A recent article by Slashdot notes that auction giant eBay has started delisting all sales of virtual items from its site. These items include currency, items, and character accounts, which eBay no longer supports due to legal issues:

Mr. Hani Durzy, speaking for eBay, explained that the decision to pull these items was due to the 'legal complexities' surrounding virtual property. "For the overall health of the marketplace" the company felt that the proper course of action, after considerable contemplation, was to ban the sale of these items outright. While he couldn't give me a specific date when the delistings began, he estimated that they've been coming down for about a month or so.

The sale of virtual commodities for real money has been a hot-button topic in the world of online gaming, and eBay's decision to disallow such sales removes a particularly large marketplace, particularly for those entites known as RMT (Real Money Traders). While there are still plenty of ways to purchase virtual items directly from sellers such as IGE, eBay's silent declaration that it considers virtual property to be the property of game makers speaks pretty loudly.

Slashdot - eBay Delisting All Auctions for Virtual Property

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