Gold Farmers May Be Safe: Chinese Law Revisited
It looks like Gold Farming might remain legal in China, for awhile at least. After a University of Manchester's professor Richard Heeks looked over the new Chinese law on virtual currency, the law is slightly more specific. The main focus of the law is trading virtual currency for real world goods, and gambling, not the trade of money for virtual goods.
This [new Chinese law] therefore is not about what gold farming clients do: use real money to buy these virtual currencies; it's the mirror image. And it's not about the major trade in gold farming such as World of Warcraft, which relates to other types of virtual currency. And it's not about buying/selling in-game items. And it's not about the power-levelling of avatars. Bottom line: it's not about gold farming.
The real purpose of this new law is to maintain governmental control over currency, rather than letting the value of a dollar be controlled by the developers of an online game. It is pretty obvious that an influx of foreign currency to their country is not a bad thing at all. A multimillion dollar (possibly even billion) industry is not something any government wants to snuff out.
Is Gold Farming Really Banned? Confusion Over China's New Virtual Currency Rules [GamePolitics]
Asterick
Posted to Video Games on 1 July 2009
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