andrew-finch.com

That’s what a lot of people are saying. At least, people in the World of Warcraft. The most widely played massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) recently released the ‘Celestial Steed’, an in-game mount. Think of it as another means of transportation for players in the game (it certainly isn’t the only one as there are already hundreds of free mounts available in the game). The price tag on this piece of code was a whopping $25, more than the cost of the actual game.

Now, you might say, “Who in their right mind would spend almost 30 bucks on a purely cosmetic item in a video game?” Well, as it turns out, a lot of people. Blizzard entertainment, the owner of the Warcraft franchise, sold this digital product through an online store where customers reported queues of around 200,000. It is estimated that this mount sold in the hundreds of thousands, netting the company millions in the first day.

To give you an idea of how easily this money was made, I’ll break down the actual digital code itself. You see, the ‘Celestial Steed’ is a reskin of another mount that is already available in the game. So all a programmer had to do was change the look. I’d estimate that this probably took about a day’s worth of work (I’m pulling this number of out thin air).

World of Warcraft’s subscription base has leveled off as of late, so it makes sense that the company would devise new ways to add additional revenue streams. However, the latest explosive success of the ‘Celestial Steed’ begs the question: What else are people willing to pay for?