Entropia Universe is a massively multiplayer online game set across a science-fiction universe of multiple planets, each with its own ecosystem, lore and player base. The game is built entirely around a living, player-driven economy in which every role feeds into one another and where where virtual assets hold real-world value and players can participate in a thriving virtual sandbox economy. The hunters who slay creatures across planets generate loot that crafters need; the crafters then produce equipment that miners and mercenaries need, and the traders move goods between players and planets, and investors who own land and collect taxes on all of it.

Set in a persistent, single-shard universe, Entropia Universe offers a deep and evolving sci-fi world spanning multiple planets and vast space environments. Unlike traditional class-based MMOs, players progress through infinite skill development, with the freedom to define their own roles and paths.

Players can invest in in-game companies, own land areas, and even acquire shares that pay real dividends, connecting gameplay with genuine economic opportunity.

The platform has been live since 2003 and continues to push the boundaries of virtual economy design.

When a small team of developers in Gothenburg founded MindArk in 1999, the idea they were building towards was one that most of the games industry would have laughed out of the room at that time. The idea was to create a virtual world with a genuine real-cash economy, where the in-game currency (PED) would be fixed at 10 to one to the US dollar and players could withdraw anything they earned as real money. It took four years to bring that idea to life, and when Project Entropia launched in January 2003, it did something no online game had done before or has convincingly replicated since.

The transactions that followed in the games’ early years made headlines around the world:

• In 2004 a virtual island sold at auction for $26,500, earning Entropia Universe its first Guinness World Record. 
• The following year, an English actor named Jon Jacobs mortgaged his home to buy a virtual asteroid space resort for $100,000, built it into a nightclub and stadium, and recouped his entire investment within eight months through in-game revenue alone. He then sold the property off in portions over the following five years, with the total across all sales reaching $635,000
• A virtual space station exchanged hands in 2009 for $330,000
• Five virtual banking licences were auctioned in-game for a combined total of $404,000. 

The BBC reported on it, as did The New York Times, Forbes and The Guardian, and annual player transactions in Entropia Universe now exceed $450 million.

Now, after more than two decades on the same engine, MindArk is migrating Entropia Universe to Unreal Engine 5. This will include rebuilding the core gameplay systems, building a new distributed backend designed to scale, and more. In a development update earlier this year, MindArk confirmed that the existing game worlds have already been successfully imported into the Unreal Engine client, with the team describing seeing familiar locations come to life in the new engine as exciting. 

A redesigned starting world called Setesh launched in 2025 as a testing ground for new players and new systems, and both the current and new clients will run in parallel throughout the transition, ensuring that every item and every penny of value players currently hold carries across in full. Alongside Odyssey, MindArk has introduced CelestAI, an AI system that brings the game's economic data together into one place, allowing the team to model how changes will affect the player economy before they go live rather than after.

There is a lot more to come with Entropia Universe, with more changes and developments in the works.

Entropia Universe is available for PC (Steam).