To those unfamiliar, there is an ever-growing gaming industry that focuses on online, massively multilayer games. One of the prevalent phenomenons was "gold farming", which amounts to selling in-game currency or items for real money. The Massively Multiplayer Online gaming industry has been growing very fast over the past decade, and with it grew the shadow industry of people harvesting in-game resources and selling them for real cash. This violates the terms and conditions of most such games, but one can set up an elaborate system of personas, several acting merely as expendable harvester-accounts who pass the goods along to other users, who collect it, and so on... And now the Chinese control this industry, by and large, and arguably they are the ones who made into a true industry. And this creates a certain... idea. The idea that game-money and real money have an exchange rate. And that pretty much makes the game-money into a currency. Add to that online social networking sites, and so on, that sometimes offer to let you buy virtual items or currency with cash, and exchange that... and what we soon have is a budding shadow market. Another currency, or even more than one, that essentially undermines the currency set by the state. China Bans Gold Farming: News from 1UP.com China bans virtual cash for real-world trade ? The Register The Chinese government realized that. Many sites took the above-mentioned regulations as the Death of Gold Farming, but I tend to agree with The Register's take. The regulations seem to explicitly ban the use of virtual currency as if it were real within China, rather than selling virtual currency for real money outside of it. Until now, I didn't really realize just how big and profitable gold-farming is. I now suggest the following venture - Stupid gamers of the world, unite! Together you can topple the Chinese economy by destroying the value of its currency. You won't have any money left, to be sure, but us other gamers don't mind. It just means you won't be able to afford paying for MMO time, which might mean better online games for the rest of us. Everybody win!
Jeepers, I had no idea it was so big anywhere, let alone China. I wonder how they're going to police the ban? You might get secret police posing as wizards online, hanging about the forest trying to setup a rune armour bargain sale honey-pot sting?
The legal focus won't be inside such games, but rather outside of them - the point where you leave the virtual and enter the realm of real money and real goods. Most of this stuff happens online, obviously, so it will likely entail some kind of net-crime team (China is infamous for its take on policing the net as it is) prowling through Chinese sites and shutting down anything that involves selling products for virtual money, and so on.
Is ebay banned in China? My friend sold his Runescape character for 70 quid on ebay a couple of years ago.
