Comments on: China Bans Goldfarming (Not)

By: kaputik

kaputik — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:52:01 +0000

Nice, golden bricks :)

By: James F

James F — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:37:09 +0000

Hate to be a downer, but you might want to take another look at your source. They’ve updated the article to say that the ban is only on using virtual currency to buy physical goods and services. Apparently using physical currency to buy virtual goods is fine by them.

By: Yang

Yang — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:35:11 +0000

@Ayekay: If there is a inflation/surplus of QQcoins, Tencent is likely the first to react, It means real money for them. I’m skeptical about the jump 70% bit – there’s always unlimited official source at an even price, and if black market QQcoins are that cheap to begin with, I would like some! If that’s true it’s indeed a quite well hidden market ;)

Though, QQ is huge in China, Tencent claims more than 300 million “active” instant message accounts. QQcoins could function as a token: always ample demand; solid value – backed by the single largest social networking corporation of China; easily transferable, relatively hard to track. Importantly: It never expires, so if you ban its exchange to RMB, traders can always store it, use it as real money, or just sell it – nobody can eliminate black market, nobody.

In fact WoW pre-paid card (WoWchina is a time-based service) is traded for in-game gold and DKP, or even for “outside” things. Now to think of it, packets of cigarettes had played a similar role on earlier stage of Chinese underground trading;)

By: Mad Doc MacRae

Mad Doc MacRae — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:28:47 +0000

I guess the Chinese government didn’t read that article posting in one of the Sunday Papers hear about how goldfarming is the natural reaction to boring gameplay, and is thus a good thing.

By: Chemix

Chemix — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:27:00 +0000

well yes, giving your credit card number and information to use it for the transaction (and by that, further transactions) to a person of anonymous background is likely not a good idea.

By: Agrajag

Agrajag — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:35:47 +0000

@mandrill: Forget the spooks tinfoil. What gold farming usually funds, or funded by, is identity theft. I’ve seen several articles about the link between the two.

By: Chemix

Chemix — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:01:36 +0000

I can imagine it now, WoW sweatshops, and I’m terrified, really

By: Taillefer

Taillefer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:34:39 +0000

These are some big numbers. I was just verifying the 220 million users thing Ayekay mentioned. The website states 800 million registered users and 300 million active. Somewhat embarrassing then, that this is the first time I’d heard of QQ.

No wonder they tried to get some money out of it.

By: Frye

Frye — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:10:07 +0000

Having a lot of gold became meaningless over time. You just couldnt buy anything useful with it. Except maybe some mount or crappy gear. I, for one stopped a while back when it truly sank in they have given up on balancing classes and decided people should just go and play alts, plus healing (as a priest) was so much dumbed down, i could no longer stay focused for more than 20 minutes.

By: Ayekay

Ayekay — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:50:57 +0000

@UncleLou

“I don’t think it would be untaxable”

They did try to put a personal income tax on virtual currency trading last year (I linked to it back up at the top of the comments). I’m guessing it’s too hard to track, especially when people are using the coins for gambling purposes.

By: Ayekay

Ayekay — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:48:01 +0000

“What’s so terrible about gold farming…why does the Chinese government care?”

The ban isn’t about gold farming. It’s about QQ coins and possibly similar virtual currencies that are used as black market media of exchange. QQ has 220 million active users, most of them in China. WoW has just under 12 million, most of them outside China. I would be surprised if this had more than a peripheral effect on gold farming ops, especially because they specifically still allow you to sell in-game items.

By: Radishlaw

Radishlaw — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:50:56 +0000

This is akin to people making a new type of coin in your home country.
I think this ban is related to virtual currency being able to be exchanged for real world money, and thus are able to avoid taxation, and can the source of a lot of economical problems. In typical Chinese government fashion, instead of painstaking defining what is okay and what is not, they would ban everything related instead, and that is what in my opinion happened here.
Don’t expect gold farming to be extinct though.