Welcome to Team Fortress 2! Valve’s charming and classy first person shooter game has an economy of sorts, full of dropped weapons, discovered items, crates, and the keys to open those crates. This strange economy is big business. About $50,000,000 of the human dollars in business. There’s a reason kids call it Hat Fortress 2. Check out this article with the details, which links to another article with even more details. Kotaku has the story.
Game developers, here’s a tip. Character customization. Lots of it. And trading it. When the lure of the gameplay fades, Pretty Princess Dress-Me-Up will live forever.