China Bans Gold Farming

InformationWeek is reporting that the Chinese government has declared a ban on the sale of virtual goods for real currency. This move is poised to shut down a several billion yuan a year business that has been growing by leaps and bounds every year. "The trading of virtual currency for real cash employs hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and generates between $200 million and $1 billion annually, according to a 2008 survey conducted by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester. He estimates that between 80% and 85% of gold farmers are based in China. [...] Game companies typically forbid gold farming but committed virtual currency traders find ways around such rules. Some game companies have recognized the futility of trying to ban the practice and have built virtual commerce into their game infrastructure."

Comments

Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[eldavojohn]

The trading of virtual currency for real cash employs hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and generates between $200 million and $1 billion annually, according to a 2008 survey conducted by Richard Heeks at the University of Manchester. He estimates that between 80% and 85% of gold farmers are based in China.

Dear god! Eight tenths of one billion dollars is a lot of cash!

The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146,000.

So what is it, hundreds of millions or hundreds of thousands? Because one is a nice chunk of change while the other is, across China's population, laughable.

These numbers just aren't adding up here. There seems to be a large disparity between what the Chinese government reports and what Heeks' study finds. It's entirely possible that Heeks' is stretching stats to make his research sound more important and news worthy. It's also possible China is understating the impact their ban will have so they can "cure you of your illnesses." The reality is probably both a little of column A and a little of column B.

Some game companies have recognized the futility of trying to ban the practice and have built virtual commerce into their game infrastructure.

And now China will realize that futility. One would think that China would enjoy the tax on those who report this income but now it's just going to all go under-the-table. Hell, I'd say tax it but I'm certain China wants to look like the caring government attempting to heal the afflicted youth.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Hojima]

Personally, I'm quite happy when oppressive people with power tighten their grip. It follows the law of tension: the harder it's wound, the more likely it is to snap. Organizations such as companies that bully, to massive governments, make stupid decisions to maintain and ascertain their power, when all they do is jeopardize it more. I can't wait till they make a huge mistake on civil liberties and practically give their citizens no choice but to revolt.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

The numbers aren't adding up because the exchange rate for Chinese currency to U.S. Dollars is incorrect and the author dropped some zeroes. One Dollar is equal to ~7 Renminbi, so one billion Renminbi should be $146,000,000.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[htwf_and_ip]

the harder it's wound, the more likely it is to snap.

I thought it was "The more you tighten your' grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your' fingers."

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[eldavojohn]

Personally, I'm quite happy when oppressive people with power tighten their grip. It follows the law of tension: the harder it's wound, the more likely it is to snap.

Normally I would agree with you. But as a kid I watched tanks clear a square in China. As a result of this, the Red Cross would later report twenty five hundred people dead with seven to ten thousand wounded. The same government that dealt with those protests in that way is still in power today, twenty years later.

If that didn't do it, I don't see banning gold farming and regulating the internet doing it. The Chinese government is a new kind of oppression that has survived many attempts to move in the opposite direction. It must be a decision made simultaneously by billions of people to change this. If you're sitting their waiting for that tension to snap, you may be waiting a lot longer than you think.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[EvanED]

(Posting in case anyone is reading at +1 or something; mod the AC up instead of me)

The parent poster is correct... TFA seems to have been changed too to be not stupid. The original version did math wrong and left off three orders of magnitude.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[dintlu]

China may enjoy the tax generated from gold farming, but virtual commerce cannot be regulated and controlled like real commerce. Ignoring the interaction between Real and Virtual economies is headstrong and foolish, so from my vantage point it appears that China is letting some other country pave the way for virtual regulation rather than saddle itself with unique problems caused by this novel form of earning money.

Think of it this way, if gold farming really is worth $1b USD per year, this is equivalent to the annual income of 400,000 Chinese citizens. If, for whatever reason, the purchase of virtual goods is "outlawed" in a country, or the virtual world in which gold farming is performed bans the practice, or the virtual world's maintaining corporation goes out of business, that's 400,000 people without a livelihood anymore, people who are now a burden on the state.

These are pretty basic scenarios and that's just off the cuff. I'm sure more consideration from brighter minds could produce even more coherent objections to allowing gold farming to grow as a legitimate industry.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[GreatAntibob]

Why would the people revolt? I'd be willing to bet most Chinese citizens think these restrictions are reasonable.

It's one of those "common sense" type ideas in Western nations that everybody wants a democracy and that everybody wants nearly unlimited personal freedom. It's simply not true. Many (maybe most) Chinese people not only approve of some limits on speech and civil liberties but think the government may not be going far enough. Many of my co-workers are Chinese citizens, and they are just as happy to have the government set ridiculous (by Western standards) limits on civil liberties, tell people what an ideal society looks like, and go along happily, as long as there's food on the table, taxes are low (or non-existent), and the occasional corrupt official is put in prison/sentenced to death. So what if the government owns most major businesses and that the low taxes are a result of not giving the people a chance to share in the wealth? The biggest complaints I've heard from them over the last year have been that the US needs to butt out and that food prices have been too high (mainly because the standard of living is going up).

High minded ideals are great for students, but the people living over there (and here, for that matter) are more concerned with being fed, with educating/raising their children, and with getting on without too much trouble.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146 million, not $146 thousand.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Danathar]

The thing with China....just because the west says it's not possible (censoring the internet, cracking down on dissidents, outlawing stuff) does not mean they don't try anyhow. And if they try they give it their complete attention because they actually think they CAN do it.

Remember the saying...

Just because you believe in something does not mean it's true

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[kenp2002]

As far as I read it they are talking money EARNED not neccesarily exchanged. So both could be accurate depending on which end they are on. Also who knows how much dissapears into pockets so to speak.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[sakdoctor]

Get with the time. Now there is a massive Chinese middle class that have more than enough food, and are trying to figure out what to spend their money on.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8113149.stm

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese Yuan is worth approximately 6.75 USD, depending on when you look. So 1 billion yuan is about 146.34 million USD, not 146 thousand as claimed. So $200 million to $1billion annually is pretty close to "several billion yuan."

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[zephris]

I personally don't care how much it means in real money. What I care about is that, suddenly, 80% to 85% of the in game spam is going to stop. It will be as if millions of voices will suddenly cry out in terror and be silenced. I, for one, welcome the new found silence. These gold farmers have been a royal pain the MMO player's side for far too long. They've been seriously screwing up in-game economies and putting grouping players on edge, camping the spawn points for high gold mobs while legit players have to make do without. China has my full support in this.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[IcyNeko]

In other news, mass migration from China to United States and Canada has occurred...

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[lgw]

So, wait, are you seriously arguing that the Chinese government was smart to destroy the livelihood of 400K people to prevent the possible future destruction of the livelihood of 400K people? I take it you also support the death penalty for failure to wear a seatbelt?

BTW, the sale of virtual goods is "outlawed" in most of the games in which it occurs (without much effect) and gold farmers often move from game to game as popularity shifts, so thee are non-issues. "Gold Farming" is a legitimate industry - it's perhaps the first large-scale remote service industry, and it's no sillier than hiring someone to mow your yard for you.

I guess Communists are still just struggling with this whole "free market" concept - outlawing somehting just moves the market underground. Something America is trying equally hard not to learn about the War on Drugs(TM).

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[OttoErotic]

Does......does 'sakdoctor' mean what I think it means? Because I think it means that you changed it from sac to sak and now all I can picture is some kind of Gestapo testicular surgeon, which is awesome.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Hojima]

Seeing as that was a move that the government regretted so much that it's practically purged from their history, and that it was one of the major events that contributed to their economical reforms, I'd say it might be sooner than later. Obviously the little hundred million dollar dent that this law made isn't going to do the trick, but the more the middle class gets bolstered, the more filled bellies with higher ambitions will appear. And once that number gets high enough, who knows what little events will make them snap. I'm only afraid of how much damage the government might do to take its final breath.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[fizzup]

I was having breakfast in Idaho City, Idaho around the time the Chinese government put down the Tianenmen Square protests. I overheard a guy at a nearby table say, "This wouldn't have happened if the Chinese were armed, I tell ya." I nearly laughed out loud, but I took a moment to really think about what he said. For the first time in my life, I understood the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

The First Amendment is the first line of defense; the Second Amendment is the last.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[StikyPad]

It's a pretty safe bet that the figure is in the millions USD, but beyond that it's hard to say.

While my sample size is very small, 3 out of the 4 people I know IRL who play WoW have each dropped $200 on such services. If we assume that 1% of the WoW population spends half that, and that each 8 characters represent 1 account, that gives us $772k by itself. And that's just a very conservative estimate for one game, since some self-reported figures are much higher. If we expand our assumptions to say that each 4 characters represents 1 account, and that 15% of those accounts have purchased $100 worth of gold or other services, we end up around $23M -- a number which I still suspect is conservative.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[dintlu]

400k times 20% per year.

I was only speculating on China's rationale, that what may not be a problem now becomes problematic as it grows over time.

Examining potential interactions between virtual economies and real economies is more productive than dismissing them outright and failing into your old, familiar free-market-versus-communism-death-penalty-war-on-drugs-blah-blah-blah argumentative schema.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[eldavojohn]

Seeing as that was a move that the government regretted so much that it's practically purged from their history ...

You live in a pretty fucked up world where sweeping a mistake under the rug is a sign of regret. I don't know about you but I was raised that if you fuck up, you admit it and then you apologize for it. If that's me asserting my Occidental values on the Orient, I'm sorry. That's just how things should be. The survivors of those killed deserve it and the dead should be honored and memorialized. They died for reform and they should not be forgotten. I think that is a fundamental respect that underlies all cultural boundaries.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[JoeMerchant]

The Chinese government is a new kind of oppression that has survived many attempts to move in the opposite direction.

I'd say that the Chinese government is the product of the oldest, longest running civilized society on the face of the planet - they've taken oppression from an art to a science, they may not have it completely down yet, but they're much further along than the "Wild West" upstarts in America.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[JoeMerchant]

Only on /. would a story about gold farming lead directly to conclusions of imminent cultural revolt and overthrow of authority.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realized that the Chinese government used tanks right? Small arms (the kind of guns allowed in the US) cannot stop a tank.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Runaway1956]

I won't attempt to make the numbers add up here. I only wish to point out that it depends on who is working the numbers, how big they get. If you play online games, you certainly know that gold mining is a pretty big problem for the gaming industry. The manner in which they deal with it varies from one company to the next. But, it is easy to imagine that the practice probably nets a billion dollars per year for the Chinese people. It IS a huge industry!!

The hundreds of thousands of dollars mentioned above can't be a drop in the bucket, because such a small amount of activity wouldn't even be noticeable in game. I played Runescape for a long time (still do occasionally) and you literally stumbled over gold miners everywhere you went in the game.

Runescape has managed to deal with the issue pretty successfully. The system isn't perfect, of course, but the miners aren't blatantly apparent anymore.

In reality, it is probably impossible to track all of the mining that is going on, and quantify it with any certainty.

Of course, that doesn't excuse the sloppy math work in TFA.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[cyber-vandal]

Chinese guns can take out tanks can they?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but w/ a sufficient supply of ammunition one can make a charge which will damage a tank's treads rendering it immobile, then one can pick off the crew when they come out to repair the treads.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[gad_zuki!]

Guns didnt help Jews, Poles, Gypsies, in WWII. An AK in every home didnt stop Sadaam from oppressing his own people. Its funny how people think a handgun or rifle works against a mechanized division.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[AmigaMMC]

No kidding. It's funny how Americans feel "protected" for having gun. While the price to pay, statistically, is 3 children shot dead in a household each day.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[worthawholebean]

One billion yuan = $146 million, not $146,000.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[DrgnDancer]

Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank. A perfectly positioned and deployed shape charge can, but I doubt many civilians in any country have the training necessary to use such a thing even if they were legal. I don't disagree with the second amendment per se, but implying that it holds the government in check has always seemed silly to me. What holds the government in check is a combination of the rule of law and a culture in the military that makes them nearly unusable in domestic situations. You'd never see a Tienanmen Square in this country because the military would simply refuse the order.

If politicians and (more importantly) the military ever totally abandon the Constitution and impose some sort of martial law, no amount of small arms is going to stop them. As it stands right now, small arms can only kill dismounted infantry if it is extremely well aimed, let alone anyone in any sort of vehicle. Modern body armor doesn't make soldiers invulnerable robo-cops, but it protects most of their vitals from even assault weapons. Put the armored soldiers in an even a lightly armored vehicle and nothing short of high explosives can do much damage to them.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Achoi77]

Rebel Farmer: The more you tighten your' grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your' fingers

Chinese Govt: Not after we demonstrate the power of this station. In a way, you have determined the choice of the planet that will be destroyed first. Since you are reluctant to provide us with the location of the rebel base, I have chosen to test this station's destructive power on the World of Warcraft.

