"China Outlaws Virtual Money for Trading" sorta

A bunch of news articles recently:
ZDNetAsia
The Malaysian Insider
Virtual World News

And what analysts thought of it:
SeekingAlpha

Well, I have questions.
What happens to gold farmers for US WoW, will they be affected? They are playing in a US hosted game. I think they won't be able to sell gold anymore.

For violators, what are the penalties? Will it punish the kids or the company?

Maybe gamers will just go to games hosted outside China...
All those free to play gamers who play for long hours to sell the gold they picked up will no longer be able to sell their gold for real cash. What will they do? Will they still continue to play their game? And what about the game companies? They want players to play in their free to play games so that they will exchange their gold for game value cards from rich players.

What game out there doesn't have gambling-like gameplay? And what about all those games in development? Will they change the game mechanics so that it will follow the new law?

Well...gambling. Analogy in tradeable card games: Opening a booster pack gets you random cards. And sometimes you can get a rare card, which you can sell for a lot of cash. It is somehow similar to gambling.

This new law doesn't really affect games outside China. But since game makers make one game and then distribute it to different countries, maybe they will make a China version of their MMO. But then, a treasure chest is part of the fantasy! Maybe they can make everything "cannot be traded, discarded or sold". It unimaginable that you can't trade with anyone, but is that really the case?

It seems farfetched that virtual currency will affect the actual economy, but China just put forth this regulation. Maybe it doesn't affect the economy now but will do so in the future, that's why they stopped it.

The loophole may be the definition that tools and weapon are not currency. So maybe, players can trade in bullets or elemental jewels, perhaps.

The gold farmers might be unemployed. That's surely going to affect the economy. Also, China is going to lose that stream of money coming in from gold buyers. I don't know. From a right or wrong standpoint, it's the right thing to do, but from a money-making perspective, it's not the way to go. Maybe there's another way to make a ton of money that's legitimate.

Or mayeb I misinterpreted this whole thing, because China banning their own gold farmers seem too good to be true.

I think what they want is you can't pay for real food or clothes using QQ coins.