Recently, eBay, which of course hosts a vast number of real-money trades, was rumored to be putting a stop to all such activity conducted on its service. Though the company has not made an official announcement, confirmation of these rumors has been popping up fairly frequently. Slashdot recently spoke with eBay representative Hani Durzy on the matter. According to Durzy, eBay has been working on delisting real-money trades for approximately a month. The process is expected to continue.

Durzy noted that this is not in fact new policy, but is merely more consistent execution of existing eBay policy. In-game items and currency are considered to be the intellectual property of the game's copyright owner, not of the player whose in-game avatar has acquired the items. According to eBay's regulations, "The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner." The great majority of MMOs do not authorize such activity, so eBay has decided to take a blanket approach and ban RMTs altogether. The action is "for the overall health of the marketplace," said Durzy.