Rebel Farmer: No! Warcraft is peaceful, we have no weapons you can't possibly-

Chinese Govt: You will provide another target - a military target? The name the system! I grow tired of asking this, so it will be the last time. Where is the rebel base?

Rebel Farmer: ...Runescape. They're on Runescape.

Chinese Govt: There! You see Lord British she can be reasonable. Continue with the operation, you may fire when ready.

Rebel Farmer: WHAT?!

Chinese Govt: You're far too trusting. Runescape is too remote to make an effective demonstration but don't worry - we will deal with your rebel friends soon enough.

Rebel Farmer: noo..

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[ckaminski]

Let's do the math. 200+ million firearms in the hands of the civilian populace.

2.5 million American soldiers, many of whom would be reluctant to drive tanks over protestors.

Many people will die, but as the carpetbombing of Tokyo, Berlin, and Iraq have proven, that only strengthens the will of others to take their place.

Chinese leadership realized that the key to "civil order" was well-fed, fat and lazy citizenry, just like the good old U.S.of.A. :-) Carry on.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the Chinese Yuan is worth about 14 cents. The Dollar is worth 6.83 Yuan. The way you have it presented makes it look like the Yuan is worth more than the dollar.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Rewind]

I can't speak on Iraq, but WWII isn't a good example. A lot of disarming / gun control did occur there. I am not saying it would have made a difference, but I will say that is a bad example because "They gunna take our guns and then they gonna come fer us!" did sort of go on there.

Also WWII leaders like Hitler change things. For example Ghandi style non-violent civil disobedience can work in many situations, but I don't think it would have been even remotely effective against a leader who has a goal of genocide. That doesn't mean it is never a viable approach.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[dan_sdot]

Hitler's first move was to confiscate firearms from the Jews. Here is something I just googled up on the subject: http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/article-nazilaw.pdf

The first step of every modern tyrant is to confiscate firearms. (Note, this is not to say that everyone who wants to confiscate weapons is a tyrant). Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, etc.

The point is not that a guy with a handgun is going to stop a tank. There are 2 points to make:

1) A crowd the size of the protests currently happening in Iran actually is something to be feared if they are armed.

2) A complete reliance on the state for one's protection creates a complacency and an orwellian love for "big brother". This point is more subtle than the first, but the more I study the issue, the more I realize how important it is. If a person is forced to rely entirely on the state (usually a police force) for his/her protection, this is not a good thing. Responsible gun ownership reminds one that even though good police protection is a wonderful thing, if there were no police, one would still be able to get along with one's life. This autonomy from the state is a good thing.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Rewind]

Why would the people revolt? I'd be willing to bet most Chinese citizens think these restrictions are reasonable.

It's one of those "common sense" type ideas in Western nations that everybody wants a democracy and that everybody wants nearly unlimited personal freedom. It's simply not true. Many (maybe most) Chinese people not only approve of some limits on speech and civil liberties but think the government may not be going far enough. Many of my co-workers are Chinese citizens, and they are just as happy to have the government set ridiculous (by Western standards) limits on civil liberties, tell people what an ideal society looks like, and go along happily, as long as there's food on the table, taxes are low (or non-existent), and the occasional corrupt official is put in prison/sentenced to death. So what if the government owns most major businesses and that the low taxes are a result of not giving the people a chance to share in the wealth? The biggest complaints I've heard from them over the last year have been that the US needs to butt out and that food prices have been too high (mainly because the standard of living is going up).

High minded ideals are great for students, but the people living over there (and here, for that matter) are more concerned with being fed, with educating/raising their children, and with getting on without too much trouble.

That sounds much more like a hierarchy of needs thing than a real ideology. If you are worried about food on the table, safety, and having enough money to get by then obviously personal freedom takes a back seat. If you, on the other hand, have all or most of the above then you might start to care more about other things.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guns were taken away from the Jews, Poles and Gypsies.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[SL Baur]

The Chinese government estimates that trade in virtual currency exceeded several billion yuan last year, a figure that it claims has been growing at a rate of 20% annually. One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146,000.

So what is it, hundreds of millions or hundreds of thousands? Because one is a nice chunk of change while the other is, across China's population, laughable.

The math is wonky. 1US$ = 6.83 Yuan at the current exchange rate. US$ 146 million is the correct figure.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[DrgnDancer]

Srsly? You think that would work? First of all you'd have to get the people skilled enough to build a proper explosive charge. Then you gotta find the people to set it, and detonate it (pretty much a suicide mission, especially if they're expected to part of the ambush too). Then there's the fact that the tank would be shooting back with explosive rounds that are like the size of your head and can take out BUILDINGS. You didn't think taking out the treads would actually stop the turret working did you? So it will still be shooting the a fore mentioned rounds at you while you try to "pick off" the soldier trying to repair the treads. Then the soldiers themselves are ALSO armed with small arms (Oh, and the tank has a .50 cal machine gun also mounted on it's turret with minimum exposure to enemy fire for the gunner, in case you happen to be too close for the big gun), and have body armor on that will allow them to take a direct hit to either head or body with 7.62 long rifle ammunition without being killed (It'll hurt like a bastard though, but it really can stop AK-47 rounds, I've seen it happen. Dude's whole body was a bruise afterward, but he walked away from being shot in the chest with an assault rife). They're pretty well trained, they don't keep trying to change the tire when people shoot at them. Assuming you can deal with ALL of that, you can also deal with the three OTHER tanks in the platoon and THEIR crews at the same time. You didn't think they traveled by themselves did you?

Wanna know how many tank crews we lost during the year I was in Iraq? One. They drove over an explosive device that was literally constructed of three 500 pound AIRCRAFT bombs wired together. Short of that, there's about three ways to stop a tank:

1) Another tank.
2) A wire guided missile with a shape charge attached that no civilian would have, and even if they did, takes a few months of training to learn to use.
3) Assault aircraft.

Otherwise the tank pretty much wins.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146,000.

No, it's about $146 million. You get a little under 7 yuan for a dollar. Hundreds of millions.

There is indeed a tremendous amount of money in "virtual" currencies (which, if you think about it, you'll realize are no more virtual than whatever you have in your wallet right now) but I base that on years of online gaming rather than a scientific study.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[ovu]

I dig the logic, but there are several people in Iraq and Afghanistan who might disagree with how unstoppable armed troops are against motivated citizens...

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[MoeDrippins]

Depends on your point of view; considering the story was about the gov't OF CHINA restricting its population, it's not such a great leap.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Darinbob]

Even though the Chinese government seems like it has a tight grip, in many ways they are far too decentralized and provincial officials can be notoriously corrupt.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[bobby_tables]

$200 million - $1 billion worldwide.

80% of gold farmers (the guys that actually work in the game to make currency) are in china.

80% of the workforce does not mean 80% of the revenue. The guys in China typically don't make much (probably more than they would make in a factory, with slightly better working conditions). It is the guys that run the business that make the cash, and those guys are probably not in china.

This will accomplish some combination of the following:
1) China will lose tax revenue, as workers will continue to work, being paid under the table.
2) The tops of the management chain will find a new source of cheep labor.

In the end, gold farming will continue.

If China wants to stop gold farming, they should figure out how to get better working conditions and higher wages in the jobs they actually want people doing. Trying to solve a social problem with rules is just silly.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then lets amend the constitution to allow every legal citizen the right to a tank.
I think your missing the point, you snarky ass.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[cowscows]

I wonder if here in the US, if the government would actually be able to convince the military to turn its tanks and other war machines against the people. While the armed forces certainly have their own culture, would the average soldier fight against a mass uprising of the people in order to defend whoever happens to be president at the time? Would they consider their duty to their commanders greater than their duty to the people?

I think an important part of military enforced dictatorships has to be an economic situation where being a part of that military generally leads to a better life than one could expect as a civilian. In that situation, it's more about securing one's own status and income, and securing the position of the government is just a necessary side effect of that.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Znork]

destroy the livelihood of 400K people

As these 'goods' are only artificially scarce I'd tend to equate such livelihoods with other make-work; the need to do the labour at all is artificially generated, the good could be produced automatically without human labour, and so it's a drain on the economy.

Still, banning it is pointless. If they actually wanted to stop gold farming there's a vastly superior way to do it: simply require any game available to Chinese citizens to be without any limits on availability of items or medium of exchange.

Personally I'd like to see that on MMORPG's in general; set up a few servers without any limits to player funds and items, let the 'challange' people play on the real servers and those currently paying for farmed gold play on the 'easy' servers.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[DrgnDancer]

I already mention the reluctance of the soldiers as one of the main factors keeping us safe. We're assuming that went away somehow in the "military kills protesters" scenario.

You're going to get all those 200+ million armed civilians in one place supporting the protest? How are they all armed?

Yes, if the military turned against us and EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN who is not otherwise a soldier took up arms in the defense of liberty and ALL of them could competently use their weapons (which you're assuming all of them have, in fact most people I know don't own a gun) they could certainly have a good chance against even our military. You'd have the support of at best a small percentage of the population (many would support the government even in the face of Draconian policies, hoping to be in the elite; more would be too scared; more still would be apathetic as long as American Idol continued to play; etc). Of those a fraction (maybe a large fraction, given the type of people you're talking about, but still a fraction) would actually HAVE guns, and a much smaller fraction would have any training in using them. Of the guns available to you most would be hand guns or hunting rifles, the first are all but useless against even body armor, let alone vehicles, the second only useful in the hands of real marksmen.

Then there's the lack of training and fire discipline. Unless your 'troops' are former police or military themselves, they've never fired guns as part of a formation. This means that they are quite as likely to shoot each other as they are to shoot the soldiers that they are supposed to be aiming at. Cops and soldiers spend all that time training for a reason. It's because it is really hard to shoot, move and communicate in a group without lots and lots of practice.

I said it above and I'll say it again, what keeps us safe is the rule of law and respect the military has for the rule of law; not the second amendment. That, at best, keeps you safe from muggers and home invaders.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank

Well, I agree that tanks are pretty nasty business -- but isn't their main vulnerability the big gun itself? I'd wonder if you couldn't clog it fairly easily with something low tech and get the tank to blow itself up. And a building-destroying round can take out a building, but it's pretty inefficient as an antipersonnel weapon up close - you need soldiers for that. One round could take out one person, of course, but that's the wrong target. A tank is pretty much a single purpose mobile demolition device.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Modern body armor doesn't make soldiers invulnerable robo-cops, but it protects most of their vitals from even assault weapons.

Lucky thing most hunting rifles are more powerful than any "assault weapon".

A .30-06 will go through any body armour worn today with no difficulty at all. And it's far from the most powerful hunting round in use in the USA.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[DrgnDancer]

See my post above about how many tanks we lost in the year I spent in Iraq. Hint: it was a very small number, and it involved more explosive than you are ever likely to see in one place unless you're in the Air Force. Even the more lightly armored vehicles survived attacks more often than not. We've lost troops to improvised explosive sure, but a military that had gone totally rogue would almost certainly consider those to be "acceptable". the military would HAVE to have gone totally rogue for this scenario to play out.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Dogtanian]

I believe he meant "regretted" as in simply "wished they hadn't done that"- i.e. "you'll regret doing that".

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Only on /. would a story about gold farming lead directly to conclusions of imminent cultural revolt and overthrow of authority.

I don't know, I see this every day. It takes a lot of manure to get gold to germinate, and the people of Thunder Bluff have to deal with uprisings all the time from the gold farmers. If it weren't for the protection of Cairne Bloodhoof I'd be all a'lather too.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[LanMan04]

Right, but how many tanks does the US have? How many would they be able to deploy in urban environments? How many people would they have to pacify? I could see the tanks running out of gas and ammo before being destroyed, but the end effect is the same.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[SBFCOblivion]

I don't disagree with the second amendment per se, but implying that it holds the government in check has always seemed silly to me.

I agree. It made a lot more sense when guns were really all there was. Course there were cannons and such, but still. Primarily guns.

Now days I don't think we'd do a whole lot trying to go up against the US Armed Forces. Heck, you can't even get an automatic weapon (legally) without a ton of paperwork and being put on a watch list because of it.

We should be allowed a hell of a lot more fire power in keeping with the second amendment.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[misexistentialist]

Your number is incorrect, unless you are counting 12-year-old crack dealers and 15-year-old gay suicides. In any case more than one million children are aborted in the US each year, so a few hundred more is nothing. Even if you consider these children imaginary, the ones sentenced to death by weak pollution and vehicle safety standards are not.

Since self-defense is a basic human right, it's funny how all you non-Americans think that not having guns make you human.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[ComputerGeek01]

Chinese guns can take out tanks can they?

