Trading of virtual currency made illegal - in China
I’ve just read this story, it was linked from a WoW site saying about how gold farming was being made illegal in China.
But the implications are potentially huge, here’s an excerpt from the story
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 rules out the station exchange style servers from being allowed to operate legally out in China, it also prevents Eve in its current form from being able to be run out in China since you can use in game currency to buy game time.
So far it looks like strangely enough you can buy virtual currency with real money, and the same for virtual items, but its illegal to transfer the money back again. In a perfect world this shuts down gold farmers hard, although how well this is enforced remains to be seen. Its a big surprise for me for this to be coming out of China, it shows it must be a recognised problem out there, wondering whether this will just be enforced for the money launderers, or for the whole gold farming industry.
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