Korea goes after RMT
Covered also on TerraNova. Finally, Korean Governement are to Illegalize RMT. is an article over at Virtual-Economy.org
What does it say?
Apparently as fallout from the gambling scandal I have mentioned previously, it would prevent businesses from mediating exchanges of money for virtual items. It would also prevent businesses from repurchasing the “outcomes” of said transactions, such as in-game currency or points. Violation would be punished with a fine.
This would go into effect by next month.
(Repurchasing the items themselves is apparently OK — but the article further reports that there’s another bill in the works to ver those, which would be submitted for consideration next year).
So, interesting points: clearly, this is targeted at people who were taking virtual currency of some sort, such as Sea Story tickets, and reselling, laundering money, etc. Basically, this is similar to the IGE model here in the US. Arguably, some other US cases, like Gaming Open Market, would have fallen under this as well. It’s going to be hard to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses, IMHO. There are cases where third-party RMT activity is tacitly encouraged, for example. There are cases where it might be a legit means of adding onto the service — one thinks here for something like the “pretend markets” for various things that are out there.
Exceptions were clearly carved out for the “broadcast” providers of digital assets, meaning the companies that use microtransactions to sell digital items directly to end-users. Since this is a major business model in Korea, it’s unsurprised that it remains untouched. However, what about the potential for worlds where end-users are the content creators, a la Second Life? Do they count as “third-party businesses” under this bill? Would a user making content for, say, GoPets, be disallowed from selling it for real cash?
Most of the Korean games have one-way sales only, and do not have secondary sales within their framework; if you buy something for real money, it’s locked to you, and you cannot transfer it. There’s lots of methods for “gifting,” of course. What about the world where resales are permitted, and in-world secondary markets are supposed to appear using real money or convertible virtual money? The West is experimenting with models like this.
Lastly, this intentionally targets businesses. Individuals who do this as a casual thing are apparently in the clear. This line could be hard to enforce.
Ted Castronova thinks that
In the United States, today is Thanksgiving. We’re often asked what we are thankful for. Today, I am thankful for the Korean National Assembly.
Opinion: My oh my is this the right answer.
but I am not nearly so sanguine. I can envision many perfectly legitimate business models that might founder on such a law, and lots of gray area between personal trades and business ones. If the intent is to go after money laundering and the sort of organized crime that seemed to hover around the Sea Story scandal, tackling entities officially designated as “businesses” ain’t gonna do the trick. What about a personal trade matchmaking site, that then derives its revenue off of ads? Loose coalitions of users who work together to farm and use such a site to move the goods? What about SOE’s Exchange service, which facilitates, but takes a cut?
RMT is inevitable. The real question is scope and scale of it, how damaging or beneficial it is to a given virtual world. Blanket proscriptions in a field where we have both Kart Rider and Second Life seem to me liable to catch up dolphins along with the tuna, so to speak.
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on other sites, only for us all to be trumped by the Korean National Assembly as they consider making unauthorized real-money transfers (RMT) for game content illegal. Castronova loves the news. Koster, ever the defender of user-generated content, is less enthused. I say it’s a good first step that has been a long time coming, but the only way such legislation is going to work in the rest of the world is if we begin to understand how intellectual property differs from material goods
not a place like your job where the money you get is received from someone else. The money you get from the enemies is created ex nihilo, *poof.* Every time someone kills something, money comes into existence. It’s very timely with the news on TN and Raph commentary of Korea looking to ban professional illegal RMT’ing. For me the problem with a lot of virtal economic models in MMO’s is that they downplay the real chaos of price changes and have, like Zubon notes, endless money supplies. So their biggest problems
[…] (Edit: Looks like Raph already have some good analysis up as well.) […]
This is quite an interesting stroy, I wonder why Blizzard never persued people who were dealing with Diablo 2 items on ebay. I guess that makers of Second Life are behind the money that they are hoping to earn, so the do not like others to trade outside of Second life.
Thank you for sharing this story with me !
[…] (Edit: Looks like Raph already have some good analysis up as well.) […]
[…] (Edit: Looks like Raph already have some good analysis up as well.) […]
[…] RMT is inevitable. The real question is scope and scale of it, how damaging or beneficial it is to a given virtual world. Blanket proscriptions in a field where we have both Kart Rider and Second Life seem to me liable to catch up dolphins along with the tuna, so to speak. 댓글달기 https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/23/korea-goes-after-rmt/#comments CopyBot Redux, over on VentureBeat Raph 2006-11-24 02:41 작성 | Game talk Matt Marshall of VentureBeat asked me to write a brief article on the CopyBot thing, and here it is: Investing time and money in virtual worlds: Caveat Emptor. 댓글달기 https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/23/copybot-redux-over-on-venturebeat/#comments NPR : Makers of Gaming Systems Reach Out to Wider Audience Raph 2006-11-23 08:33 작성 | Game talk The audio is up for the NPR thing I did today: NPR : Makers of Gaming Systems Reach Out to Wider Audience. 댓글달기 https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/22/npr-makers-of-gaming-systems-reach-out-to-wider-audience/#comments Library of Congress likes retro games Raph 2006-11-23 07:53 작성 | Game talk There’s some new rules in town: the Library of Congress, based on recommendations from the Register of Copyrights, has decided that there are six new cases where circumventing the DMCA is OK for certain purposes. […]
[…] Castronova loves the news. Koster, ever the defender of user-generated content, is less enthused. I say it’s a good first step that has been a long time coming, but the only way such legislation is going to work in the rest of the world is if we begin to understand how intellectual property differs from material goods–and that ain’t gonna be easy. […]
[…] Recently, Steve Danuser wrote over at Moorgard.com about the topic of the proposed Korean legislation that the only way such legislation is going to work in the rest of the world is if we begin to understand how intellectual property differs from material goods–and that ain’t gonna be easy. […]
[…] Indeed, this is bigger than just bad publicity – Remember that thing about the Korean stance on RMT? I imagine that’s a country SOE wants to continue doing business in … but I could be mistaken. […]