Which one? Norinco is one of the largest knock-off artisits in the world, I bet they've replicated at least one or two AT firearms. I should note the guy who started this thread tho was keeping his argument to small arms which the above mentioned firearms would not be. I want to take this moment to remind everyone of the little para-military scare that we in the US saw in the 90's, does anyone else remember this? Those training camps in Texas and Montana and such? You may remeber them as being affiliated with certain extreamist or maybe fanatically right wing groups? I grant you that the ATF\FBI has done a fine job of extinguishing the credible threats (Kudos guys) but it proves that if people want to recieve training for combat outside of the military then it can and has happend. All that is missing is the leadership for such a group and the will to do so, and as an American I can say that things are no where near so bad that it is worth getting shot for. Moral of story, life in America = good but it has happend here before.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

There certainly are low-tech methods of rendering a tank useless. After all, there is a limit to its mobility, and it's really only a hunk of metal.

If Vietnam and now Iraq have offered any lessons, it is that flashy tech does not win a war. If tanks started rolling into cities, people will flee to the woods. And that's when your second amendment rights come into play.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[scot4875]

but the more the middle class gets bolstered, the more filled bellies with higher ambitions will appear

Yes, because well-fed people in a decent financial situation are, historically, the most likely to revolt.

--Jeremy

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because small arms and improvised explosives did nothing in Iraq....

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[corellen]

It's depressing to me to see how many people have so little faith in our Armed Forces. Most don't seem to realized our oaths of service have us swear to the Constitution first and foremost. If some how some units of the military did carry out unlawful orders to suppress civilian unrest, they will face resistance from other parts of the military, probably resulting in civil war but it is my firm belief that any military vs civilian will very rapidly become a military vs military & civilian conflict.
Officers: I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Enlisted: I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd never see a Tienanmen Square in this country because the military would simply refuse the order

*cough*Waco*cough*

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[gbjbaanb]

Yeah, the 2nd amendment won't be anything other than a bit of paper until we get TANKS!

(apologies to Dominion:Tank Police)

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[gad_zuki!]

>I already mention the reluctance of the soldiers as one of the main factors keeping us safe. We're assuming that went away somehow in the "military kills protesters" scenario.

No we are not assuming, we saw it at Kent State.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[qopax]

Uhm, yeah, they're usually the ones leading the revolt.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, lumping together everything and everyone doesn't exactly lend credence to your crooked opinion, now does it?

But hey, you threw together some words, so whatever, right?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146,000.

These numbers just aren't adding up here.

There's your problem: one billion yuan is actually $146,000,000, not $146,000. With that correction, it all looks close enough.

(You went through a lot of speculation that could have been avoided by a quick google for "1 billion yuan in usd".)

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[visible.frylock]

I don't disagree with the second amendment per se, but implying that it holds the government in check has always seemed silly to me.

Iraq.

Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank.

They've gotta get out to take a piss some time, don't they? I think I heard this on /., can't remember who.

What holds the government in check is a combination of the rule of law and a culture in the military that makes them nearly unusable in domestic situations. You'd never see a Tienanmen Square in this country because the military would simply refuse the order.

This is true in America to a large extent, but both rule of law and that military culture have been eroding for a while. Anyway, the military is supplying local cops with weapons, and they don't have the same culture. If there's any doubt whether our military considers us their enemy, the police certainly do.

Which is one of the biggest reasons that there's supposed to be an iron curtain between police and military. Otherwise, it ends up looking like Akira.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[shutdown -p now]

Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank.

That's patently wrong. Things like RPGs are still quite effective, even against modern tanks. Yes, there are countermeasures, but they can be defeated, too.

A good example of how vulnerable tanks actually are against infantry is the first Battle of Grozny. Chechen fighters had set up people with RPGs in basements along the main routes which Russian tank columns used to advance towards the city center. They would wait till the column is entirely within reach, and then 4-5 people would hit the first tank in the column, and the same number for the last - thus virtually guaranteeing that tanks would be disabled at the very least, trapping the rest of the column - which would then be destroyed methodically in a similar fashion. And basements were used over roofs because tank gun simply cannot depress low enough to make an aimed shot into a basement.

Two things to keep in mind: it's much easier to increase armor penetration than it is to increase armor strength (mostly because you have to increase armor strength along the entire surface of the tank, while e.g. a shaped charge only has to punch through a specific point). And also, tanks have very limited visibility and maneuverability in urban environment, especially compared to infantry.

This sort of thing is why, in modern urban warfare, tanks are always supported by infantry, which defends them against enemy anti-tank infantry.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[mysidia]

I don't think the Chinese empire is that large (yet)

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Dachannien]

Also, at least in past years, the "handlers" were not Chinese, so a large portion of the proceeds went to some asshole in the US or Canada, while the Chinese gold-farming sweatshop workers slaved away to meet their quotas for a puny fraction of the market value of their work.

This is why China's move here won't stop the gold farming. The handlers have already started moving a lot of this crap to Southeast Asia, where wage rates are even lower and regulation is even more scarce (but where proficiency and experience playing these games is generally not as widespread), and this will only incentivize the gold farming outfits to finish moving their operations.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Guns didnt help Jews, Poles, Gypsies, in WWII. Its funny how people think a handgun or rifle works against a mechanized division."

You, sir, fail at either being familiarized with, or understanding, history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_resistance_movement_in_World_War_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto

Just two samples of counterarguments to your claim.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be a large disparity between what the Chinese government reports and what study finds.

Seriously, are you new here (to planet Earth\politics\repressive Communist regimes)?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[lgw]

I pay someone to wash my car every couple of weeks. This is artificially generated labor, right? Just like gold farming, it benefits both sides when the service is provided for the requested fee. What more does a deal need to be legit?

Most of the manufacturing done in China could be automated, and the work is only done there because the workers undercut the robots. Even so, China is losing manufacturing jobs to robots faster than America is losing manufacturing jobs to China. Almost all the jobs humans do will eventuallly be automated and unnecessary, but they're still real jobs today!

If you want to see a game played the way that you think is right: start a company, write a game. Blizzard is pretty amazing at taking over an established genre by giving players what they actually want, and ignoring what the vocal minority clamor for. However they're doing it in WoW is probably what makes the most people happy.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[lgw]

Well, I suspect CHina's actual motivation here was simply to quash (this instance of) true free market capitalism before it becomes too popular. It's not like Communism vs free markets was some unrelated rant here.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[cskrat]

I'm sorry but all your talk of military formations and heavy weaponry suggest a level of open war that does not sit well with your talk of civilian apathy.

As for the distribution of civilian weaponry. The fact that not everyone is armed is made irrelevant by the fact that anyone could be. Hunting riffles are, with the right ammunition, capable of piercing body armor. Further, hunting riffles are often owned by people that hunt and can hit a moving target from a respectable distance. The civilian snipers will be defending and therefore have the terrain advantage. Given the wide variety of terrain types in this country, (compare Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Florida, Virginia) local terrain knowledge will be enough of an advantage to nearly offset the disadvantage in training and equipment.

I have no doubt that civilian casualties will be higher than military casualties. But if the US military ever turned on the general population, the result would make the Vietnam War seem like a grade school shouting match.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[couchslug]

"You do realized that the Chinese government used tanks right? Small arms (the kind of guns allowed in the US) cannot stop a tank."

They can force it to button up so it can be killed with incendiaries, have a track disabled by inserted objects for a mobility kill etc.

Small arms dispersed among the people facilitate revolutionary capability, and NO country has enough tanks for them to be everywhere at once. No country, possibly excepting North Korea,has enough domestic military power to destroy widespread armed revolt, though it may contain outbreaks. Tanks can't be everywhere, and can be killed by infantry with expedient weapons. Widespread ownership of weapons means that if enough people choose to unite,they will outnumber any force their government can field. Partisan warfare with a determined base can be very hard to put down,and can turn into civil war where the government forces are divided.

The amount of asspain a few thousand lightly armed Iraqis and Afghans have been inflicting on Coalition forces is an example of what can happen with small arms as basic weapons.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[krenshala]

... will be enough of an advantage to nearly offset the disadvantage in training and equipment.

Don't forget that a large number of the folks that own said hunting rifles are former military, and thus have the same (or possibly better) training than the "attackers".

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Zerth]

You can kill a tank if you are willing to hide in a hole until they run over you.

Stickies

For that matter, stick some metal slabs on the ground at a choke point, cover it poorly enough so a tank driver could see it(no more than 2 leaves, mind), and hit them when they stop to avoid the "mines".

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank.

What about thermite?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[couchslug]

"If politicians and (more importantly) the military ever totally abandon the Constitution and impose some sort of martial law, no amount of small arms is going to stop them."

The whole military is wildly unlikely to go against the mass of the people, especially as many of the folks in combat arms are good old fashioned rednecks. Remember Timmy McVeigh? If Washington tried martial law without reasonable cause there would be a distinct lack of folks willing to enforce it. There would be plenty who would, OTOH, enjoy turning their weapons in the other direction.

The whole US military is not physically large enough to control CONUS. The more than one hundred million small arms in the US mean that should the people wish, it would be quite practical to revolt and succeed.

A fractured US military

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[rubycodez]

plenty of low tech means can and have stopped tanks. "tank traps" can be dug; molotov cocktails can overheat the interior, mechanisms or fuel; wheel tracks damaged or broken.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

rpgs are legal.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can't wait till they make a huge mistake on civil liberties and practically give their citizens no choice but to revolt. it's DOING it everyday.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Sum0]

All this assumes that the tank is working alone. It isn't. Tanks work in teams, and in conjunction with infantry. A person can potentially take out a tank, but almost certainly at the cost of his or her own life. I was an anti-armor specialist and later a combat engineer before I became a scientist, so I feel like I have some experience in this.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[greyhueofdoubt]

As a veteran of Iraq and someone who would be happy to post pics of the Humvee/APC graveyards if my site was still up let me just say:

NO. You are wrong. If the U.S. military decided to invade the U.S., for real, not just "security" around a natural disaster area, the war would be over in days or weeks. And the people would win. Do you have any idea how large the U.S. is compared to our military? How vulnerable our forces really are? All of our retirees and guardsmen who would know all our weaknesses and S.O.P... They all LIVE HERE. My base could be effectively shut down by one person doing one thing (yeah, probably dying in the process), and it would be easy. Dead easy.

And "small arms" is a wide category. My .22-250, a smallish varminting cartridge, can penetrate 3/8+" mild steel, and that's just a plain-jane hollowpoint hunting round. You load a decent penetrator and maybe a little more pep in the powder charge and you're talking about something that could penetrate armored glass, humvee tires, building walls... And then you can move up to the bigger hunting rounds, the .308, the .30-'06, the 7mm-'06, the .338. Insurgents using measly 7.62x39 have taken out APC's in Iraq with horrific consequences- I have firsthand experience here, a human being hell-bent on causing death and damage will typically be very successful.

>>Put the armored soldiers in an even a lightly armored vehicle and nothing short of high explosives can do much damage to them.

Nor can they do much to the environment around them, short of yelling through loudspeakers. The turret gunner will be the first target, and his guns can only point in one direction at a time.

>>Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank.

You know what can stop tanks? Tank barriers. You put your bomb next to the tank barrier and you set it off when the tank is over it figuring out what to do. And when the tankers figure out that trick and call in EOD, you shoot EOD. And when they figure that out and just barrage the barricade from the next corner, you put your bomb under the logical place for the tank to be. Underground fighters and insurgents have known this for decades. Americans are bright enough to figure this stuff out.

>>You'd never see a Tienanmen Square in this country because the military would simply refuse the order.

Kent state. Different order of magnitude, but it's the thought that counts. Don't count on units simply refusing orders. There are enough assholes in the military to keep a civil war moving until everything falls apart.

-b

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[greyhueofdoubt]

When you are the only person on your block being persecuted, no, a weapon will not help you. When everyone on your block faces either death or fighting, they will fight. Your example re: Saddam falls apart because a few years later a few AK's DID cause major damage to an occupying force. Saddam's advantage (and Hitler's) lay in choosing isolated and/or weak minorities who couldn't or wouldn't band together or be defended by the general populace.

If you start attacking Americans (not just certain Americans), guess what? Everyone you're attacking has something in common, and no one is left out of the fight, and you war is already lost.

-b

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[bronney]

Yes you have experience but not the balls. I don't have the balls either that's why I am posting to slashdot. But some people have balls and are willing to use them when faced with the situation. You saw that guy stood in front of that specific tank during the protest? He would be a perfect candidate to slab on a sticky bomb.
.
If he's the 0.0001% of the 1.3 bil population that's willing, you have 130k stickies. How many tanks the government have?
.
I am not an American but I respect the Second Amendment and every time I think about why the forefathers put down the words it makes me cry. Think of what they went through to write those words on that piece of paper. They knew it could go south, but damn the government can go "souther".

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank. A perfectly positioned and deployed shape charge can, but I doubt many civilians in any country have the training necessary to use such a thing even if they were legal. I don't disagree with the second amendment per se, but implying that it holds the government in check has always seemed silly to me. What holds the government in check is a combination of the rule of law and a culture in the military that makes them nearly unusable in domestic situations. You'd never see a Tienanmen Square in this country because the military would simply refuse the order.

