Chinese Limit Use of Virtual Currency

UK, June 30, 2009 - MMOs such as World of Warcraft will be affected by a new ruling from the chinese Government that will ban the trading of virtual currency for real goods and services.

InformationWeek reports that Gamers in the communist state will still be able to buy and sell items using virtual cash online, but will not now be able to sell this currency for 'real' money - a practice often referred to as 'Gold Farming'.

The practice is big business, generating between $200m and 1bn a year worldwide, according to a survey by the University of Manchester. The report also states that 80-85 per cent of gold farmers are based in China.


Source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/999/999671p1.html




So, should this affect gw at all? What about other games, good? bad?

Holy $@!*

I never knew it was between $200m and $1billion. Thats a fat pocket. Paid for by geeks of course.

I guess that explains why there was so many wow subscriptions in china

Thats a LOT of real money O.o
But I really hope it does affect GW and stop all the gold buying/selling.
People will just have to play the game and earn the gold as intended then
and not just buy there way to high end stuffs and titles etc.
Stops.
Thinks.
Ahh who am i kidding lol they will find some other way as usual.

All I can say is........

OWNED

Do you think blizzard will suddenly say...

"oh crap...we thought we had 11million players, turns out we only got 4million, the rest were farming bots".

If you read through to the source article (here) You'll see they are also trying to crack down on porn. So yeah, China. Good luck with that.

I'm going to post it, and it will be controversial but such is life.

All they did was make it so thousands lost their jobs for no reason at all. It won't affect the gold farming industry as they are very well able to adapt, shift gears and more. They have to with all the efforts that are made by game publishers to stop them.

EQ2/Sony decided instead of fighting them to take their own cut and came up with their own gold currency exchange. It was smart/controversial but it worked. If people want it and are willing to pay for it any business is eventually going to want their share of it.

I also, nowadays, fail to see how buying Gold to get ahead of your fellow player is any different then these new micro-transactions that have been introduced in so many MMO's, including Guild Wars. How is paying to unlock your skills any different then paying to get some gold? You didn't work for it or earn it. They both serve the purpose of getting ahead of your fellow player faster and easier.

The gaming industry has just done a better job at masking what they are doing by putting a face on it as "legit" since the micro-transactions are coming from the gaming developers themselves.

Oh well now little asian boys wont be able make more money and actually have to find a job in a workshop.....

No no i mean well thast alot of money that shouldnt be generated .. If anythign make it a taxable legit bussiness but yeah OWNED.....i hope i understood it right.

This.


The industry has grown beyond china, and now other countries will just jump in to pick up the slack, since this change doesn't make buyers any less plentiful.

I don't care, gold farming needs to be stamped out.

Well, China does have a lot of restrictions placed on thier country's internet use. Although last I heard, over 80% of the internet is porn.

Edit: Making it illegal won't make it stop. Because we all know nobody sells drugs or guns illegally right.

Inde's post is invalid since the most important thing in the world - the only thing really - is gaming.

article
Did I read it wrong, or are they going to ban the pre-pay cards for WoW?

Won't affect GW imo, its already illegal in GW. Not sure about WoW.

I lol'd hard at that xD

I don't think it'll change much. Inde has a good point there. Though these gold farmers won't lose their job, they'll have to adapt, is all. As long as it reduces the spamming in games, I'm fine with it, but I doubt much will change.

billion dollar worth of business, you think they don't know how to by pass a ban?

The place where gold farmer play/farm the game will become some underground space that is void of air and unhealthy for human. Its going to create more problems.

One thing come to mind, more hacking to steal your gold

As ever, I couldn't care less about the issue.

I've never considered being able to grind gold in game to be skillful, so to me, the person who buys gold rather than grinding it is simply being time-smart. Yeah, it sucks if you get rolled by a newbie with better equipment in a gear-based MMO, but then it's your own fault for expecting to find balanced skill-based play there.

As far as GW goes, buying gold doesn't even give you an advantage, so it's laughable (at least, ever since PvE characters stopped being a necessity for PvP).

Companies should start selling gold for their own games. That would put more money directly into their pocket.

Yeah, you read it wrong.
Virtual currency will still be allowed. Ie, I can still buy a sword for 25ecto. They just said cards that the company actually sold (that either provide a subscription, or actually provide in-game money) are also virtual currency.

