News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers by ggrochow on Monday March 27, 2017 @02:59PM (#13970629)
Something worth mentioning, they recently introduced a "Subscription Token" item that you can purchase for real $, and sell on the market ingame for credits. That also means you can essentially purchase game-time for in-game credits

I purchased the game, 2 months of subscription, and have been using ingame-credits to fund my sub for the following 5 months ( I've currently got an additional 4 months of time in tokens that im trading on the market as well )

While it did take some time to get ramped up, and I am in a safe area with my alliance. A player can, with a little market interaction, not pay IRL money for the game. (you will have to survive long enough to get there, expect to get killed off a few times before you figure out defense)

Re:Screeps – An MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers by snerbles on Monday March 27, 2017 @04:56PM (#13971703)
This is the same concept as EVE's PLEX item, which was introduced to combat TOS-violating real money transactions. In-game prices are subject to in-game market fluctuations, which are relatively stable.

Ever since then, any headline involving EVE player shenanigans and a dollar amount is derived from this one-way exchange rate.