Lunchtime Poll: Would you toss $1000 at a Facebook game item?

There's no need for a clever lede on this story: 2,000 people spent over $1,000 on a single item within a video game. (It pretty much speaks for itself, no?) VentureBeat reports that 2,000 players of Bigpoint Games's browser-based sci-fi MMO (massively multiplayer online game) Dark Orbit spent €1000, or $1365, on a rare space drone to use in combat against other players.

The special drone, known as the Zeus Drone, was available for the immensely premium price for just four days, which netted Bigpoint about $2.67 million in extra sales revenue. Tell us of another free-to-play game that's made that much cash in less than a work week, because this writer certainly hasn't heard of it. But here's the clincher: The Zeus Drone, while unbearably difficult to attain, is available for absolutely free to all Dark Orbit players.

That means 2,000 people were both A.) with an extra G to throw around on a digital item within a game and B.) impatient enough to spend said thousand clams on a digital item within a game. That's a down payment on a car, a month's rent (with utilities, mind you) or even a brand new laptop to play video games on. This news reminds us--though, on a far larger scale--of expensive Facebook game items like, say, the infamous Unwither Ring. Because it's only a matter of time before a Facebook game developer takes a crack at this, we ask you:


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