China bans RL money for virtual goods/services...

[Mangala]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/ebusiness/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218101859

The Chinese government has declared that virtual currency cannot be traded for real goods or services...
<snip>
The ruling is likely to affect many of the more than 300 million Internet users in China, as well as those in other countries involved in virtual currency trading. In the context of online role playing games like World of Warcraft, virtual currency trading is often called gold farming.

[Caradir]

WOW that will impact Eve hugely, but i assume they will find ways around it or business will move to NIgeria or some other African country.

[Keggi]

was in WOW recently and one of the gold sellers have a bot program or something where a load of lvl1's march into stormwind and fly into the air then drop to the ground and die.

and land in such a way that there bodies spell out the name of the website.

[Warcold]

More than one hit for that on youtube, seems it is a popular new way of getting attn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaMBOwvdL54
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfPraPfklgs&NR=1

[Keggi]

hehe that second video is exactly what i saw except when they landed they were dead and it was on aszune and in sw.

[Taith]

was in WOW recently and one of the gold sellers have a bot program or something where a load of lvl1's march into stormwind and fly into the air then drop to the ground and die.

and land in such a way that there bodies spell out the name of the website.

I've only personally seen it for the first time recently, but I'm pretty sure the trick was used in Vanilla WoW days.

*

The ruling provides me an interesting piece of perspective though. I made a smart-arsed remark in guild chat on my tauren druid on the weekend about the gold-sellers being out in force. In one thirty minute period I had three whispers. One offered an account trade (my first ever incident of this Horde-side), and two offered gold, one even going so far as to mention they have 30k gold on Aszune, also a first for me on either faction.

Maybe it's fire sale time and they're trying to unload assets fast ahead of the new law.

My impression from general reading over time is that the Chinese government doesn't like the idea of MMOs much and I can see them strongly disliking the idea of gold farmers. That said, I would expect the new law to be aimed more squarely at the QQ. I remember reading an article on it way back (I'll try to find the link when I'm home) about how it was becoming a viable parallel currency in China and all sorts of fraud and money laundering were being done through it. If I remember correctly what my accountant brother told me, parallel currencies can have drastically destabilising effects on a country's legal currency. *



* The obvious exception being Iceland's real ISK and Eve's virtual ISK, one of which is currently a viable currency and one of which is defunct. Funny isn't it, which one is which?

[Gunnarr]

While I'm happy with the news, I don't think it'll make a lot of difference in the long run - the money people are making in China over selling virtual goods is just too good to pass up I think.
Sitting behind a computer all day farming gold sure is a helluvalot easier than actually farming land, and pays several times better as well, if I understood right.
In addition, I don't think the law is aimed at gold-farming at all, but instead ruling out the QQ-coins, so chances are it isn't actually enforced for "export products" like (wow-)gold.

Even if it will be enforced, several options to circumvent the law already spring to mind - how about a foreign-based "credit card" company (Korea maybe?), that allows you to charge your card with wow-gold, then gives you a balance in real currency?