The new laws, despite curbing gold farmers, aren't making their online game companies very happy. When the law was announced, stock prices for online game companies dropped.
To sum it up:
- The new laws prevent any kind of gambling with virtual currencies. Which, in essence, is how a good chunk of money is made by the online game operators there (pay cash, get something that has a chance of dropping something good).
- Virtual goods can only be used to trade with other virtual goods. This throws a wrench into some of the business deals they make (smaller company enters deal with larger company for billing etc, larger company requires smaller companies to use their virtual currency).
- Can't allow in-game secondary market for players to trade virtual currency. As per the article, this hits NetEase's game that was perceived as being cheaper than other free to play (F2P) games because "free" players could earn in-game currency to exchange with "pay" players, and then redeem the real money trade (RMT) virtual cash for more game time.
On the one hand, I think the Chinese government has the right idea to nip what could be a huge problem in the bud: vitual currencies impacting real life currencies. Read the amazing story of Entropia Universe and how they have real life banks doing real life business in game; this means nothing less than earn gold in the game, go to a real life atm and withdraw that gold as dollars. AWESOME. But, if they get big enough... very dangerous to the economy.
On the other hand, I think they moved too fast and too far with the laws.
