SOE has released a white paper detailing the results of the first year of Station Exchange’s operations. Gamasutra has good coverage of it. For those who aren’t sure what I’m referring to, the Station Exchange is Sony Online Entertainment’s attempt to make money (and reduce CS costs) by operating a legal exchange for players to buy and sell virtual stuff obtained in Everquest II. Sony takes a piece (10%) of each completed transaction.

The service itself hasn’t made much money for SOE, relative to their size (about $275k), but as PlayNoEvil notes, customer service calls related to RMT went from 40% of calls to 10% of calls, and that alone demonstrates an unquestionable success for Sony’s experiment.