China cracks down on virtual cash

[UUUU]

Probably the stereotype of "gold farmer" has become so synonomous with China on a world scale that they feel the need to change their appearance to the rest of the world. Don't think it would affect EU because the direct relationship between cash input and cash output and there isn't really any activity that nets enough without an investment to make it viable on the same scale as non-mentioned games grinding for gold. The recent sweating bug has shown what would happen if a bunch of people spent all their game time doing that.

[roughrider]

I'm for the Swedish way of doing it. If the cash is in the game its non taxable. You only pay tax on the amount that you withdraw.

[Rumsponge]

I think there's a better description of the new law on The Escapist-

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...ming-After-All

To me, it seems like bad news for CRD and, as a result, MA. But, I've never been completely clear on the whole CRD situation.

[aridash]

Originally Posted by Rumsponge

I think there's a better description of the new law on The Escapist-

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...ming-After-All

To me, it seems like bad news for CRD and, as a result, MA. But, I've never been completely clear on the whole CRD situation.

yes, thats a better interpretation, its not about gold farming. but im not sure it is concerned about people from outside China using virtual money to buy real items from within China.

[Rumsponge]

ok, so I got to wondering how this would effect CRD. I went to http://www.crd.gov.cn/ but it's gone. Then I did a search for any recent news on CRD, but can't find any. Did I miss some news about them folding?

[aridash]

no mention of CRD in Annual report, so maybe this does have an impact after all.

[Lavawalker]

Originally Posted by aridash

Chinese govenment is directly involved in the CRD project, so i really dont think this will impact on MA or EU. the new rule is reported to be to prevent unofficial trading of game currency in the real world, where as MA offers the option to withdraw money through an official channel.

This is the correct interpretation.

The ban refers to things such as external gold traders for subscription based games. Your IGE websites and affilates of the world etc.

This ban protects Entropia Universe by not allowing PED to be traded externally on such websites along side the gold for subscription games.

Entropia Universe is the provider of virtual currency and all transactions involving this real world currency in virtual form is contained within the operating boundaries of the service provider.

ie. MindBank will handle all transfers
From the real world USD ---> PED and out again PED --> USD.

China is a horrid market when it comes to MMOs, a good 50% of the gaming population play games solely for the purpose of virtual currency farming and external reselling of this virtual currency. (Usually at a cheaper rate for large quantity, imagine the fraud attempts on credit cards and the such if this were allowed)

The only way to have resolved this problem is through what has been enacted by the Chinese government, which are also the major shareholder of CRD.

[Lavawalker]

Originally Posted by Rumsponge

I think there's a better description of the new law on The Escapist-

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...ming-After-All

To me, it seems like bad news for CRD and, as a result, MA. But, I've never been completely clear on the whole CRD situation.

Interesting article.

Lets see how it all pans out.

[Lance]

I hate the chinese government, they seem to think they rule the people. It's supposed to be the other way round. Wake up Chinese people! Revolt and demand democracy and freedom!

[OdessaSilverber]

Originally Posted by Nicole

Hmmm off hand I think this would be good for EU, but I’m puzzled why China Government would stop its citizens from making / pulling in money from other countries. Hell they are making a profit and bring more money into the country ; at least the way I see it.

Seems the government is ok with people making money from games but wants them to only spend and use that money in the game; sounds like a perfect match for EU?

No, not really. Most "gold seller" companies are located outisde of china. That being said, most people who profit from gold selling are the companies. These companies only have people who live in china and do the work, but the majority of the profits goes to the company.

A chinese goldfarmer works like 12 hours/days for 80 EUR (in a month!!!). However, for 80 EUR you get like 10.000 World of Warcraft Gold. And this isn't really much. For example a good Mount or item costs 15.000 gold. Some guilds are charing 30.000 Gold to leech people through hard mode instances for meta-achievement (where you get a very fast flying drake as reward).

And a chinese Farmers can do like 5.000-10.000 golds a day (depending if he finds valuable stuff or sales go well). Even an average player who only plays 3-4 hours daily (and do not have to do high-end raid 5 hours every day), can do 1.000-2.000 gold a day, even more (depending on his profession).

That being said, everyone with 2 brain cells can see, that 95% of all money made from farming is not going to china. Even though 80 EUR are enough money to survive for 1 month in china, it's not much compared to the "value" of the chinese workers work. If the chinese would sell the gold by themselves, they could get like 300-800 EUR/months, which is REALLY much money in china. But this is not the case. Chinese are (as usual) threated as slaves by the western countries.

So the ban of the illegal gold selling is probably to preserve this kind of money loss (read: make other countries rich). If only official money exchanges (run by the publishers of that game or plattform is allowed, which is the case and OP's source is simply bad and wrong), then only companies located in china are allowed to exchange the currency to the chinese there. And since the publishers for chinese MMOs are/have to be located in china, they can be taxed for selling virtual currency.

One thing most people don't know, some goldfarmers even advertise in chinese games themselves. Who ever tried the Aion Chinese Beta, would noticed that there was as much gold spam advertising ingame, as there is in other western games (Lineage II, WoW, etc.). This is additionally not possible anymore neither and the goverment can tax it much better.