You should review what happened in the 1960's at Kent State.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[ShoulderOfOrion]

What makes the second amendment powerful is that it--along with the rest of the Bill of Rights--codifies the belief that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around; and that faith and trust is placed in the people, not the government.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[DigMarx]

Wow. So a regular infantry combined with asymmetric warfare in native terrain (which was also initially alien to the invading force) --as well as funding and supply by a major power-- pales in comparison to the Michigan Militia and Joe-Bob with his .30-06? You, sir, have a remarkably high opinion of the US citizenry. My personal prediction is that a potential civilian revolt/revolution/uprising of any decent size would fracture due to Americans' inability to see eye to eye over trivial political issues.

One last thing: compare the value westerners (generally) place on life to, for example, the value placed by the Vietnamese Communists and/or the Iraqi opposition. I'm an American living in Thailand, and I can say from experience that the attitude toward life here would blow your mind, daddy-o.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who worry about the civilians too much in this scenario give the civilians way too little common sense. If a situation such as that were prolonged enough, it would be obvious how stupid directly fighting a tank would be. Rather it would be much smarter to stay close to invisible and let them pass unhindered. However, you know that supply column that follows the tanks... The one with all the fuel, and the mess wagons, and tents, and other logistical stuff? Things needed to keep those tanks operational? Well, once that comes down the road... That's when all hell tends to break loose, and support vehicles unlike the more heavily armored tanks and assault vehicles - they burn rather quick when pelted with enough molotovs. The infantry guarding that can only watch so much and cover so much area, and they're pretty much in the same arms level as the populace. (Some people will argue about body armor vs. small munitions, but neglect to consider the limbs aren't usually protected. A wounded soldier won't be doing too much.) Also a motivated low-tech opponent can make it miserable for the guy in a tank. A few snipers in rotation means any mechanized that is forward deployed isn't going to be able to get out to take a piss or shit, have a smoke break, or whatever... I'm sure it would get stuffy in there, and that would get pretty old after a while. Of course they could run infantry forward with the tanks, but if the military was fighting everybody that would open holes in the backside again.

I think folks should read up about conflicts involving asymetrical warfare a bit more before they consider things too lopsided to the bigger guns. It's not like the current situation in Iraq or Afghanistan is a cakewalk in this regard. (And those have mostly secure bases and supplies coming from elsewhere. In a SHTF scenario, even if territory can be secured where's the food and fuel going to be coming from?)

Of course this could change if military tactics turn Russian style. (Basically maintain a solid front against whatever it is you're assaulting, keep range, and then let the rockets, bombers, and big guns go crazy and flatten the whole area.) But then there will be nothing left of the controlled area to be worth controlling after artillery is done with its job. (Still a loss in regards to any capturable assets or labor, if you've ever read what Sun Tzu had to say about that.) But in cases where terrain allows easy hiding, shelter from bombardment, and dispersement, even this doesn't work against a low tech opposition. You either have to win over the locals or don't plan on winning.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[DigMarx]

Having read a bit about Mao, Che & Fidel, and Pol Pot, it's quite obvious the bigger guns don't always win. But what you have in these situations is a well-organized vanguard that in turn organizes the masses, has utter willingness to sacrifice said masses for "the cause," and has the support of the masses they've organized to sacrifice.

To put it frankly, Americans are just not that hard. We don't need a military to dominate us, we're just fine being dominated by business in league with government. We can't even do anything to stop THAT. What makes you think we could ever revolt against the military?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Talla]

Let's do the math. 200+ million firearms in the hands of the civilian populace.

But then there would probably be lots of them on either side, all of them shooting at each other.

2.5 million American soldiers, many of whom would be reluctant to drive tanks over protestors.

If the protesters were shooting at them I doubt they would be very reluctant to use any means to stop them. It's just 40 years since they shot at unarmed peacefull protesters.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[donscarletti]

One billion yuan is currently equal to about $146,000,000. I'm pretty sure it was a typo.

It would be awesome for tourists though, I've eaten a meal at a decent enough restaurant for as little as 12 yuan, street food goes for 1/4 that. If instead of $2 it equaled .2c I would feel even more frugal. I'm currently being paid in them so I'm glad it's not the case.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Jedi Alec]

I know the perfect planet for them to demonstrate their power on...

Jita IV will do nicely, thank you.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Jedi Alec]

You realize that tanks have a nasty habit of having several machineguns in addition to the main cannon, right?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Digital End]

If that makes you feel better about it, you keep thinking that. It's would not be an all out war, it would be a series of events like the ones mentioned in this thread untill the general population sat down and shut up. And they would, with few exceptions, after a short enough time.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[fbjon]

That depends on how long people would hold out. What would be the reason for conflict? How many would side with the military? Talking about people vs. military and claiming you can beat "them" is naive at best.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Hubbell]

I really hate it when idiots like you spout off this nonsense, as guns most certainly DID help in WW2.

The Bielski Partisans, which the movie Defiance is based on, were real and they started with a SINGLE PISTOL.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was able to hold the Wehrmacht (the german army seeing as you obviously know nothing about WW2 or combat in general) off for nearly 3 months using only pistols.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Numbers DO add up, billion yuan is ~146 million dollars, not 146 thousand

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[hesaigo999ca]

I spent all my points too soon, I would have given you mod funny for sure

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but if the Chinese were armed, and a revolution started, the Chinese would need only to do their best not to get killed by the tanks, while killing anyone who is not in a tank and trying to protect the government. Eventually, the infrastructure that keeps the tanks fuelled up will fail. Once the tanks run out of fuel, they are little better than metal bunkers with the cupola machine gun on top; a modern tank needs its engines running to aim its turret.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[L4t3r4lu5]

And you're assuming that the only resource required would be ammunition.

I know all these big hunters will be a formidable force, but only until the government shut off the national grid, telecoms, start broadcasting white noise on HAM frequencies, shut off water and sanitation, and the general population are dropped into the stoneage in less time than it takes the president to press a button.

How long do you think you could feed yourself without your local 7-11 stocking twinkies and pepsi?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[MBraynard]

Jews were disarmed. Poles were invaded by a superior army and then co-operated in their surrender. Saddam's regime was more tyrannical than oppressive and more or less was in a state of war with regions of his own country - some of which was out of his grasp (Kurdistan).

However, the grandparent is right in that tyrannical/oppressive governments are rarely overthrown without outside assistance. See: US revolution.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Toad-san]

"Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank. A perfectly positioned and deployed shape charge can, but I doubt many civilians in any country have the training necessary to use such a thing even if they were legal."

Actually there's any number of ways to stop a tank. 1 - Log between the roadwheels or up against the drive sprocket. 2 - Good old Molotov cocktail (preferably with thickened fuel: got any soap chips or blood, hmmm?). 3 - Spray paint or soap suds over the driver's and TC's periscopes, forcing them to poke their heads out, where any weapon can kill them. (Super soakers are good for this.) 4 - Soap on an asphalt road curve, preferably one next to a cliff. 5 - Poison their soup when they're NOT in the tank.

Civilians usually don't know this stuff, but that's what they have ME for. And history. You are studying history, right?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Dragoness Eclectic]

How long do you think the people ordering such actions would live? Governments aren't faceless monoliths; they're made of people. People die. Cutting off food, water, santitation, communication and entertainment would turn all the neutral citizens and many of your former supporters into rebels, not to mention cripple the government forces as well. Your scenario is stupid.

Utilities and distribution are local and mostly privatized. Why should they cooperate with a bunch of obvious complete loons in Washington D.C? They're much more likely to pay attention to local authorities, especially if the local authorities are supported by an angry, armed citizenry. Your scenario is not just stupid, it's impossible.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Not to mention Jewish partisans

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[hot soldering iron]

Citation needed.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[ubrgeek]

But if it's happening in other countries, can we say China shot first?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[ubrgeek]

> I'd wonder if you couldn't clog it fairly easily with something low tech and get the tank to blow itself up.

I forget, are the coyote or the roadrunner?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Aqualung812]

Its funny how people think a handgun or rifle works against a mechanized division.

Have you seen how the highly mechanized USA Armed Forces have done vs rebels with handguns and rifles in Afghanistan and Iraq?
It seems to me that if people are armed AND want to resist, they can.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

>But if the US military ever turned on the general population, the result would make
>the Vietnam War seem like a grade school shouting match.

Kind of like the Civil War, ay? In that scenario, which side was the civilians and which side was the military?

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Znork]

This is artificially generated labor, right?

Nope. The cleanliness of your car actually is a scarce product; it probably wont clean itself, nor can it be effectively cleaned without labour. Now, if you were paying another guy to dirty it at the same time, that would at least be make-work.

What more does a deal need to be legit?

Nothing. I have no complaints about gold farmers or gold purchasers. It's making them necessary that's a problem.

Virtual gold and other virtual products can be created by flipping a few bits in a database. They're not scarce. The entire purpose of an economy is to decrease scarcity. Enforcing rules that mean that many hours of human labour is spent flipping those bits creates a net loss to the economy; the money spent employing people to instantiate non-scarce items means that money isn't spent employing people to produce actual scarce items.

Without anyone losing anything, you could have both the gold and a clean car, which for the purposes of an economy, would be the optimal outcome.

If you want to see a game played the way that you think is right

I don't really care what way the games are being played, but when virtual problems translate into real-world economic effects then it becomes an issue outside the games as well. If players are bypassing boring parts of the game by, to a noticeable extent, actually directing economic resources towards bypassing those parts of the game, then it becomes an actual problem for the outside economy: if the $1 billion worth of work is accurate, then we're not talking chump change, that's $1 billion that could have been spent doing something else, had the game actually worked as the players obviously desire. I mean, can you imagine what 400k workers can accomplish if they're not taking 8 hours a day to manually do a very very very slow database update?

Personally I think the developers should deal with the problem themselves; when people find parts of the game tedious enough to be 'work' they'd rather pay someone else to do there's obviously a problem. But if they have too little incentive to solve that (in one of the many possible ways to solve it), and the problem goes on to this extent, then perhaps some mandated solution would be in order. If not by mandating non-scarcity, then by other variants like selling the gold and scarce items with the proceeds going to charity or something that doesn't actually involve wasting human labour on a non-problem.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed practically nothing short of another tank can stop a tank. A perfectly positioned and deployed shape charge can,

2 words....sticky bombs

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[lgw]

The thing is, we've already got one foot in "post scarcity" and we don't know how to cope. Having everything manufactured by robots should be an economic paradise, but instead seems to be a huge unemployment problem. We know that just giving people money not to work doesn't ... work. Makework (if you want to call it that - the person paying sees economic benefit) of this sort seems to me like a quite reasonable way to transfer money from the world's richer areas to the world's poorer areas without it feeling like it's charity.

And that money isn't exactly wasted. The gold farmers will spend it on food and housing, which will employ 400K other workers who would not otherwise be employed productively.

While I agree with you about game design, Blizzard's biggest problem now is where to park all the dump trucks full of money, so presumably the average player thinks the current style of MMO play is OK.

Also, I'm not seeing an important difference between paying $16 instead of $3 for a car wash (just to make it look a bit better) and paying $13 to a gold farmer (just to have some virtual property). Either way, I'm paying someone $13 for hard work (that I could easily to myself if I cared to) just for my slight amusement.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Deosyne]

How long do you think that a modern military can press on without the support of an infrastructure? A military command with infantry, armor, and air assets requires a whole hell of a lot more resources than scattered groups of insurgents do.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[AP31R0N]

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are a pretty good case for our military's inability to occupy a hostile population. And that's with a military that's mostly willing to fight to fight the enemy. Having been in the military, the vast majority would be on the side of civilians. Most of the Nat Guard units would ignore federal commands.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[ckaminski]

You neglect the fact why we "let" corporate interests dominate us in America: for the most part, American's are fat, happy and lazy.

Take fat and happy away, and you have chaos. Look no further than our inner cities to see the battle being waged by a few against many, and the police. Now turn those people into a moderately-organized and trained force, and you have an assymetric battle going on that few police departments would be able to fight.

As long as you have hope and faith in the system, and most of us do, to some extent, you won't get the style of revolution you see in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Take that away, however, and a home-war will make Iraq seem like a trip to the kindergarten sandbox.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Sum0]

Not to be a pedant, but 0.0001% of 1.3 billion is 1,300, not 130k.

"The balls" to do what? Commit suicide? You are correct. To quote an excellent movie, it is better to live on your feet than die on your knees. Like I said, I was a combat engineer (sapper) - I'd set improvised explosives (mines), make efforts to take out the infrastructure that supports the tanks (fuel, food, ammunition, leadership), and commit general sabotage. Parking yourself in front of a tank will make a nice Pulitzer opportunity for someone, but there are far more effective ways to change things - especially in a country like China, which has an army of about three million, and almost 8,000 tanks.

As far as the Second Amendment goes, owning a Ruger isn't the same as being in a militia. There are two interpretations of that Amendment.

