED.
Last year in 2021 MindArk the creators behind Entropia Universe announced they reached a deal between themselves and Unreal Engine 5. They have also been using the world metaverse a lot more than they use to. Entropia Universe in my opinion has a bigger and more in-depth metaverse long before the term and before most ecosystems claiming to have one today will EVER have.
The game itself could use graphics overall and if they pull it off this game will crush everything in the metaverse gaming space without even trying. They already do with their documents proclaiming $450 million in transactions in 2020. All without NFTs, cryptocurrency, and blockchain. The cryptocurrency space has some learning to do by an old giant.
All of this is quite impressive for a game that came out in 2003. Most games these days struggle to have any staying power beyond just a couple of years. The fact they are often seen as the precursor to more modern-day play to earn and how many cryptocurrency-based games work. Shockingly, they did not go harder into cryptocurrency sooner.
As far as accepting cryptocurrency payments they are using the provider Utrust which I don’t know much amount. Just checking things out paying with cryptocurrency works for both buying PED and digital items in the Entropia Universe web store. The cryptocurrency options are not the biggest however it more than covers the basics with BTC, ETH, and a couple of others.
I have been itching for years to want to get back into this game for some long hunting sessions. I’ve written a little bit about this game in the past with Bitcoin Not First Digital Currency I Profited From. The issue is over the years I’ve sold all my holding right down the very clothing and vehicle my character was using. The only thing I did not try and cash out was my skills for the most part.
I have even attempted in the past to come back to the game just as a free-to-play. That was often short-lived as the things I enjoy doing cost a chunk of money to get back into. Making a few cents a day doing things free to players do gets a bit boring and would have taken forever. Many players who had no idea who I was were quite supportive in my attempt to be free-to-play which was nice to see.
If I wanted to make a comeback to the game I could see myself needing to depot $500-$1k with it being more on the higher side. For the fun of it, I want to get back into Atrox hunting. I’m just not quite sure what the best eco amour, plating, gun, and healing device for my skill level would be. It’s been quite a long time.
Since I would be playing for pure fun I would mostly need to deposit monthly. The normal amount I tend to spend on a game in a given month would not be quite enough for any real fun. There are a lot of other things to do other than hunting like mining. This would be the more reasonable thing to come back to do.
There is also the other issue I see. While they allow you to deposit using cryptocurrency. It does not look like you can make withdrawals doing the same. The withdrawal process was always at least back in the day a pain in the behind and took forever to receive.
I think it is also fair to say most players deposited money into a game like Entropia Universe to have fun. The idea that you could cash out once you were done playing is what many wish you could do in any game. As many never withdrew much of anything unless you ran an in-game business or got lucky on some insane drop.
While it appears they have changed the risk over the years for a more average return on loot drops and other factors. You always needed to make any profit from markup of item sales to other players. While hoping for some big-ticket item to drop to be sold for a lot more than its trade value is always nice. That was quite rare. Otherwise, you would just be taking a small loss every time over the long run for anything you are doing.
Final Thoughts
Maybe at some point, I’ll make a much smaller deposit than I think I’ll need and try and work out what I need. This game can get a bit pricy to play. While I could always try and get back to just mining in the game. I always enjoyed the hunting side of things more.
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Information
The content was written by @Enjar about Entropia Universe.
