It all began with a strange email - how Yanis Varoufakis became Valve’s economist-in-residence.

“I’m the president of a videogame company (www.valvesoftware.com).”

I thought to myself: Oh, not another “business proposal” from a crackpot… However, something in my head stopped my finger from pressing DEL while my eyes pondered the next line:

“We are running into a bunch of problems as we scale up our virtual economies, and as we link economies together. Would you be interested in consulting with us?”

This looks to be the first of (hopefully) many posts on economics in Valve’s games — I’m looking forward to them.