Facebook Credits Being Phased Out, Making Way for Many More Virtual Currencies

Facebook Credits, which are probably the West's* largest virtual currency, are being phased out, to be replaced by local real money payments and subscriptions. This is a move anticipated by industry insiders, partly because adoption of Credits has been very slow (only a small percent of Facebook users have bought them), and partly because most Facebook game developers have their own virtual currency, which means gamers have had to spend their real currency to buy Facebook's virtual currency in order to buy another virtual currency. So while this discontinues one of the world's biggest virtual currencies, we're likely to see many more rise to take its place. Or like Ed Castranova of Terra Nova puts it: "Facebook Credits Are Dead, Long Live Virtual Currencies".

*I'm pretty sure that Q Coins from China are the world's largest virtual currency in terms of numbers and dollar value.