I would expect the side with automatic weapons, hand grenades, artillery, fire support, tactical nuclear weapons, remote-sensing technology, and the support of the government to win. I'm not saying things won't change in China. What I'm saying is they will probably change like they did in the former USSR - politically and economically.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Anonymous Coward]

In keeping with the anecodtal evidence...
I made literally hundreds of dollars selling items from Everquest.
Dropped hundreds at launch on WoW.

Made it all back and haven't paid a subscription fee with my own funds for any of the games I've played since. The market is huge. MMOs come down to either time or money. A savvy player can use both to their advantage.

Re:Hundred Millions or Hundred Thousands?

[Znork]

we don't know how to cope.

Well, I'd rather say we don't want to cope. And by we, I mean the political class which is stuck in the scarce era of redistribution politics.

a huge unemployment problem.

Unemployment isn't in itself a problem; it's basically free time. Distribution of unemployment is a problem.

The thing is, if person A has to work 4 hours to earn a decent income, but then has to work 4 hours more to pay for two other people to subsist it doesn't really matter if the money goes to make work or outright benefits without work. It may feel better to imagine the recipients of the benefits are working for the money they get, but the fundamental problem remains; person A has to work (with real productive work) much more than he might actually want because someone else isn't doing productive work.

Personally I'd rather see a more reasonable division of labour than the creation of unnecessary work or payments to the long term unemployed. I think it's eventually necessary to go that way, but it's not easy to shift that way either, especially as many of today's economic measurements are flawed and don't work in a post-scarce economy.

And that money isn't exactly wasted.

Oh, true, the money doesn't go away, it's the time spent by the farmer that's 'wasted' and lost to the economy.

Also, I'm not seeing an important difference between paying $16 instead of $3 for a car wash

The fundamental difference is that nobody can flip a bit to give you that $13 extra worth of sparkle that you value. Somebody can flip a bit in a millisecond to get you the virtual gold, and you could pay for your car wash _and_ have the gold without anyone else in the economy being deprived of that value. IE, the economy as a whole would gain $26 of value (both products value for you) over that economic cycle instead of just $13 (wash or gold).

Either way, I'm paying someone $13 for hard work (that I could easily to myself if I cared to) just for my slight amusement.

Yep, but economic theory isn't that concerned with the contents of the value, only that something has a perceived value to someone and a (perceived) cost to someone else. As long as each transaction maximizes perceived value to the purchaser and costs as little as possible to produce, the economy as a whole grows and we all become richer (without saying anything about wealth distribution).

Conversely, when we start messing around with making things cost more than they actually would cost to produce, well, then we're in the end making someone and everyone have to work a little bit more to get to the level of wealth we want to achieve.

I know it's estoteric, but I hope I explained reasonably well :).

China seems to want to enhance its image...

[ls671]

Wow! China seems to really want to enhance its image, any other reason for that move that anybody can envision ? After all, it will be less money going straight into to China... Of course I may be missing something ;-)

I watched a program on TV where they visited a company working in this field. They basically employ 30+ people who play the game all day, we saw the player pool on TV while they were playing. They are based in countries where they can pay people very small wages, they take the points earned by those people and resell them with a margin on what they paid the players. Well at least this seems like a simple to understand business model ;-)

Just for fun, if you could get paid a decent wage, say same as you are earning now, how many of you would be interested in such a position ? ;-) Is it a dream job (playing all day !) or more like a hell job? Note that this could be similar to people getting paid to play all day to find bugs in new games but the qualifications required to get the job may vary a bit...

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Spy Handler]

It would not be a pleasant job, even if you got the same wage you do now. Your bosses will constantly be pushing you to maximize your per hourly gold yield. And most likely you would be running several computers at once and using various hacks, working like a dog. Any semblance of it being a fun game would be completely gone, replaced by simple drudgery.

I'd rather do straight data entry typing than be a gold farmer...

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Evelas]

Being forced to play WoW as a job? How could that ever be considered a dream job. Sure it's not a bad game, but it gets old after a while.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[jockeys]

And most likely you would be running several computers at once and using various hacks, working like a dog. Any semblance of it being a fun game would be completely gone, replaced by simple drudgery.

how is that ANY different than your average MMO player?

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Red Flayer]

Your bosses will constantly be pushing you to maximize your per hourly gold yield.

My understanding is that most of the gold farmer "workers" work on a quota system. Of course the quota will get moved up depending on possible performance. It's not about maximizing yields, it's about hitting the quota dependably.

When labor is that cheap, it's probably more effective to hire additional workers than it is to squeeze every last drop out of the ones you have.

Anecdotally, back when I played MMOs, I was once asked to hold onto some surplus in-game cash for a farmer. He wanted to set it aside so if he had a bad day, he could use it to get over quota and avoid punishment.

I recall reading an article about this somewhere (Gamasutra?)... the gold farmers didn't want to make too much gold for their bosses, or their coworkers would get mad. Excess earnings in a session were hidden to (1) save for a bad day (2) sell independently for income or (3) play the game themselves. It was a really interesting look inside gold farming at the basest level.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a lead farmer, motherfucker!

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

On the plus side, aside from RSI risk and lack of exercise during working hours, it is a largely harmless and physically undemanding job. No heavy machinery macerating your digits, no toxic exposures, no baking in the fields for 10 hours, no swabbing out other people's toilets.

It would certainly be a job, not a game; but not a substantially grimmer one than a nontrivial number of first world service jobs, much less third world peasant/sweatshop stuff.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is still a hundred times better than working on a farm for a living. Life is hard in rural areas, and making any kind of living outside of farming is a huge step up from what your parents likely did. Even if the work is hard and demanding by our standards, people in the 'first world' live decadent soft lives that don't know what a real lifetime of work would look like if it slapped us in the face.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[dave562]

Your average MMO player has a choice of activities. To use WoW as an example, you can do quests, you can run instances, you can do battle grounds, do some world PVP, level an alt, do silly seasonal quests, etc. As a gold farmer, you do one and only one thing... farm the most valuable items out there. You don't have the opportunity to do anything else, because doing anything else is a waste of time and isn't what you are getting paid for.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[SatanicPuppy]

How is that different from actually playing the game?

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Endo13]

how is that ANY different than your average MMO player?

how is that ANY different than your average lame troll post?

See the difference between our two questions is that mine is an actual rhetorical question, while yours is simply a troll masquerading as rhetoric.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[lgw]

I've done buisness with gold farmers in the past, and they were quick to contact me directly to solicity my next sale - to them, not to their employers. I think this is all a bit less Charles Dickens than people are making it out to be. Certainly it's better than typical jobs for kids in the West's industrial revolution.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[lgw]

I used to work next to a QA group for a major game company. Their QA folks did 12-hour shiftwork, in conditions not all that different from a Chinese gold farmers, other than the pay. Anyone looking down on this job as some third-world thing needs to check their arrogance. As you say, this is a Hell of a lot better than working on a farm (or industrial revolution-era factory).

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[jack2000]

Yep sounds like "optimization loops" all over again...

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[JoeMerchant]

Ever do straight data entry typing? It has lots of guises, most of them resembling Dante's 4th and 5th levels...

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you understand the Chinese labor market much better than the average American. When I was in China doing some contractor work, I was amazed at how many employees did nothing for extended periods of time, and it was OK, even expected. Plus, everyone over there way over highers, since labor is so cheap.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Chriscim]

Last year, I went through a marital separation, moved into a new place with roommates, and was laid off from my job within the same week. It took me a month, but I eventually found a full-time job, and a weekend job. The damage had been done though, I was behind on bills and struggling to keep up. I had a WoW subscription going and was considering cancelling it, but the through of selling gold occurred to me as a way to help make ends meet while I wasn't work at either job. So, in order to help get out of debt and pay the bills, I started selling gold to individuals just through word of mouth, and to gold farmers when there wasn't a demand from the people I knew. Let me tell you, it was not very fun at all and really killed the game for me. For those not familiar with the game, you can do up to a certain number of "daily quests" (quests that are repeatable every 24 hours). I would do the maximum allowed and use my tradeskills (both gathering skills) and sell the goods for in-game gold, then turn around and sell the gold to whoever would buy it. I was playing probably 5 hours a day, just farming. I could make around 5-7k gold per week (Before the Lich King) and sell the gold for $10-20 per 1K. Typically I made between $3-500 per month from playing a video game. I bought the Lich King (expansion), leveled my character to level 80 and started gearing him up to farm efficiently at that level, but I was so burned out from playing every day (and finally out of debt). that I no longer saw a reason to play and cancelled my subscription. It sure as hell helped pay the bills, but the constant headaches from farming for hours at a time, killing my social life, and sucking up all my free time to do meaningful things, killed the drive to play the game. I can't imagine gold farmers (who play far more hours than I did) enjoy this at all. It's not as bad as working in a sweat shop and/or doing real labor, but it's kind of rough and really wears on you after awhile. Even so, I don't see why their government would outright ban the buying and selling of game currency. A lot of these people are really depending on that income. :(

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Skuld-Chan]

I talked to a gold farmer on WoW, and through his broken English I found the following things out (in case your curious - I just replied to some level 1 warrior trying to sell gold in trade channel). He makes about 5-20 dollars a month (depending on how hard he works), 12+ hours a day, and lives in a dormitory with about 30 other people. After all that he said I should go to China and go work for them.

I dunno - I don't think I could play any game on those conditions.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked as a game tester for a while as a living, and I'd say it's fairly close to the same idea. Get paid to play the same game for months on end, 8-16 hours a day (yes 16; crunch time sucks ass and they don't pay overtime) over and over again. It's like living Groundhog Day... only from time to time different bugs pop up.

I mean, it wasn't a BAD job. It was far from the worst that I've had. It did, however, get really fucking boring really quick.

Re:China seems to want to enhance its image...

[phantomfive]

Honestly, if it's between gold farming and working on the farm, I'll take working on the farm. And I have. Farm work isn't bad, although the pay isn't good (unless you own the land).

NO!

[gubers33]

How are they going to get their World of Warcraft gold! China is putting their World of Warcraft citizens in jeopardy of becoming weak.

Re:NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sounds like I'm going to have to stop playing. I don't have time to farm gold.

"Virtual goods"

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that include things like an online book or some online services?

Re:"Virtual goods"

[CorporateSuit]

Would that include things like an online book or some online services?

I was thinking of software licenses... since it's like having bought something, but not really -- so it's virtual property.

Why would China do this?

[Raindance]

It's certainly an interesting development, and one that I think will slightly curb the growth of gold farming, gold spam, wacky in-game currency trends, and so forth, but I think the real question here is, why would this be in China's interest to do this, and shut down a blossoming home-grown (if gray-market) industry?

The IW article notes that "The government justifies its ban on virtual currency trading as a way to curtail gambling and other illegal online activities." It just seems this isn't the real or whole story, though. Control? International reputation? Deals with Chinese MMO devs?

Re:Why would China do this?

[maxume]

One reason might be that building an industry that is entirely reliant on the whims of a foreign company could leave them holding the bag for thousands of idiots who thought they had a job.

Re:Why would China do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does the US housing situation have to do with this?

Re:Why would China do this?

[vlm]

It just seems this isn't the real or whole story, though.

Encrypting the client-server protocols, makes it harder to hack the "game". Sort of.

That also makes it a great tool for secret communication about counter-revolutionary activities ranging from simple gossip about Tienanmen square, to money laundering.

Its an interesting public admission that a video game company can make a government-proof encryption/authentication/communication system.

Re:Why would China do this?

[pmontra]

One reason might be that building an industry that is entirely reliant on the whims of a foreign company could leave them holding the bag for thousands of idiots who thought they had a job.

Only a few countries build cars but every country service them. Local car service industries are at the mercy of manufacturers which, for example, make fully electronic cars that can be serviced only with expensive tools, but no country ever banned cars for that reason AFAIK.
I really wonder what the reason for the gold farming ban is.

Re:Why would China do this?

[Apache]

I suspect that the article is actually blowing out of proportion the MMO currency trading side of things. A quick googling shows that evidently gambling is illegal in china and the government has gone to lengths to crack down on it:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/China_steps_up_anti-gambling_campaign

If :
  A) MMO currency trading is not a notable contributor to China's GDP
  B) Virtual currency makes bypassing gambling restrictions easier
  C) China is genuinely interested in curbing gambling
It sounds to me like banning on-line currency trading is a no-brainer as it will criminalize the entry point people would use to get around local gambling restrictions. Any problem with MMO currency trading is purely incidental.

And I doubt China cares about the cost the rest of the world pays for [Titansteel Bar]s on the auction house..

Re:Why would China do this?

[maxume]

That's a pretty tortured analogy. For one thing, there isn't an OEM replacement parts market for video game loot.

Half (or better...) of a gold farming industry could disappear overnight if Blizzard decided to crack down. Even if GM and Chrysler had completely dissolved, people would still want their existing cars serviced.

Re:Why would China do this?

[MeanderingMind]

The problem with the analogy is that repair services are different from currency exchange. The former does need to adapt to new technologies (and potential jerk moves on the part of manufacturers). The latter isn't supposed to print money, simply trade it. Gold farmers are more akin to counterfeiters, producing currency against the best interests of the economy that otherwise wouldn't be a part of the system.

