More on China and virtual currency

 Posted by (Visited 6185 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 012009
 

The PlaynoEvil blog has the best summary i have seen of the key issues — and they still have wideranging implications!

– If the service is shut off, customers are entitled to a refund of unused currency.

– “virtual currency should be exchanged only for virtual goods and services provided by the issuer of the currency” (this would cause problems for a lot of the third party currency folks here in the US and elsewhere)

– Companies already involved in virtual currency trading are required to register with the local cultural affairs bureau within three months.

– Minors may not buy virtual money. THIS IS POTENTIALLY HUGE. If enforced, this would essentially shut down most MMOs that use the Free-to-Play business model.

— via Chinese Government DOES NOT ban Gold Farming – Puts Free-to-Play in Jeopardy Instead – PlayNoEvil Game Security News & Analysis.

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China Hasn’t Banned Gold Farming

 Posted by (Visited 6211 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 012009
 

What it has banned is spending virtual currency for real world items. In other words, it is more about defending the real world currency than anything else. I have mentioned in the past that many people in China regard the QQ coin (Tencent’s virtual currency) as solid enough to put savings in. Sounds like maybe the government thinks that is a bad idea.

This is a government restriction on the use of the quasi-Paypal-like currencies (mainly QQ coins) that are used extensively in China to pay for virtual game stuff. As announced they can now only be used to pay for virtual stuff, and you can’t buy real things with them as game companies were allowing to happen, nor can you gamble. This 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.

—ICTs for Development

[via a commenter, via Blue’s News]

Chinese jail for virtual currency extortion

 Posted by (Visited 7639 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Jun 092009
 

So this gang of bullies strongarms a guy in an Internet cafe in China, and extorts a bunch of virtual goods and a pile of QQ coins from him. He gets caught, and the court rules that since the virtual goods were purchased, this was a valid case of extortion. Thee of the gang got fines, and the ringleader — three years in jail!

According to the Xinhua news agency, the man, along with three others, assaulted another man in the cafe, forcing him to give up various virtual goods and 100,000 yuan ($14,700) worth of the virtual currency known as QQ coins. The coins are the currency utilized by the major Chinese web portal, Tencent. It is used for the purchase of online goods and premium services for supported titles.

— Virtual Currency Extortion Leads to Three Years of Prison in China.

It isn’t too surprising that this sort of thing is getting taken seriously there; industry experts in China assess the virtual goods market there as being 25 times the size of the US market. (You can download an interesting report on this here, or just check out this slide show).

New China MMO stats

 Posted by (Visited 11554 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Apr 092009
 
  • 63% growth in 2008
  • $2.8b in revenue
  • Six operators brought in more than $200m last year…
  • …but each of them tended to have just one title that did it for them
  • Social networking continues to grow there (55m users) and cross-pollinate with games

Top games in terms of concurrency:

  • Netease’s Fantasy Westward Journey : 1,800,000 concurrent users.
  • Giant’s Zhengtu Online : 1,500,000 (this is the one that’s controversial for its “gambling” nature)
  • Tencent’s Dungeon and Fighter: 1,200,000 (see here, sidescroller)
  • Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: 1,000,000

from China’s MMO market to hit $5.5b by 2012 // News.

China’s taxman came

 Posted by (Visited 6489 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Nov 032008
 

Virtual Worlds News: China Levies 20% Tax on Virtual Currencies.

This is completely unsurprising — after all, levying tax on earnings made via selling virtual goods is something that the US does already (if you make money, they expect a cut, no matter where how how you made it) and it’s a lot more common in China than here. But there’s a wrinkle:

The ruling applies to QQ coins and the like as well as gameworld currencies, and based on the WSJ report, seems to apply whether or not the value is cashed out.

The announcement, which was distributed to local tax bureaus, specifically takes aim at those who buy virtual currency from gamers and surfers and sell it to others at a mark-up. Taxation officials are granted the right to determine the original price of online virtual currency if the individual fails to provide proof of an original price, it says.

Interestingly, companies seem to be exempt from taxes like these right now, presumably because the government there did so in order to incentivize economic growth in the sector.

However, if the value is not cashed out and taxes are still paid, that could mean (maybe should mean) that the companies are liable if they manage to accidentally delete some of it. In other words, they’re banks.

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