Live Gamer to Take Over Everquest Exchange

Sony Online Entertainment and New York-based Live Gamer (which we profiled in December) announced last week that Station Exchange, the system Sony launched in 2005 to give citizens of the online game world Everquest a “legal” way to auction off virtual currency, characters, and objects, will be shut down on March 27 and replaced four days later with Live Gamer’s new system for virtual-item trading. Live Gamer, which has venture backing from Waltham, MA-based Charles River Ventures and Kodiak Venture Partners, works with game publishers to offer sanctioned virtual trading environments designed to prevent fraud and discourage black-market or “off-grid” trading. Sony is one of its first major game-publishing partners.

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/