Re:Why would China do this?

[JoeMerchant]

But it's a tortured CAR analogy, so that makes it o.k. - right?

Re:Why would China do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason might be that building an industry that is entirely reliant on the whims of a foreign company could leave them holding the bag for thousands of idiots who thought they had a job.

The Chinese economy is already export-oriented. If people in the US ever get tired of paying low prices for manufactured goods, then the Chinese government will be left "holding the bag for thousands of idiots who thought they had a job."

Re:Why would China do this?

[Devistater]

And thats differant from what they are doing by banning it entirely, how? :)

Re:Why would China do this?

[maxume]

The size of it?

Re:Why would China do this?

[Barny]

Maybe the Chinese govt realise if they want any hope whatsoever of recouping the US National Debt they might have to stop funneling all the money out of stupid Americans :)

Re:Why would China do this?

[Devistater]

Yeah you are right, if they just ban it entirely (presuming enforcement), it puts lots more people out of a job than if just 1 game company say went under.

Re:Why would China do this?

[maxume]

Imagine it is a growing industry.

So...

[Darkness404]

So let me get this right, China bans a highly profitable industry from operating in China that no doubt brings in lots of revenue in the Chinese government or at the very least prevents people from having to work directly for the Chinese government. Sound really smart. While your at it why not ban the production of shoes, hard drives and cheap kids toys, it would have about the same effect.

Re:So...

[wjousts]

FTA:

The government justifies its ban on virtual currency trading as a way to curtail gambling and other illegal online activities.

But it's probably more about control. In a tightly controlled economy, the Chinese government doesn't want a parallel and uncontrolled economy popping up.

Re:So...

[Darkness404]

But China of all governments should know that whenever they start to control something it just leads to an underground movement of people who do it but they get no money from it and a communist/fascist/socialist government needs all the money they can get if they don't want to go the way of Soviet Russia. At some point they have to realize that even if the game currency is used to trade across multiple games, it will eventually surface as taxable cash.

Re:So...

[Pollardito]

It might be related to their attempts to limit the time that people spend playing games online. After all it would seem strange to limit people from playing more than 3 hours in their private life, while still allowing people to play 4 times that long at work.

Re:So...

[wjousts]

Nobody said governments behaved rationally.

Re:So...

[Darkness404]

Not really, if you are a socialist or communist state and rely on people making exportable goods to be taxed heavily in order to support your larger needs to "help" your citizen so anything that hampers your productivity should be eliminated or reduced in order to get more tax revenue. So if you are selling something that leads to more tax revenue it would be a good thing for the government on the other hand if you are doing nothing productive it costs money in a communist or socialist society.

Re:So...

[Pollardito]

I don't think that they're making either of these moves for economic reasons though. I think that they're instead trying to limit outside influence on their citizens. Here's a quote from a MSNBC article on the 3-hour limits:

President Hu Jintao ordered regulators in January to promote a "healthy online culture" to protect the government's stability, according to state media.

on the other hand it does look like those 3-hour limits would only apply to non-adults, and gold farmers probably include a good number of adults.

what about subscriptions?

[poetmatt]

subscriptions are intangible, are they going to prevent retailers from selling those too? FTA: "prepaid cards of cyber-games"....so they're not going to let people buy world of warcraft subscriptions or something?

Re:what about subscriptions?

[Manos_Of_Fate]

A subscription to a game is a service, not an intangible item. The ban is on virtual items that only exist in the game, not on selling anything without substance (which would make charging for services illegal).

Re:what about subscriptions?

[Darkness404]

...But similarly its a "service" for someone to farm gold for you too. And at what point does this stop? Eventually you can charge for an expansion pack that might give you virtual items too, would that be illegal?

Re:what about subscriptions?

[blueg3]

They're not banning hiring someone to perform a service in a virtual world for you; they're only banning the sale of virtual goods. If you think you can trick them with that distinction, though, try convincing someone that when they buy a desk lamp, they're not buying a good, but rather are purchasing the services of the manufacturer of that lamp.

Re:what about subscriptions?

[EvanED]

...try convincing someone that when they buy a desk lamp, they're not buying a good, but rather are purchasing the services of the manufacturer of that lamp.

Well, to be fair, buying the lamp pays for both the labor and raw materials. If I took a bunch of raw parts to some guy and gave him some money to turn the parts into a lamp, I think that line becomes much more fuzzy. Just in this case, there are no raw materials.

I'm not sure where the line falls here to be honest. It might depend on how it's marketed or something like that.

(What about this: if you hired someone by the hour to farm gold for you, is that buying the gold or the service?)

Re:what about subscriptions?

[Manos_Of_Fate]

Unless they're using your account, I'd say that's a commissioned good. If they're using your account to do the farming, that sounds more like a service, but also breaks the ToS of just about every game out there at the moment.

A 'Webpage' is a Virtual Item

[MrMista_B]

So, China just fobade anyone who does any work on the inernet from receiving payment of any kind for their services.

Wow.

No, seriously, I'm impressed.

Re:A 'Webpage' is a Virtual Item

[blueg3]

All of the non-gold-selling Internet business that comes to mind involves either selling a real good (although that real good consists of data) or performing a service, not selling a virtual good.

You seem to be confusing real goods on the Internet that consist of data with virtual goods. (Note that a real good consisting of data -- like the contents of a website -- can easily, though perhaps inconveniently, rendered into data in a more "physical" form. I cannot give you WoW gold via any physical means.)

Re:A 'Webpage' is a Virtual Item

[bill_mcgonigle]

It sounds more like they shut down their stock market. Obviously, I didn't read the article.

But China is hoarding gold so the Yuan can emerge as the new world reserve currency when the Dollar collapses, so there might be something to this.

Re:A 'Webpage' is a Virtual Item

[sabt-pestnu]

You use the terms "virtual good" and "real good consisting of data" without drawing any solid distinction between them. What makes a digital good "Virtual" vs "Real"? Wikipedia has a definition we can start with, I guess.

Virtual goods are non-physical objects that are purchased and exchanged on the internet. A virtual product has no intrinsic value in the physical or real world and is by definition intangible.

Would a Second Life script be a virtual good, or a real one? It has a real world manifestation, much like a javascript file does. It can only manifest as the object it represents when applied within the Second Life environment, though. ... does it become a virtual good if it is only linked to (or sold) within the game? ... Is it both a virtual good and a real one?

Intrinsic value is also a shifty concept. If it takes me Y hours of play to earn X (insert game currency here), doesn't that imply that there is a labor value to the virtual currency? As a counter example, is there an intrinsic value to copyrights and patents (as opposed to specific items using the patent or copyright)? How about E-books?

Despite posting this on slashdot, I am interested in answers to these questions. Perhaps someone can forward me to where I can learn those answers.

Re:A 'Webpage' is a Virtual Item

[blueg3]

I intentionally avoid being the one to draw a particular distinction, but there is certainly a distinction.

Actually, I guess I do make a rough distinction -- data-only goods can be fully represented in reality. For example, computer code can be printed out. (Further, those fall under the definition of intellectual property -- an existing definition for intangible goods.)

Cash4WOWGold

[Blixinator]

What will this do to the gold market? Will the guy on the Cash4Gold commercials become even more annoying and have larger graphs to show just how much he profits from buying gold from people at prices well below market price then selling it when the prices go up?

Isn't currency virtual already?

[caywen]

Isn't virtual currency just a microcosm of a "real" currency system? Perhaps they should also start cracking down on retail gift cards and "point" systems, too.

"Virtual goods"

[Lohrno]

"InformationWeek is reporting that the Chinese government has declared a ban on the sale of virtual goods for real currency." If worded exactly like that, does that mean that there will be no Korean MMOGs there? Those game companies themselves make their entire business model to sell virtual goods for real cash...

Bit more worrying...

[Anonymous Coward]

China is also moving away from the sale of real goods for virtual currency.

Re:Bit more worrying...

[Anonymous Coward]

Zing!

Chinas motives

[Gresyth]

The government justifies its ban on virtual currency trading as a way to curtail gambling and other illegal online activities.

Will the other illegal online activities include, dissent against the govt or telling the world about human rights violations? Looks like its another way to pass a law to restrict their populace.

But will they ENFORCE this?

[elrous0]

If this is just another instance where the farmers just have to bribe the cops to look the other way, this "ban" will amount to nothing more than a PR stunt.

Re:But will they ENFORCE this?

[Dan667]

I would guess this is the case. China probably needed to make a public announcement like this to get something they wanted in a negotiation. I bet they do nothing to enforce this.

Re:But will they ENFORCE this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect they're banning it because gold sellers tend to get the gold by stealing accounts. Obviously it won't be easy to stop, but they can probably make it a bit harder. Which I suppose is better than nothing.

Re:But will they ENFORCE this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, someone with some common sense. China is going to do NOTHING, this is just lip service. Seriously, everyone needs to ask what is China's vested interest in stopping their people from making money off the Americans.

There is always India

[Hoi Polloi]

And suddenly thousands of Indian techies have opened Warcraft accounts.

Re:There is always India

[Anonymous Coward]

And suddenly thousands of Indian techies have opened Warcraft accounts.

So we might get something like this except with a Bollywood flavor?

Re:There is always India

[Darkness404]

So now when I call tech support I will have to wait twice as long as I usually have to because the support people are out busy on a guild dungeon run?

Re:There is always India

[jack2000]

What? Are you crazy? They'll be farming WHILE talking to you. Heed my word slashdot, it WILL happen!

Loyaly Programs

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that make loyalty programs (such as Air Miles) illegal? They also trade virtual currency (points) for cash and goods.

Corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes me wonder who greased who's palms to get this passed into law...

Why? I don't get it...

[Monkeedude1212]

It's not illegal to make Gold.
It's not illegal to Give Gold.
It's not illegal to Give real Money to someone else.

But somewhere along the way, selling Gold online becomes illegal. Wheras stating the transaction as a two-way donation easily bypasses the law.

Also - the big question - why would this become illegal? People do what they want with their money. If Blizzard was smart - they'd offer Gold at a price matching the market and get a cut on this. They've already ruined WoW four times over. Anyone who's played since the beginning can tell you how much more enjoyable it used to be.

Gold farmers also increase the amount of subscriptions that the game has, more money going into the developers... I don't get why they fight it so much.

To me - its the worst business logic I've ever come across, and games that have these microtransactions already involved will be the ones who come out on top.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[rainmaestro]

This reminds me of the old Carlin skit on prostitution:

"Selling is legal, ****ing is legal. So why isn't selling ****ing legal?"

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[Chad Birch]

It's not illegal to have sex.
It's not illegal to give money to someone else.

It's not illegal to drive.
It's not illegal to drink.

Things aren't always just the sum of their parts.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[Red Flayer]

Also - the big question - why would this become illegal? People do what they want with their money. If Blizzard was smart - they'd offer Gold at a price matching the market and get a cut on this.

Once they start doing this, then they run afoul of banking regulations. Suddenly they are running an currency exchange board using a 'phony' currency... lots of countries would have issues with this.

China is trying to clean up its image regarding currencies, and one of the things necessary is that they limit certain transactions, especially ones involving other countries' currencies, that screw with international trade. Especially so in light of their recent request to the IMF that a 'supercurrency' is created.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[HikingStick]

If you give to someone else with the expectation of something in return, you are no longer talking about a donation, but either a financial transaction or barter. You can play the word game as much as you like, but if your character donates 100,000 gold to another player's character, and that character's player--out of the goodness of his or her heart--decides to find out who you are and send you cash, then a de facto transaction has taken place.

If your logic had any legal merit, you'd find cadres of hookers using the "I donated services" defense while the Johns make a "I made a cash donation" defense.

Besides, any time you give money to a group or individual and receive something tangible in return, the only part of the transaction that is considered a donation is the amount above the fair market value of the item. So, if you buy a tin of popcorn from your local Boy Scout for $10, and the tin would normally sell for $4 at retail, your donation is only $6.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[gujo-odori]

George Carlin had a lot of insight into bogosity, and phrased it in memorable ways.

While I'm not particularly in favor of prostitution, the court long ago ruled that sex acts between consenting adults are legal.

That being the case, it seems - at least to this layman - that the law is on shaky ground in dictating how said consent may be achieved. Whether it's by flowers, dinner, and clever small talk, or whatever the going rate in cash is, consent is consent.

To make matters even cloudier, the court has also ruled that porn is protected under the first amendment. No matter how much sophistry they want to wrap around it, at the core of porn is the fact that people are being paid to have sex with someone that (in many cases) they just met for the first time a few minutes before the scene. Not that elapsed time between meeting and the act matters to prostitution laws. If it's legal for a third party to pay two (or more) people to engage in sex and film it, then it seems contradictory to say that it's illegal for one party to pay the other to engage in sex.

