Second Life: GOM Closing Down

We regret to announce that Gaming Open Market will be stopping all
trading of L$ effective 10pm eastern time Sunday October 2nd. After
that, the site will remain open long enough to allow everyone to
withdraw their cash and L$ balances.

This choice has not been made lightly. However, we feel that closing the L$
market to concentrate on other projects is in the long-term best
interests of GOM.

Thank you all for taking part in what was for us an interesting adventure.

This is the e-mail I got from GOM, announcing the closing down of the service. It’s all over the place now, and has caused a bit of a turmoil in the L$’s rate in the past 24 hours. As lots of people playing Second Life know it, GOM (Gaming Open Market) has been trading the virtual world’s currency against real-world one (namely US $) for quite some time.

Coming on the heels of its former president’s resignation and of Linden Labs announcing that they’ll also hold currency exchange, this closing may not come as too much of a surprise, but it remains a blow no matter what. Given that LL’s exchange system hasn’t been implemented yet, we’re currently left with IGE’s clumsy system as the only alternative… and it’s not a very appealing one, I admit.