In 2011 Valve president Gabe Newell recruited economics professor Yanis Varoufakis to oversee the markets for virtual goods in Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, and Dota 2. Now Varoufakis has taken the role of finance minister in Greece's new government, and the fate of the Eurozone may be in his hands.

Anti-austerity party Syriza swept to power in Greece at a snap election in the weekend, after campaigning to renegotiate the terms of bailout loans from Germany and other European lenders which have crippled the country's economy.

Newell contacted Varoufakis three years ago after realising that the problems Valve was seeing with a shared currency across its virtual economies were analogous to Greece's situation with the Euro: “This is Germany and Greece,” Newell wrote, as he proposed that the economist might take a consulting role with Valve to help the software developer understand these issues. “Rather than continuing to run an emulator of you in my head, I thought I’d check to see if we couldn’t get the real you interested in what we are doing.”

Varoufakis almost deleted the email after reading just the first line, thinking it another business proposal from a “crackpot”, but he read on and became intrigued by the offer.

In a blog post after he joined Valve, the economist wrote that he had been hired “to forge narratives and empirical knowledge that (a) transcend the border separating the 'real' from the digital economies, and (b) bring together lessons from the political economy of our gamers' economies and from studying Valve's very special (and fascinating) internal management structure.”

The allure of the job was the fact that Valve's digital economy would allow scientific research and experimentation to be conducted, something that is not possible in ordinary economies. Econometrics, wrote Varoufakis, is a “travesty”:

“While its heavy reliance on statistics often confuses us into believing that it [econometrics] is a form of applied statistics, in reality it resembles computerised astrology: a form of hocus pocus that seeks to improve its image by incorporating proper science’s methods, displays and processes.”

Greece went bankrupt in 2010 and was bailed out with hundreds of billions of dollars in loans by the Eurozone, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The loans came with strict conditions that the country should cut public spending and privatise state assets.

The new government in Athens has set Greece on a collision course with the European Union by requesting a partial write-off of the debt, a suggestion which Germany in particular has so far refused to countenance.

“Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders, the Greek taxpayer,” Varoufakis told the BBC on Monday.

“What we’ve been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that have turned this nation into a debt colony,” he added.

Unemployment in Greece rocketed from 9 percent prior to the crisis to a high of 28 percent in 2013, and remains at 25% today. Economic output has plummeted, in part because of the austerity measures, resulting in a staggering public debt to GDP ratio of 175 percent.

Corruption is rife, with tax evasion by companies and wealthy individuals a significant cause of low government revenues. Syriza, a leftist party, has indicated that it will prioritise tackling this problem. “We are going to destroy the Greek oligarchy system,” Varoufakis told the UK's Channel 4.

After spending time experimenting with a virtual economy, the academic-turned-politician may now be in a position to test his theories in a real one.