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China Bans Gold Farming

[Jun 29, 2009, 4:44 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

InformationWeek reports that China has banned trading virtual goods for real money, making the practice of "gold farming" illegal (thanks Slashdot). The report quotes a 2008 survey conducted by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester estimating that between 80% and 85% of the world's gold farmers are in China, and says this of the new ruling:

The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146 million.

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.

The most popular form of virtual currency in China is called "QQ coins," a form of virtual credit issued by Tencent.com.

Tencent.com, which has about 220 million registered users -- about as many as Facebook -- is quoted in the Chinese government news release as "resolutely" supporting the new rule. The government justifies its ban on virtual currency trading as a way to curtail gambling and other illegal online activities.

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20.

Re: Yawn

Jun 29, 2009, 17:51

Masa

The Chinese government doesn't fuck around. They do sentence more people to capital punishment, and execute them, than any other country in the world. Something like 10,000 people in 2005 and between 5,000-6,000 in '07 (figures shamelessly from Wikipedia). They definitely put Texas to shame. I appreciate what China is trying to do, and know China is pretty good at censoring just about anything they want in the average citizen's lives, but this won't change anything. And the funny thing is the PRC spent approximately $800 million on their so-called Golden Shield internet firewall and it's been said to be pretty ineffective with its intended purpose. It was more the laziness and hassle of individual people not wanting to work through proxies and whatnot that kept them going to many censored sites. China will just be the final amount that pushes us over. In college I wrote a paper surveying powerful political hegemonies and their penchant for conflicts. I came to the conclusion the most industrialized countries with broad-reaching cultures and high economic output coupled with high military expenditures produced the vast majority of the world's strategic conflicts. Especially if some economically powerful countries or continents fell under the influence of a superpower (i.e. West Europe and the United States). I know, a big obvious "duh!" comes out. But the interesting note was in the statistics tracked for conflicts started by, or at least highly influenced by, these countries. Of all the conflicts revolving around resource and pacification (humanitarian missions, military actions meant to undermine mass-genocide, etc), the United States had played the biggest role.

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