That discrepancy may also provide a way for people to beat the rap on prostitution charges: don't solicit someone for sex, tell them you're making a porno flick and you want them to be in it.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[Nathrael]

If Blizzard was nice, they'd just remove the necessity to farm gold and let players actually enjoy the game.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[Monkeedude1212]

But selling virtual Currency is nothing like prostitution - it doesn't have nearly the same reprocussions as prostitution and isn't in the same boat at all. Its not like its harming people to gold farm, and its not like they're being utterly forced to do it. Its no more a sweat shop of kids farming gold then it is a sweat shop of kids putting clothes together, but buying a T-shirt made in China is perfectly legal.

If you can show me a valid reason why selling Gold is against any moral law, except for the reason that the developer says "don't do it" - I'll jump on board. I just don't get why it should be against THE LAW. If Blizzard wants to enforce this rule by tracking down the buyers/suppliers and banning their accounts, all the power to them. But should someone be fined or sent to jail?

And the whole currency exchange board thing - is completely irrelevant. Its not like they are printing new money, its not like its phony currency. By that logic, selling video games in general would be ruining the market. (feel free to add your joke here)

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[Repossessed]

Farming takes time though, which means blizzard gets more payment before you max out and get bored. Actually enjoying the game wouldn't be good for their bottom line.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[MeanderingMind]

I don't see why this was marked redundant, it's a fair point that hadn't yet been made.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[seebs]

It's not illegal to report truthfully about embarassing facts.
It's not illegal to give someone money.
It's illegal to blackmail people.

It's not illegal to get drunk.
It's not illegal to drive.
It's illegal to drive drunk.

Some combinations of legal things are illegal.

I really don't object to them banning this -- I think the harm done to the rest of the community is significant, and would not miss these people at all.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[MeanderingMind]

Gold farmers also increase the amount of subscriptions that the game has, more money going into the developers... I don't get why they fight it so much.

To me - its the worst business logic I've ever come across, and games that have these microtransactions already involved will be the ones who come out on top.

Smart businesses don't think in raw, bulk numbers like that. Not all subscriptions are created equally.

Consider why people get banned from the game at all; it usually involves something that negatively impacts the play experience of other players. Sure, Blizzard loses $15/mo if they ban Player A, but they stand to lose many times that amount if they let Player A run around being a jerk to Players B through Z. One account termination due to the actions of Player A costs the company the value of his subscription.

The same essentially applies to gold farmers, in a more indirect way. Early in WoW's history gold farmers impacted other players simply through economic inflation and crowding out resources. Some resources were almost impossible to farm for yourself because of the ubiquitous presence of farmers. Blizzard banned these farmers because of these negative impacts alone, and the money it cost them to do so was likely saved in preserved subscriptions and reduced support costs.

This argument is far more pointed now. Gold farmers still inflate the economy, only they do so through ill-gotten gains obtained by hacking accounts. The support costs are many times greater than before, and are far more likely to result in account termination. Losing one's account, even if you can get it restored, is the single most frustrating event that can happen to a player in a game where progression is a foundational goal.

So Blizzard is saving a lot of money by working to prevent gold farming.

Also - the big question - why would this become illegal? People do what they want with their money. If Blizzard was smart - they'd offer Gold at a price matching the market and get a cut on this. They've already ruined WoW four times over. Anyone who's played since the beginning can tell you how much more enjoyable it used to be.

It's disingenuous to claim that "anyone" from a category designed to exclude people who might disagree with you will agree with you. It's also demonstrably false, as I fit into your category and find that the expansions and patches have markedly improved the game.

Your second disingenuous argument suggests that having already ruined something, there's no reason to avoid ruining it further. This is frankly silly, as the mistakes of Star Wars Galaxies can attest.

More importantly, it's impossible to price match a black market. I've tried several MMOs which allowed RMT transactions, and was not surprised to find that even there the black market currency farming/selling still thrives. Even if Blizzard/other companies offer their currencies cheap, someone will always be ready to offer it cheaper.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[_Sprocket_]

Also - the big question - why would this become illegal? People do what they want with their money. If Blizzard was smart - they'd offer Gold at a price matching the market and get a cut on this. They've already ruined WoW four times over. Anyone who's played since the beginning can tell you how much more enjoyable it used to be.

I've played the game from the beginning. And the only reason I'd even consider calling WoW more enjoyable back then is because it was new. It's still fun today. I don't buy in on the idea that they've ruined the game four times over.

However, I do believe they'd gut the game following your advice. Who wants to play a game where you just buy a win? You do, apparently.

Granted - Activision / Blizzard seems to be toying with the idea. The collectible game loot cards, website advertisements, and Pepsi advertising campaign shows where they really want to go. Microtransactions are likely just a matter of time. And then you'll have your wish - WoW ruined.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[copponex]

That discrepancy may also provide a way for people to beat the rap on prostitution charges: don't solicit someone for sex, tell them you're making a porno flick and you want them to be in it.

That's genius. Anyone have a cheap room for rent in SFV?

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point there and,
What if Blizz would be already selling gold to retailers?

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really dont understand why this idea is difficult.

When something is worth money, illegal activities follow.
Just check your email to see the amount of phishing scams that tries to steal WoW login information or viruses/trojans specific to WoW.

Remove the monetary value and it has no value therefore people will have no incentive to illegally steal account information.
Now I have no hard data, mostly anecdotal evidence, but most people who use these services tend to get hacked and their fun game turns into a hard fought fight to get everything back. (In WoW anyways)

Also on the question on why does blizzard not allow sales of gold?
This is really not that hard.

People play to have fun.
It is fun when everyone is on an equal footing.
Just look at sports.
They are all mostly on an equal footing.
They can get the players and coaches so that they stand a chance playing other teams.
If they were not somewhat equal, whats the point of watching the game?

So why play when a rich kid just buys everything to the point a normal player can not stand a chance against them?
This is why I believe WoW is so big.
All players have an equal chance to do everything in the game.
It does not matter if your rich or poor or if you have the hours on hours to play.
Everyone can eventually do what they want, within the rules of course.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[tignet]

It's not illegal to make Gold. It's not illegal to Give Gold. It's not illegal to Give real Money to someone else.

But somewhere along the way, selling Gold online becomes illegal.

Since you're focusing on Blizzard rather than on China let me correct you -- It's not illegal. You will not get arrested for doing it. It's against the terms of service, the rules you abide by to be able to play the game. If you come over to my house you must take off your shoes before using the hot tub. Those are my terms of service and if you break them I have the right to kick you out of my hot-tub or off of my property. But you won't get arrested.

If Blizzard was smart - they'd offer Gold at a price matching the market and get a cut on this. They've already ruined WoW four times over. Anyone who's played since the beginning can tell you how much more enjoyable it used to be.

Grinding gold to pay for repairs isn't fun. For casual gamers that wanted to see "end-game" they often bought gold to pay for their repairs. Certain aspects were certainly more fun, but the gold-centric aspects of the game were not.

Blizz did address it somewhat in the first x-pac. No more buying Golden Pearls to make that epic cloth item -- now you can simply run an instance and get the crafting material you need (as a drop) to craft your item. Now that those drops are no longer BoP the items have become much more of a commodity and the prices are reasonable due to sellers having competition in the auction house.

The change from making the crafting materials for epic items BoE also means that you don't have to grind instances for materials. Making gold is very easy (doing dailies nets about 400g per day) allowing you to obtain the item any way you want.

Now there are probably a few reasons Blizzard doesn't want gold selling:

1. Gold farmers were always quite annoying. Killing/camping quest mobs and such. Often they would cooperate on differing factions so that one would always be close to harass you (train mobs onto you, use a scroll (or whatever tricks they have to put you into combat also) then vanish.

2. They want you to play the game. To have gold allow you to buy something that it might take months to "earn" in-game is frustrating to those abiding by the ToS. A hint that perhaps the game should be more fun and less of a grind, but Blizz has an interest in keeping things balanced for those following the rules.

3. There are probably legal considerations for brokering (laundering) real money relatively anonymously.

4. People are giving out their account information to get powerleveled and to buy gold. Yes, to buy gold that could be sent in-game. People are getting hacked, messages posted on the forums (often pointing to malicious sites) to hack innocent people, etc.

There are plenty of boring parts of WoW that feel like a grind, which was the reason I stopped playing. However gold has lost its value. From Blizzard's perspective there simply is not a good reason for allowing it, and plenty of good reasons for not allowing it.

Re:Why? I don't get it...

[meerling]

It's rather easy. It's a violation of the User Agreement for the game.

Why does the game company want to stop gold selling?
It's part of the nature of the ingame economy and balance.
They crafted a world based around certain ideals and formulas based on time and available resources. Someone buying in game gold or items using money from another universe (aka real money) is disrupting that balance.

Is that disruption visible on a personal level? Maybe, guess it depends on what you encounter. Ever fight a 20th level twink with all epic gear that's only been playing for 3 weeks? You know the scum doesn't deserve it.

This kind of activity isn't much different than playing a chess match with someone, and that bozo keeps slipping a fiver to a player on the next table to get extra pawns from him.
Is that fair? No.
Is it against the rules of the game? Yes.
Do you know anybody that would do it if they could get away with it? Probably, do you know a gold buyer?

Farming Gold?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do I buy gold seeds so I can start gold farming?

I've heard that money doesn't grow on trees, yet I didn't know that I could farm gold.

Goldfarmer

[rlp]

Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Auric Goldfarmer: No Mr. Bond, I expect you to ... play World of Warcraft.

so we are so lazy now

[stabiesoft]

we have to pay the chinese to have fun for us now? What's next, do we pay them to have sex for us, eat for us, pee for us...

Re:so we are so lazy now

[slyn]

Farming gold isn't what most players find fun about MMO's, hence peoples willingness to pay for it.

Re:so we are so lazy now

[dariuscardren]

I have fun doing it (log in form work and do it in 64 colors over VNC) but still have fun

Re:so we are so lazy now

[dave562]

We pay the Chinese to do the grunt work so that we can focus on having fun. I bought gold once from a WoW gold farmer. I figured that the real life time I would have to spend to get an item in the game was worth more to me than the $50 it would cost me to pay a Chinese guy for the gold to buy the item. It was $50 well spent and it greatly increased the pleasure I got from playing the game.

Re:so we are so lazy now

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to get my dedicated Chinese wang holder, I do so hate getting my hand smelling like wang.

Hey, as an added bonus, if his name is Wang, he could be my wang holding Wang!

Dear God, I am going to hell aren't I?

Re:so we are so lazy now

[Abcd1234]

We pay the Chinese to do the grunt work so that we can focus on having fun.

Which just illustrates why these games are b0rked. If people are willing to pay to avoid an integral part of the game, maybe you've done something wrong.

Re:so we are so lazy now

[dave562]

To Blizzard's credit, they have taken a couple of steps to address the situation that I spent real money on. I wanted an epic mount, but I didn't want to spend the time it took to gather up the gold required to buy it. They've since adjusted the quest reward structure to make it much easier for new players to earn enough gold to purchase an epic mount in a reasonable period of time.

Re:so we are so lazy now

[brkello]

Meh, your argument is tired and not well thought out. Obviously a lot of people are having fun playing the game. Any subscription MMO you play is going to have some form of grind, if it didn't, it wouldn't be an MMO. Some of those grinds are less enjoyable than others so people would rather buy their way past it. Others want to be better than their friends so they buy gold to impress others with whatever in the game. There really isn't anything broken in the game, if gold was unlimited, then there would be no economy (which many people find fun to play). And the truth is, you really don't need more gold (at least in WoW) for anything but vanity items. You can afford most things just by playing normally.

People play for 3 years and then get tired of it. They had fun at first, but then it gets too boring or time consuming. Nothing is wrong with that...anything gets boring and repetitive after years of doing it. It isn't a flaw in the game, it is just human nature. A game that is so good that you never quit...well, that just doesn't exist. So if Blizzard is doing it wrong, what the hell is doing it right? And do we really want that?

Re:so we are so lazy now

[Abcd1234]

Some of those grinds are less enjoyable than others so people would rather buy their way past it.

I'm pretty sure that was my entire point. No, really, I get that some people like to impress their friends, or are simply genuinely lazy. But if people are buying their way past certain parts of your game because they're "less enjoyable", then you have, in fact, done something wrong. After all, games are, by their very definition, supposed to be enjoyable.

Re:so we are so lazy now

[Anonymous Coward]

Except I actually enjoy sex, food, and taking a nice long piss.

Given that some hate farming gold, why not pay for it?

Think about it, if someone enjoys farming gold as much as work, they can work overtime at $40/hour and use 15 MINUTES of that to buy 1,000 gold in WoW. Or I can farm gold for SEVERAL HOURS. It really makes no sense not to buy gold. You are, after all, trying to compete in wages against a Chinaman and we all know that is impossible, so what's the big deal?

A couple hours of time, $30, 1k gold, and the the thought of my peers I'm a hard worker versus.... 1k gold. Gee, I wonder.

