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06-29-2009, 08:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-29-2009, 08:50 PM by vor_lord.)
According to
this Information Week article, China has banned the sale of virtual currency (quote taken from cited source):
Quote:In addition to its ongoing crackdown on Internet porn, the Chinese government has declared that virtual currency cannot be traded for real goods or services.
Virtual currency, as defined by Chinese authorities, includes "prepaid cards of cyber-games," according to a joint release issued by China's Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce on Friday.
"The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services," the Ministries said.
This is a big industry, and I'm not sure how much more influence the Chinese government can have seeing as the games themselves have tried to stop this, but my guess is quite a bit. It's pretty difficult from this article to see exactly what is being defined as illegal (my topic title is the title of the article).
I wonder what the effects will be. Will we start to see the bulk of gold farming start to move to new homes outside of China?
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Unless they fully enforce it (and no nation has the resources to do so) this is a meaningless gesture. Legit players will still play legit, and cheaters will still cheat.
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Quote:Unless they fully enforce it (and no nation has the resources to do so) this is a meaningless gesture. Legit players will still play legit, and cheaters will still cheat.
China is a slightly different beast. Their hardware infrastructure is built to make it much much much easier to filter/block/track than other countries. They paid Cisco a lot of money to set things up so they could control things and while I know they can't control everything they try to, they can be more effective than many other organizations attempting to do so, especially in the short term. The short term could get a lot of the gold farming "factories" closed for months while they try to figure out ways around the controls. Demand for that type of service is still high and with supply cut sharply in the short term, this could have a real affect.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
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We all know what happens when supply is less than demand: the price of "gold" will go up.
Quality over quantity.
- BruceGod -
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Goldbuyers, worry no more.
There's a pretty big loophole in the law, in that foreign transactions are not enforced by the law. The law only prohibits such transactions within China. It basically does nothing to prevent Chinese nationals connecting to foreign US/EU/Oceanic servers, farming gold, and selling it. In short, to prohibit gold selling, it does jack.
What the law does do is essentially make microtransactions illegal. So basically, if you're running a Chinese MMO that relies on microtransactions from players, you're screwed. If you want to launch a MMO with a microtransaction service in China, you're screwed. In fact, I'd probably wager that services like WoW's paid server transfer/character rename/redesign/faction transfer would be illegal under this new law.
So in short: The "ban" doesn't harm sellers, it harms developers. Way to go, China.
When in mortal danger,
When beset by doubt,
Run in little circles,
Wave your arms and shout.
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