More on China and virtual currency

 Posted by (Visited 6192 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 6226 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]

Facebook & virtual currency

 Posted by (Visited 10242 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: ,
May 202009
 

I wrote a blog post about this yesterday, but alas, I lost it.  CNN has an article about Facebook’s virtual currency plans, which are already moving into alpha.

Facebook is researching the idea of creating a unified currency but is “very early” in the process and has not committed to it, the site said in a statement to CNN.

Currently, applications on the site — which allow users to play games with each other and trade gifts — are powered by currencies made by the application’s developers, not by Facebook.

These developers are making good money on the system, and Facebook is missing out on profits in that area, said Hudson, of the Virtual Goods Summit.

— ‘Virtual currencies’ power social networks, online games – CNN.com.

Now, Facebook already has a virtual currency — credits — which you use to buy gifts. But what is being talked about is opening up an API to their currency system through apps.

For those who haven’t noticed, the open APIs Facebook is creating are allowing access to data such as login from anywhere on the Net. So in effect, this could lead to a fairly standard currency fo any site that accepts Facebook logins.

The real play here, as Information Week notes, is to become a “gold standard” of sorts, similar to the way in which Facebook and LinkedIn are already becoming stronger standards for online identity than OpenID is (the flip side is, of course, than you can now use OpenId to log into Facebook!).

The notion of “customer ownership” starts getting very blurry in a world like this. It won’t be long until you see major MMORPGs allowing you to log in with social networking credentials rather than requiring you to create their own account (we at Metaplace already allow this). And if these currency plans move forward and go far enough, we could see many users just paying their subs or their microtransactions with Facebook credits.

For smaller apps and websites, this can make a great deal of sense. Lots of other players are trying to establish base virtual currencies that work across sites and apps.

Why Isn’t Money Points?

 Posted by (Visited 15225 times)  Game talk, Reading  Tagged with: , , , ,
Apr 282009
 

Mint.com is a personal finance site that won the judges’ award at TechCrunch40 the same year that Metaplace won the audience award. It helps you do budgeting and other such dull tasks, all in slick interface.

Despite the zillions of products out there to do this, we still managed to wheel, deal, and borrow ourselves into a financial crisis (that is still ongoing, though swine flu may be eclipsing it just now). Clearly, something was lacking in the appeal here, for if said product category were truly successful, we wouldn’t be in this fix.

Now, Mint is in closed beta on a feature that turns personal finance into a game, complete with points earned for doing things like socking away some cash into the savings account each month, or switching to a credit card with annual rewards. Get enough points in a sustained way, and you too can be a Financial Guru.

This seems like a fairly straightforward harnessing of game-style incentive systems towards a laudable goal (though I should note that said credit card with rewards is likely from one of Mint’s partners). But honestly — money is points anyway, isn’t it? Why is it that we value the cash less than the flat-screen TV?

Continue reading »

China’s taxman came

 Posted by (Visited 6502 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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