That depends on the game. I believe one big trend in gaming will be connecting in-game economies to real-world economies. That might happen by tokenizing in-game assets and allowing free trade via exchanges / auction sites.

Depends on the game. In multi player games where people can exchange items, people will pay real world money for other players items.

EX: People buying WoW gold.

> "buying WoW gold"

IIRC, Blizzard doesn't profit from that directly and explicitly prohibits it in their ToS.

That's simply the most well known example. Blizzard had a real money auction house in DIII which they got a cut of profits from virtual item sales so they clearly understand items have value. PLEX in eve online directly links real world money with their in world currency etc.

I could go on, but saying it's virtual is not necessarily enough to protect these companies.

They released their own PLEX clone ("Wow Tokens") a few years ago.