Platform governance and digital property rights in virtual real estate: volatility, user entitlements and regulatory accountability

Purpose This study aims to examine how platform governance shapes the content and durability of user entitlements in virtual real estate. It defines virtual real estate narrowly as spatially delimited, platform-mediated parcels in persistent virtual worlds, whether recorded in a proprietary database or linked to a blockchain token. This study asks how access, exclusion, transfer, persistence and redress are distributed among users and platform operators and how uncertainty in those entitlements can contribute to market fragility and regulatory risk. Design/methodology/approach This study combines a targeted interdisciplinary review with comparative legal analysis of disputes and legal developments directly relevant to virtual land and digital property. Bragg v Linden Research and Evans v Linden Research are treated as core virtual-land cases; AA v Persons Unknown, Ruscoe v Cryptopia and the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 are used as broader digital-property comparators. Platform materials and descriptive post-boom market indicators are used for context. This study does not claim a causal econometric estimate of governance effects on prices. Findings Virtual real estate is governed through layered entitlements rather than a single ownership rule. Technical control, platform contract terms and external legal remedies may diverge, and transfers can occur through platform databases, in-game mechanisms, blockchain transactions or informal account and credential transfers. The 2021 NFT/metaverse boom is therefore treated as a historically exceptional episode rather than a representative market baseline. Post-boom evidence shows that leading platforms remain operational and retain user or creator activity, while land prices have fallen sharply; these observations support caution about market stability but do not by themselves identify governance uncertainty as the cause of price movements. Originality/value This study contributes a governance-centred account of virtual real estate that separates virtual land from virtual assets generally and distinguishes property-like expectations from legally enforceable entitlements. Its regulatory contribution is correspondingly narrower: it identifies entitlement disclosure, notice of material rule changes, transfer and portability safeguards, dispute resolution and platform accountability as mechanisms that can reduce avoidable uncertainty without assuming that virtual land is legally equivalent to physical real estate.