Hey kids. Just so you know, Beatdown is a sarcastic and mocking way of looking at the PC games industry. Some of you may have read this column elsewhere, specifically Daily Radar (visit Daily Radar for back issues). Things change and people move on. Sharky Extreme made the questionable decision to bring it over. Remember that the following news has been satirized for your protection.

In a stunningly naive move this week Sony and Verant, the team behind that EverQuest game, have banned the online auction of characters, gold, property and other items from auction websites like eBay and Yahoo. Naturally, the auction sites haven't played along and sales are still brisk at the time of this writing.

Why should they stop? Since auction sites take a cut from every sale they're making a fortune on the sale of all those 50th level characters, magic items (a cloak of flame went for $1,475.00 recently). A cottage industry has sprung up where players build up characters, perform quests, find treasures and then dump them off to rich folks who just want to jam around the game world like a god.

Sony and Verant claim that this auction business is bad for the gameworld and bad for the fans earning it the hard way. It is bad for those fans. But it's also likely that they are unhappy that they didn't corner this auction market themselves and instead have to be content with the $2 million dollars plus they make on it each month (200,000 subscribers, $10 each). "EverQuest possesses that mystery magic that draws people to it," said John Smedley of Verant Interactive. "A lot of people have begun calling it EverCrack. It is very addicting." The only difference John, is that the people who make the crack-cocaine make a bigger percentage off their product than you probably do.

In related news EverQuest is going to cross the seas and hit Israel, Russia, Turkey and most of Europe very soon. No word yet on whether or not they will be offering subscriptions and servers in Erathia or Britannia though.