Wednesday, July 1, 2009

China Limits/Bans Use Of Virtual Currency



2 days ago Chinese government decided to limit the use of virtual currency. The law says that it’s forbidden to trade virtual currency for real money (i.e. selling WoW gold) with one exception: Only the game publisher is allowed to do such exchanges.

The official statement of the government is to limit online gambling. However, I personally doubt this is the true reason. Most of the gold farmers companies are not based in china, but are outside of china and they only have people from china do the farming itself. This way china won’t see much money from the gold farming (taxes etc.).

Imho there are two main reasons for this: Dugi's Ultimate World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King PvP and Leveling Guide

  • Chinese Government only wants (Chinese?) based companies to employ/sell virtual goods (so they can better regulate and get taxes from it)
  • The exclusion can also be an indication of the soon to be started Chinese virtual world in Entropia Universe (an as MMO camouflaged casino like online game) called CRD (Cyber Recreation Development Corp.). This news however is not new, there were already plans announced two years ago (Source: Redline China)

Original News can be found at InformationWeek.

Dugi's Ultimate World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King PvP and Leveling Guide