July 5th 2009 10:02 pm
GOLD FARMING HERE TO STAY Plus What Say You, Gold Sellers?
Hope y’all had a happy Fourth. I know I did. Now back to work.
Okay, so WoW gold buyers like me flipped when news broke out last week that the Chinese government was going to eradicate gold farming and all things RMT.
Turns out it was all a false alarm.
Reader Lestat de Lioncourt sent me a couple of these links over the weekend:
CHINA STILL OKAY WITH GOLD FARMING
Virtual currencies restricted, not gold
Earlier in the week we reported the surprising news that China had banned gold farming, new rules jeopardizing a business worth millions of dollars, with a large presence in the People’s Republic.
We learn today, however, that gold farming has in fact not been banned - rather virtual currencies are no longer exchangeable for real money; the opposite side of the trade from gold farming.
QQ coins are big in China, and present a virtual currency that can be used to pay for real items, or even for gambling, and this exchange has now been banned - virtual currencies now only useful in a wholly virtual context.
This from ICTs for Development’s Richard Heeks: "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."
CHINESE GOLD FARMING BAN ISN’T, ACTUALLY
A lot of game reporters are sticking their foot in their mouth today, yours truly included. You see, we read the news and write about it. So when we read what sounds like a logical news story, sometimes we don’t go really deep checking facts, especially if those facts may be in foreign languages.
So when we broke the story that China was trying to crack down on gold selling, we were skeptically joyous. Sure, we realized it was more in theory than anything, but at least it was positive change for a problem that has plagued MMOs since, well, MMOs existed.
But then comes along some people with degrees and less on the line when it comes to gold farming, and they calmly point out that the Chinese decree isn’t to ban gold farming. In fact, it’s not a ban of the exchange for real world money for virtual currency at all: it’s the exact opposite.
So it’s confirmed: gold farming is here to stay. Whew.
In my "panic" just before the Fourth, I took it upon myself to contact a few gold sellers for their reaction on the initial news release. I guess you could say I was desperate to hear from the big players what they thought of the alleged ban. Picture me sending emails on caffeine overdrive - that’s how on edge I was!
One of them sent a standard thanks-for-your-email-we’ll-get-back-to-you-soon reply.This should be interesting. Stay tuned.
P.S. It both irks and amuses me how some writers have expressed disappointment that the gold farm ban wasn’t for real. I can understand how they hate the spammers in the game, but to equate RMT with organized crime is just too much. But then again, I blame those scammy Chinese gold sellers for giving RMT a bad name — like I said a gazillion times, they are NOT helping give RMT the cred it deserves. What the Chinese government should do is police the industry to make sure those spammers and scammers are kicked out pronto!!!
P.P.S. Speaking of the devil, I got a phishing email from dem scammers pretending to be Blizzard. Read all about it in my MySpace blog post .
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2 Comments »
Cathryn Wheel on 06 Jul 2009 at 5:50 am #
All’s well that ends well, eh EGF? =D
Littlebark on 06 Jul 2009 at 10:04 am #
So I can stop having a mini panic attack now? I was ready to stock up as much gold as my pay check would allow….