"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."

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

If this pans out they just demolished a multi-million dollar industry.

well, there goes about 9 million wow subs

haha bout damn time, those ppl chinese or not ruin the economies of whatever game they get their hands on. problem is will they enforce it and accually look for the ppl doin it.

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

Originally posted by Daffid011

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

Reason and China have never really had anything in common, I don't know why they'd start now.

Originally posted by Daffid011

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

It promotes greed.

My thoughts and concerns are that this will apply to China only outside of the FTZs. If the FTZs are unaffected by this then we will see at most a tiny drop in the amount of Chinese gold farming as the majority of online farming is done inside China's Free Trade Zones. FTZs are places where capitalism is sort of the rule of the day, and many of the laws governing the majority of China do not apply or are amended for the FTZs.

If someone can tell me or find a link or source that cites whether this is all of China, Or only China outside the FTZs I would have a better grasp at what, if any, impact this will have on the RMT.

Alexis Diana Dority

*smiles*

I'd better get a WoW Gold order in quick before this raises prices... :p

Originally posted by Daffid011

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

Because the farmers and sellers and the buyers are all cockroaches.

First time I can actually say China has done something I agree with. Guess I'd better stock up on thermal underwear if I die, because Hell just froze over.

Nice move, but what's with the added hatred of internet porn what did that ever do to China?

Originally posted by Daffid011

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

according to the article, its to crack down on internet gambling

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

well, there goes about 9 million wow subs

The 9 million chinese wow players are actually just going to migrate to America.

Move over Mexicans, there's a new race in town.

These businesses are ran over there like a mix between sweat shops and mafia gangs.  Employees that are thought to have skimmed some gold off the top have been brutally beaten and murdered.  There isn't much good that goes on around these 'businesses'. 

Originally posted by Rayx0r

Originally posted by Daffid011

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

 

according to the article, its to crack down on internet gambling

Honestly, I think it has to do with the bigger picture of China's recent implementation of their netwide "filter".
 

I don't think China cares so much about the goldselling and farming, as much as they care about the fact in order to sell that gold, Chinese citizens are interacting with the western societies. All the things China tries to block with their "filter", such as free speech and unbiased news can be found on those same servers the farmers/sellers are on plying their trade, effectively nullifying much of China's new censorship.

Even if this does pan out to shut down a significant portion of their virtual currency industry, do remember that not all of the farmers/ sellers are chinese. There are also significant amounts of other asian nations, as well as Russia and eastern euro nationalities doing it. Also let's not forget there are some, albeit smaller amounts of, middle easterners, africans, south americans, and new yorkers...

One area's loss, is another's gain...

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by Rayx0r

Originally posted by Daffid011

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

 

according to the article, its to crack down on internet gambling

Honestly, I think it has to do with the bigger picture of China's recent implementation of their netwide "filter".
 

I don't think China cares so much about the goldselling and farming, as much as they care about the fact in order to sell that gold, Chinese citizens are interacting with the western societies. All the things China tries to block with their "filter", such as free speech and unbiased news can be found on those same servers the farmers/sellers are on plying their trade, effectively nullifying much of China's new censorship.

Totalitarian states have never been real big on allowing underground economies they don't regulate. It's a lot of cash going places they rather it wouldn't doing things they don't want it to do. Their next move will be to isolate game servers from other countries to block communication. Soon after they'll start chat logging and demanding access to account information to track dissidents.

Iran has been going apeshit since they found out some of their recent protests were organized in online games people aren't supposed to have access to.

It's a bit hard to manage a clamp down in the information age when the opposittion knows more about technology than you do.

This is probably also a move to keep westerners out of their game servers. Like when I was playing Aion on the CH retail version I had to buy my time through a third party. Which means my dirty western attitude and friendly demeanor was allowed to infect their servers.....even though I can't read or write in traditional.

So good that this -might- crack down on some gold selling.....even though most games these days don't depend on a strong player-run economy. EVE is really the only game out there that does and CCP pretty much killed the isk sellers with the in-game and official trading of time cards. Brilliant move because CCP can effectively condone the selling of isk, but they actually see money from it. If people want to farm more isk in order to basically play for free then that's their perogative and CCP's gain.

WoW doesn't even really have an economy. Gold is so easy to get that it doesn't freaking matter. Aion is the same way. Though to be fair I've always been good with handling my money in mmo's ever since my days of Lineage 2. Game taught me a lot about handling money, bargaining and market trends, which are valuable skills to have.

China has always been hardcore about controlling internal internet access. The vast majority of websites are blocked and internet porn is practically illegal. It's considered immoral and destructive to society over there.

The really sad part is that Japan is also starting to become anti-eroge....basically anti-hentai. Some political parties are claiming it's destroying their culture and history, which is BS and we all know it.

It's a good move by the chinese government. It stops all sorts of crime associated with RMT (such as power leveling websites and gold selling websites that steals customer infos and resells them). There will still be people doing it as the whole industry will go underground but it would probably kill off the majority of the gold spams. The prices of these virtual currency will of course go up as an after effect.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by Daffid011

I'm curious why they would do something like this.  There has to be a reason for it. 

 

Because the farmers and sellers and the buyers are all cockroaches.

First time I can actually say China has done something I agree with. Guess I'd better stock up on thermal underwear if I die, because Hell just froze over.

I don't think china is doing this to help gaming companies rid themselves of people breaking their eula.  My guess would have been something more along the lines of tax evasion or similar situations.

Part of gambling as suggested above makes a bit more sense, but not totally.  Maybe the problem is really big in china itself since so many games are item mall based that people just can't control themselves?  There was an article some time back about 60+ some internet gaming addiction clinics in china (state run I think, but can't remember for sure).

Either way this is so goofy for a government to step into this realm outside of taxation issues.