I posted this on Twitter & FB last night shortly before it hit your blog.

Another relevant quote from the article:

“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.”

I have a sense that this may be more about China not wanting any underground currencies or, worse, any de facto alternate currencies in their country. There’s simply too little difference between the electric number in your “real” bank account and the one in your game’s bank window.

Very interesting. I can’t really determine from the news article if it’s going to effect WoW gold selling and the like though. Seems like they want to crack down on the whole QQ coins thing which sounds like a means of people laundering money but it doesn’t explicitly talk about other games or currency.

And maybe this means that gold farmers just start selling items and goods directly to the player instead of currency.

I find it hard to believe the police will enforce this on a ground level. Don’t expect any PC Workshops to be raided, maybe a few MASSIVE farms with thousands of employees to make an example, but this is an industry that employs far too many people now — it won’t be stopped by a law like this.

Basically China just halted all the large scale, more legitimate operations. There was a blub in there about QQ coins so I’m not sure if this is hurting F2P or not. Maybe it will just prevent people from trading QQ coins with other accounts after purchase, locking them to your account like most F2P microtransaction systems in the east and west.

In any case this law most likely will hurt the large businesses that will have to adapt around it — I doubt the PC Workshops that farm WoW will see any change at all. Most are too small for anyone to care, and cops have more important things to do than crack down on people trying to make a living in a (relatively) victimless industry.

So you heard it here first, there’s not going to be some massive disappearance of farmers. Big companies will need to adapt to maintain legality, but small fries (most farmers) will keep on truckin’ as always.

Even if they did stop farming in China, the rest of the developing world is getting in on the action at an increasing rate!

@ golergka

“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.

Well, I’m sure gold FRAMING is still legal. FARMING, however…