Price gouging of virtual/in-game items?

[tankuroded]

Spun off from/inspired by the GT7 1.20 LCD price changes thread, since I believe it could be one such case of price gouging.

Price gouging occurs when a seller increases the prices of goods, services, or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. [...] In less precise usage, it can refer either to prices obtained by practices inconsistent with a competitive free market or to windfall profits. Price gouging may be considered exploitative and unethical.

In most cases, anti-price gouging action generally is enforced against physical/real-life, essential items. But what about virtual/in-game items? What cases in gaming can be considered an act of price gouging, and can there be a case or legal action against it?

 

[Yard_Sale]

Only because there is not yet a precedent for price gouging of in-game/virtual items, as I mentioned on the spin-off thread.

There will never be a legal precedent on this. There’s no way to sue someone over something that doesn’t have any real world tangible value. Unless they tried to take the approach of air rights (views in Manhattan), but even then… that’s something that’s tangible by virtue of not being virtual

 

[eran0004]

Price gouging refers to essential goods. I don’t believe any virtual game items can be considered essential.

 

[FerrariF1GT]

Allow me, as someone who has studied micro- and macroeconomics to at least an elementary level explain (there are users here who are more well-versed in economics than me):

Price gouging usually occurs when there is a sudden supply shortage or demand spike because producers consider supply and demand when pricing things and can get away with increasing prices due to supply/demand shocks (for a real example of this, think toilet paper in the early days of COVID). You can’t really simulate this in a game economy where the supply of items is virtually infinite. Ultimately, it’s the developers who set the prices for items and balance the game’s economy, and they are not bound by real-world economic pressures and thus it’s not price gouging.

The topic becomes murkier when you throw in real-money-to-game-money conversions via microtransactions, but once again the supply of microtransactions is virtually infinite, so the developers don’t have to account for scarcity when pricing them and determining how much game money players receive in return for paying.