Korea goes after RMT

Covered also on TerraNova. Finally, Korean Governement are to Illegalize RMT. is an article over at Virtual-Economy.org

What does it say?

Apparently as fallout from the gambling scandal I have mentioned previously, it would prevent businesses from mediating exchanges of money for virtual items. It would also prevent businesses from repurchasing the “outcomes” of said transactions, such as in-game currency or points. Violation would be punished with a fine.

This would go into effect by next month.

(Repurchasing the items themselves is apparently OK — but the article further reports that there’s another bill in the works to ver those, which would be submitted for consideration next year).

So, interesting points: clearly, this is targeted at people who were taking virtual currency of some sort, such as Sea Story tickets, and reselling, laundering money, etc. Basically, this is similar to the IGE model here in the US. Arguably, some other US cases, like Gaming Open Market, would have fallen under this as well. It’s going to be hard to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses, IMHO. There are cases where third-party RMT activity is tacitly encouraged, for example. There are cases where it might be a legit means of adding onto the service — one thinks here for something like the “pretend markets” for various things that are out there.

Exceptions were clearly carved out for the “broadcast” providers of digital assets, meaning the companies that use microtransactions to sell digital items directly to end-users. Since this is a major business model in Korea, it’s unsurprised that it remains untouched. However, what about the potential for worlds where end-users are the content creators, a la Second Life? Do they count as “third-party businesses” under this bill? Would a user making content for, say, GoPets, be disallowed from selling it for real cash?

Most of the Korean games have one-way sales only, and do not have secondary sales within their framework; if you buy something for real money, it’s locked to you, and you cannot transfer it. There’s lots of methods for “gifting,” of course. What about the world where resales are permitted, and in-world secondary markets are supposed to appear using real money or convertible virtual money? The West is experimenting with models like this.

Lastly, this intentionally targets businesses. Individuals who do this as a casual thing are apparently in the clear. This line could be hard to enforce.

Ted Castronova thinks that

In the United States, today is Thanksgiving. We’re often asked what we are thankful for. Today, I am thankful for the Korean National Assembly.

Opinion: My oh my is this the right answer.

but I am not nearly so sanguine. I can envision many perfectly legitimate business models that might founder on such a law, and lots of gray area between personal trades and business ones. If the intent is to go after money laundering and the sort of organized crime that seemed to hover around the Sea Story scandal, tackling entities officially designated as “businesses” ain’t gonna do the trick. What about a personal trade matchmaking site, that then derives its revenue off of ads? Loose coalitions of users who work together to farm and use such a site to move the goods? What about SOE’s Exchange service, which facilitates, but takes a cut?

RMT is inevitable. The real question is scope and scale of it, how damaging or beneficial it is to a given virtual world. Blanket proscriptions in a field where we have both Kart Rider and Second Life seem to me liable to catch up dolphins along with the tuna, so to speak.