Wag Ed to launch virtual trade site

PR Week UK 06-Sep-07, 06:00

Waggener Edstrom has won a brief to launch GameXa, a trading platform that allows online game players to buy and sell virtual currencies.

The site currently caters to gamers playing the hugely popular World of Warcraft, which has more than 6.5 million registered players worldwide.

World of Warcraft currently makes more money from selling virtual currency, ‘gold’, than from subscriptions to the game itself.

Online virtual-currency trading is huge in the US and Asia. Anshe Chung made headlines earlier this year as the first person to make $1m from Second Life. Chung sold property in the online world’s ‘Linden dollars’, then traded that money in for actual currency.

Wag Ed will aim to replicate the success of such ventures in Europe by positioning GameXa as ‘not dissimilar to eBay’. Head of technology Ben Sawyer is leading the account out of Wag Ed’s London office.