Many of the techniques the top answer@beetlefeet is talking about in his answer (the top and accepted answer, at the time of writing) don't actually remove any money from the economy.
"Eve Online blatantly has this through the mass destruction of items and ships through pvp (only partially replaced by insurance)."
Eve Online blatantly has this through the mass destruction of items and ships through pvp (only partially replaced by insurance).
Money is not destroyed when you lose your ship, only your ship is destroyed. Your money got sent to the player who built the ship, who gave some money to the person who mined the minerals. When you lose a ship, money is injected into the economy through the insurance mechanic. EVE implements money sinks through station fees, market taxes, etc.
"Many games (such as World of Warcraft) feature Bind on Pickup and Bind on Equip items. They are actually money sinks."
Many games (such as World of Warcraft) feature Bind on Pickup and Bind on Equip items. They are actually money sinks.
In most cases they aren't. In the case of World of Warcraft people typically sell their items to a vendor when they get an upgrade, which means the money is created and injected into the economy. If you can't sell items to vendors, then they could be money sinks if there are repair costs, but there aren't many games that do this.
It's important to remember that destroying items doesn't destroy currency. If anything, it makes the currency even more inflated since there are fewer items, making them worth more.