Edit: @Lewis91: No it is not "illegal" in GW to sell gold, it is a violation of the EULA and will get you banned. Ie, its a civil contract breach. China is actually making it a crime (I think), ie, you will go to jail. Or they are making it so it is a civil violation without even needing a contract.

The difference is the people involved. When you give money to a developer through microtransactions you have some kind of guarantee to back up the money you're handing over - their reputation is on the line, you can track it to a business, the items get added directly to an account. When you give your money to a third party gold seller, there is nothing to stop that person just walking off with your money other than repeat business. If you hand over your account to get power levelled, its liable to getting stolen.

My understanding from the official statement is to outlaw the risky third party services. I wonder how successful they will be in their aim to "nip illegal online activities in the bud" (seeing as they've obviously misjudged the size of the problem), and their motivation though. I'm guessing the businesses will just move countries.

this .

Defending Farmers is the action of a Gold Buyer.

And equating micro transactions or "paying for a game" as the same being a gold buyer is ridiculous at best.

Can I have that ban now please? You're a joke.

So the person with the most rl-money has the most GW money? Money>time/effort? nothx


And as for the gold farmers, gogo Chinese government!

The big question is will it be enforced.

Or is this just grandstanding by the government? I can't see the government cracking down on that much money that could be taxable.

Technically, bootlegging is illegal in China as well, but tell that to every street vendor selling DVDs for $2.



As for the discussion on buying gold with real money: No matter what your opinion, as long as their is demand, there will be supply. Some people have more money than time, and for them it makes sense to buy 10k of Guild Wars gold for $10 (or whatever it is worth now, IDK).

Inde is only mentioning the impact on the economy and human life IN THE REAL WORLD.

That last part is something most people here have no concept of apparently. You included.

inb4 F*CK U I HAVE A JOB AND A FAMILY.

Oh bob, bob, bob.

In so little time you've done so much! All kinds of posts, a post a day, striking horror into the hearts of those who read them! Your righteous zeal strides before you at your whim, trolling with the force of at least 3 cave trolls. I have no doubt that you are someone's secret little account. I, too, have no doubt that you will be back one day, under this name or another, to shine a little light on all of us who are amused by how idiotic you are.

And when you do return, I'll be waiting. And you'll be banned, again.

I didn't say anything about "paying for a game". It's nice that some forum posters fill in their own blanks and make up words. I also didn't defend any gold seller if you'd like to reread my statement. I pointed out the loss of jobs, that this wouldn't have any affect on the industry, that micro-transactions serve the same purpose as buying gold... to get a player ahead without work or effort.

You all are making some poor assumptions.

What makes you think that thousands of people have lost their jobs as a result of this action by the Chinese government? For that to be the case, the law would have to be enforceable and it would have to be difficult or impossible to corrupt the enforcement agents.

The only real world impact of this "law" will be that the gold farmers will have to start paying protection money to continue their operations, and every once in a while someone will be made an example. Such is law enforcement in China.

Those of you defending these transactions are correct that there will be supply given demand. You can *reduce* the number of transactions through enforcement policies, but you cannot eliminate them. Doesn't make it right, but they're a fact and wishing it would go away accomplishes nothing.

This does not imply that the problem cannot be solved.

You don't solve this problem through enforcement; you solve it through game design. The only way to solve the problem is to tweak the reward system such that the gamer cannot purchase from others desired items or assistance in acquiring them. A sizable task, and not one to implement in an ongoing game like GW, but in principle this could be done.

Martin, ironically yours is an assumption as well. There's no way to know what the farming companies will do with the news, how they will adapt, how they will change, or what they may do.

i just rememebred it was either on Russian channel or on some backwards american one . That the Gold farming bussiness wasnt just undergroud.. There wer legit companies with employes dedicated to farming gold... It was just like any other company... There were hourly wages.. adn the wages were very very big.. Pretty much more then i make in a wekk they make in 2 dys -_-...

So if anything the governemnt either trying to put them under their own wing.. or just eridacate them for what ever reason... but i know for a fact that some gold farming Companies were legit.

RMT was, is and will probably always be linked to fraudulent markets. As seen for GW, they often attempt to steal accounts and defraud players. Not to mention create and spread computer viruses. The biggest RMT companies may have ties with money-laundering and mafia circles.

