Single virtual item 'makes £1.7m in four days'

A four-day sales craze has seen one single virtual item make over €2 million (£1.7m) for browser game giant Bigpoint, according to reports.

Bigpoint’s online game DarkOrbit allows customers to accumulate a full set of ten drones, though the final one is said to be particularly hard to collect. According to a report on GamesBrief, Bigpoint decided to sell the tenth drone at €1000 apiece, and in the space of four days managed to trade more than 2000 of the virtual items.

That would mean Bigpoint made €2 million from single virtual item, in a four-day time frame, with a product that’s entirely free-to-play.

The startling sales performance is another testament to the commercial viability – at least in the short-term – of virtual goods and freemium game models.

Bigpoint is expecting to make €200 million from virtual goods across 2011.