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For other uses, see IGE (disambiguation). IGE (Internet Gaming Entertainment) is one of the largest MMORPG services companies, with offices in Los Angeles, Miami, and China. IGE is one of the main players in virtual economy services, also known in the MMORPG industry as secondary market. Members of the gaming community are often critical of IGE, as its services may allow players to break the rules of online games[1]. The co-founders of IGE are Brock Pierce, a former child movie star [2], and Alan Debonneville. Pierce was also the co-founder of the controversial failed dot-com Digital Entertainment Network (DEN)[3]. Media reports claim that Marc Collins-Rector is a silent partner in IGE[4]. IGE initially used an address in the city of Marbella, Spain, where Collins-Rector, Shackely, and Pierce shared a villa until it was raided by Interpol in 2002[5][6] In January 2004, IGE acquired its major competitor, Yantis Enterprises, run by another controversial secondary market figure, Jonathan Yantis [7] for $2.4 million and 37% of the company. He later sold his shares back to the company in exchange for 22 monthly payments of $1 million. IGE's parent company, RPG Holdings purchased Allakhazam.com in November 2005[8] and was announced in May 2006[9]. Allakhazam is a popular MMORPG community site for a wide variety of games that IGE's services cater for; however, the site continues to pride itself on not supporting the trade of virtual currencies in the real economy, typically breaking and/or removing any links to sites (including IGE) that perform such trades. This marks the further expansion of this company's presence in online gaming communities. This purchase followed that of ThottBot.com. While many users left because of the purchase, the site is still extremely popular with players of many major MMOs. Affinity Media was the parent company of IGE, though the company no longer has any ownership stake. Affinity Media's senior vice president of business development John Maffei, noted that "we’re no longer in that business." [10] Affinity retains control of Allakhazam.com, Thottbot.com, and has since purchased Wowhead.com [11] After a great deal of controversy and opposition from MMO companies, IGE began to lose revenue due to the frequent deletion of accounts involved in trading.In 2007,a lawsuit was filed against IGE by Antonio Hernandez for "substantially impairing and diminishing [player's] collective enjoyment of the game." [12] Meanwhile, co-founder Debonneville sued Pierce for breaches in contract due to his exclusion from an investment made by Goldman Sachs a year earlier. Due to this controversy and its falling profits, IGE was sold to Jonathan Yantis, its former competitor who reformed its business model to place responsibility for gathering virtual materials and subsequent losses from deleted accounts on individual gold farmers. [13] Like all the other in-game currency sellers, IGE's vast majority of the revenue comes from selling the World of Warcraft gold. Its website traffic, and allegedly its revenue has been declining since 2006 for the increased competition from the in-game currency sellers based in China[14], and the constant bombardment of anti-real-money trading measures by Blizzard Entertainment, the publisher of World of Warcraft. [edit] Games availableAs of January 7, 2009, IGE sells in-game items, money, and accounts for the following:
[edit] References
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