On the other hand, your post highlights a valid point: if MMO companies (only one part of the gaming world, albeit a big one) designed their games so that players could only buy cosmetic features, and not as a gaming world where grind is common and rampant as a disease sometimes, RMT may not be as big a problem.

Anyway, this is a major news in the short term, time'll tell if it'll affect MMOs in the long term. May be it's going to encourage in-game services (so, no real money exchanged, only virtual).

Many Chinese RMT companies are satellite "sweatshops" of a big corporation and employees are exploited, with a ridiculous pay and no social protection at all. Hopefully, these guys will indeed loose a job, but hopefully find another one as they are resourceful.

I don't think anyone's calling into question the legality of these companies, Ghost Omel.

The point is the NOW they're illegal. In China anyway. Wonder how may gold farming companies there are here in the good old land of the free?

Wait. So you are defending them, because "they won't have a job"? Would you defend drug dealers too, because they don't have a legal job and if caught, they will go to jail?

RMT was, is, and always will be illegal in games. They were commiting a crime, at least they were helping in it. Now they will be held responsible for it, if they try to do that again.

Good.

I think Russia has a big part in this market also and it's not just gold sellers. I saw a documentary on a company that you turn your toon (WoW was the game) over to them and for a set amount of money they would level the character up for you and return it to you when at the desired level. This market will not be affected.

Ugh, Abedues I really don't want to derail a thread but gold selling or buying is not punishable by law. It's not a crime, it's not illegal. It's the same tired argument of whether EULA's are enforceable. You aren't comparing anything similar with that analogy.

Edit: Okay, except in China now obviously.

ITT: Things that won't affect Guild Wars since money doesn't get you anything anyway.

well yeah, that's the difference. The game is owned by the developers, they should be allowed to make money off of the videogames they develope however they see fit. Chinese gold farmers don't own WoW, therefore it should be illegal for them to generate a business model on a game they don't have ownership of.

The same thing already happened recently when the WoW devs reworded their ToS so that all add-ons must be open source and can not require subscription fees to use.

From researching an article about Goldfarming not too long ago, I can say this:

The gold is not being sold for money in China, so most goldfarmers are unaffected by this law. Especially once you sell the gold in Germany, you have to tax it in Germany. So it's more attractive for your small business to sell and tax the money in Germany and simply transfer the money to pay wages and office space in China (and pay some taxes there too). The creation of virtual wealth in China is not illegal, shipping it off to EU and U.S. is not illegal, and the gold is never sold in China which is the only thing that would be illegal. Basically it is like operating a call center. Only the people doing the grunt work are ooutsourced to wherever labor is cheap.

What this law does is to end the status of the goldfarmer as a slave. He can no longer sell the gold he is making each day to his "gold-plantation owner" as he would now. He now has to be regularly employed. That will cut into the profits of gold-plantation owners, but not too much.

On the flip side of the coin, China has not to worry about people laundering money using RMT. Especially when laundering stolen Credit Card money, it does not matter if you only get $5 for $15 stolen, by buying and selling gold back and forth. Nothing can vanish money faster than a game company controlled MMO server, no financial controlling entity will ever get any oversight into the cashflow. But that only means the problem is offshored.

As far as the bureaucracy is concerned, everything is fine as long as people pay their taxes. No government will ever enforce a Eula, so the formula for the RMT is: break even with an account before getting banned, pay your taxes, earn money.

In the end, this law might also be a step not to loose the monopoly on issuing money and trading money outside the stock exchange. China is very careful with that, their currency is not openly traded, it has a fixed value. So if ANYbody is issuing some sort of money people MIGHT consider trading INSIDE China, then China wants tight control over that. Else people might find creative ways to convert Chinese money into western currency and China can't have that. You can see the importance of that factor from the linked article

Nobody is giving a rats a.. about fair play in MMOs really. Just so there are no misconceptions as to the goals of that piece of legislation.

You don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

Against the EULA =/= punishable by law.

When you break a EULA, the company is free to do whatever the hell they want to your account (removing items, banning, etc), but they can't drag you off to jail or sue you for money.

There are a few things you can do that are actually illegal, but RMT isn't one of them. Except in china, and only as a result of this recent change.

Comparing RMT companies to drug dealers makes you look terribly ignorant of the whole affair.