I don't care why they're doing this

[Benfea]

but gold farming has a real negative impact for legitimate gamers. I'm sick of having to compete with professional, hack-using gold farmers for in-game resources, I'm sick of having to hear badly worded spam every time I enter a major virtual city, and I'm sick of what they do to in-game economies. It could be argued that some games (e.g. Final Fantasy XII) were damaged by gold farmers, or at least made a lot less money than they could have because gamers quit over the antics of gold farmers.

The gold farmers have years of experience hiding from the game developers, so I doubt this law will have much impact on their operations, but it's nice to know those @$#% will have one more shoulder to have to look over.

Re:I don't care why they're doing this

[lgw]

Yeah, fuck those asshole making enough money to feed themselves the only way they can. Better they starve than interfere slightly with my recreation! The Chinese government should drive tanks over them, and bill their families for the tanks!

Do you listen to yourself?

Re:I don't care why they're doing this

[Cimexus]

Agreed. These for-profit farmers have ruined more than one otherwise great game out there, and I would be happy to see the last of them.

I'm particularly thinking of Lineage II, which I still play, but in truth is completely dominated by cheaters at the high end (i.e. people that buy virtual currency so they can afford the best and rarest gear ... and L2 is very much a gear-dependant game). L2's situation is made worse by the fact that unlike WoW, it is almost entirely non-instanced (and so the farmers are plentiful, visible and occupy vast areas of the game world, thus barring other people from that content), and the fact that it's a Korean game whose North American division runs on a bare skeleton of a few GMs and other staff who simply cannot keep up with the necessary detecting and banning of these accounts.

If this can curb such currency farming to even half of its current level, the prices will naturally have to rise a lot, and hopefully less people will cheat.

This Changes Nothing

[Greyfox]

Assuming the companies that were actually making the profits selling the gold were inside China they could just relocate elsewhere and continue to employ Chinese to farm their gold. Even if the Chinese government cracks down on those employees, there are still plenty of impoverished nations whose citizens would be happy to work for 16 hours a day for $.20 a day. It just means that instead I'll need to brush up on insulting phrases in languages other than Mandarin. Does anyone know the Somali for "Go stick your head in a goat"?

Nothing to do with Gaming

[kenp2002]

In full disclosure: I work in the financial industry currently.

This ban has nothing to do with gaming, gambling, or local economy.

This is likely a direct response to MASSIVE money laundering.

Joe has $100,000 worth of illicit cash.
Joe strikes a deal to buy $100,000 worth of virtual currency in WoW. Joe smuggles the money. (Many times Joe can even hire the kid down the street and pay him cash...)

Joe turns around and over several months sells the gold BACK to the gold farmers and claims the sales as legitimate income. Selling it at a 50% loss he can convert $100,000 into $50,000 of legitimate funds. Even more so when he acts as a virtual broker (IGN anyone?).

While this is a simplified scenario but we are talking BILLIONS of dollars a year are now going through these kinds of channels.

I've seen locally here in the US $300,000 attempts and laundering money this way (through a combination of FF Online, LOTRO, and Maple).

While it is getting easier to deal with this now that the gaming companies are willing to share some data I can only imagine how hard is must be in Asian markets where channeling cash to chinese gold farmers is easier with the shorter phsyical distances. Oddly though, in my experience, I have seen more Korean and Indian gold farmers then Chinese.

Never had a problem with gold farmers, never will, but I have serious doubts that this ban has anything to do with gameplay.

I think this is in response to the forged bonds that were intercepted in Italy. They are worried about organized crime shifting large sums of money (which require laundering) through the virtual economy.

If I am an evil overlord and I have to get 4 billion to my agents around the world the easiest thing to do is buy a billion dollars worth of WoW gold, have all my agents log in with characters. Divvy up the gold then have them sell it off locally or back to the gold farmers at a loss.

No quicker way to distributed that much real world money then through a network of games.

Re:Nothing to do with Gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad that you work in financial sectory and don't realize this is a poor way to launder cash. The mafia would never be so dumb. In fact a regular software company is a much better way to do it. The only hard part of laundering money is doing it without paying lots of taxes. Otherwise I could just sale you custom state-management software for 1m/pop.

Re:Nothing to do with Gaming

[vlm]

In full disclosure: I work in the financial industry currently.

Could it be that Blizzard is planning on inflating their virtual gold economy less than the local central banks?

Virtual gold might not be as stable of an investment as real gold, but it might be become better than currency. I'm sure virtual gold is more stable than Zimbabwe money...

Re:Nothing to do with Gaming

[MeanderingMind]

Would you care to go into details as to why it's so stupid to launder money through video games, or as to why a regular software company would be better? Those of us who aren't in finance would like to know.

Re:Nothing to do with Gaming

[joe_frisch]

Is the distinction between real and virtual goods that clear? I can buy music, videos, games and game upgrade packages online. If I pay to listen to music in an online game, is that a real or a virtual good. What if the performer is also in the game? What if I want to sell copies of music made in a game to the outside world?

Re:Nothing to do with Gaming

[kenp2002]

The problem with virtual gold is there is no physical asset to back it (fiat money) but worse yet it is prone to inflation and unregulated in it's production. The gold comes from nowhere, literally.

From a stability standpoint it is prone to rapid inflation (on of the ways we detect laundring in virtual currency.) so they have to spread it across multiple platforms. Rapidly diminshing returns but cut supply and you can ward off inflation. You COULD look at this in a big evil conspiracy theory way that China is trying to stablize the virtual currency market to promote laundring money through it but that is a hell of a stretch....

Re:Nothing to do with Gaming

[kenp2002]

See EULA.

This is not a ban!

[Orleron]

It's a pretense for nationalization of gold farming companies! (Obama is only sorry he didn't think of it first, LOL.)

Re:This is not a ban!

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to bring your pointless conservative negativism to a conversation completely unrelated. I'm sick of hearing this drivel about how everything Obama does is wrong even though he has tried to reach across the aisle and been spat at and frequently crossed his own damned party. He isn't a god but he is far better than the conservatives who've been in control for the past 8 years or the ineffective dems in congress. Drop this crap unless you have an actual issue you spoiled brat.

Screenshots...

[HunterZ]

Screenshots or it didn't happen!

Not the end of Chinese Gold Farming

[tick_and_bash]

While they have expressly forbidden the exchange of virtual currency/services for real cash, it does not forbid the exchange of their time (services) for a player's cash. This does not prevent them from offering powerlevelling, honor farming, or item grinding. (Change the term for whatever your MMO of choice terms these services.) These services are normally quoted as a function of time. Anyone who uses a bit of creative wording/pricing can still continue to sell virtual currency. So long as they refer to it as a service, then in theory they should be able to skirt this new ban. Quite a few sites list a time frame in which they can get gold to you. Up to 2 days for larger orders. Let's say someone wants to buy 10,000g. With a 2 day turn around time, that's about ~210g per hour. (Most players with a bit of a clue can easily bang out that much if not more per hour.) Thus, they have sold the player their playing time for a specific goal. I honestly don't think this solves anything. It'll either create an underground market, or sites will start to use more creative wording.

you failed maths

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm one billion RMB is actually one hundred and 46 million dollars as there are almost 7 yuan in one dollar.

Live rates at 2009.06.29 19:56:54 UTC
1,000,000,000.00 CNY = 146,318,619.51 USD
China Yuan Renminbi United States Dollars
1 CNY = 0.146319 USD 1 USD = 6.83440 CNY

YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

The demand won't disappear, so they'll have to outsource their gold farming to Americans.

IANAL, but my dad was an accountant for this N. Ron guy, so I know what I'm talking about.

Sillly

[FunkyELF]

built virtual commerce into their game infrastructure

So you can go to work in a virtual world, selling virtual services for virtual gold.
You can then sell that gold to a 12 year old idiot who got his mom's credit card.

Thats kinda funny.
I have a roommate who is adicted to FarmTown on Facebook. He is constantly farming other people's crops to get money to buy stuff for his own farm.


Imagine a farmer in China getting a computer, and farming in a virtual world, selling his virtual income for actual income and that being more than he made farming in real life.
Crazy!

You owe them

[32771]

Something makes me think that the Chinese government helped some of you.

Not that I like the idea but - I can be pragmatic.

China isn't socialist/communist

[Anonymous Coward]

China is a totalitarian capitalist. Yay state and corporate oppression. Best possible combination.

Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[Shivetya]

I like WOW and I have liked many other games before that.

The problem WOW faces is that gold has to be used to buy one particular feature from a NPC no player can substitute for, epic flying. While "normal" flying and such gets you there, epic flying is so many times as fast that it not only becomes a status symbol it has become a requirement for many people. If they had put the effort into making it obtainable by quests that people could do during the course of their play or even a few group quests they could eliminate much of the gold need.

I know of nothing that causes more "gold strife" than mount costs. Blizzard likes to state that epic flight skill isn't needed, but it is required to fly special mounts that attract a lot of interest from players, specifically dragons. Sorry, they can claim not needed all the want, if that were so they can't justify the price. After all if its just fluff then why is is so expensive compared to other forms of movement.

Throw in rare drops that can be sold and therein comes another source of outside gold. People play these games to have, some play to prove competitiveness, but I don't know of people paying to work again. Consider the time it takes to accrue the required gold just for in game NPC purchases and it makes sense that a market formed to sell it. I cannot make the money at a rate competitive in time to what I could buy it for. Even at $20 per 1000 gold (it spams much lower than that in game - seen 7 to 8 dollars per 1000 gold) it is dirt cheap compared to the time I would have to take away from game play : read enjoyment.

Make gold trivial or strive to eliminate penalties, and the cost is just that. Recently blizzard introduced the ability for players to have two complete talent specifications per character. Cost 1000g! Hence something which has no lore backing, is nothing more than a convenience, yet considered "required" by any serious players again asserts the need to have lots of gold.

Not smart.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[_Sprocket_]

Blizzard likes to state that epic flight skill isn't needed, but it is required to fly special mounts that attract a lot of interest from players, specifically dragons. Sorry, they can claim not needed all the want, if that were so they can't justify the price. After all if its just fluff then why is is so expensive compared to other forms of movement.

I don't agree that epic riding skills (both ground and flying) are luxury items. One can certainly make do without. But in world PvP (my stomping grounds), you're at a huge disadvantage without it. And even just simple questing and leveling takes a hit.

Having said that - I don't agree with your comment on cost. I'm not sure how much you've been out in the real world, but luxury items are often expensive. Epic flying being expensive fully falls in line with Blizzard's claims that it is a luxury item (even though I disagree with this claim).

Make gold trivial or strive to eliminate penalties, and the cost is just that. Recently blizzard introduced the ability for players to have two complete talent specifications per character. Cost 1000g! Hence something which has no lore backing, is nothing more than a convenience, yet considered "required" by any serious players again asserts the need to have lots of gold.

Not smart.

Gold is pretty darned close to trivial these days. Back in the day, I made most of my gold doing a bit of gathering and trading on the AH. Now days, gold tends to just stick in my bags without any real effort - I suspect if I put effort in to it, I'd have a goodly amount by now. Dailies produce gold. Heroics produce gold (hold on to that vendor trash). Raids produce gold. Blizzard is all but throwing it at you.

The smart player has no use for gold sellers and their scamming ilk.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[funaho]

You're right about the flying mounts; it was silly of them to make what is essentially the next upgrade after the fast epic mount be SLOWER than the thing it's replacing. Fortunately the standard flying mount is getting more than 2x faster in the next major patch, and also somewhat cheaper. Ground mounts are getting a LOT cheaper.

Mounts aside, in over four years of playing WoW I've never felt the absolute MUST HAVE desire for anything in-game. Sure, I've wanted some things (dungeon armor sets, for example) but never to the point of paying for gold to get them. To me paying for gold so I can buy some really nice item is basically just turning that item into nothing more than a reflection of the size of my real-world disposable income. I would rather there be some sense of accomplishment attached to it,even if it's just a lot of farming or holding out for six months until my regular game play has built up enough gold for it.

Then again, I'm what you might call a "hard-core casual" player. I play quite a bit, but I just play to have fun and I'm not overly concerned with comparing myself to everyone else in the game. Usually after I hit 80 I just start levelling another alt of a class I haven't tried before. I don't even bother with guilds because the casual guilds are almost useless and the alternative are the hardcore guilds that kicks you out because you decided to take a couple weeks off from the game.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[Anonymous Coward]

same here, i'm casual player, still have to get my first char to 80 (currently 76) and i've been playing for 2 years. just because sometimes i want something else, i leveled 20 different alts on different servers/sides. all ranging from 1 to 55. I also play mostly alone, and never felt the need to Buy gold to get some items, yes i'm getting killed by most PVP's because my armor/weapons are what i find as drop. but at least i have fun, i don't have a calendar to go by and really do what i want.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[MeanderingMind]

This argument isn't that compelling anymore. 5000g was a hefty sum in BC when initially there were only 2 daily quests and questing wasn't as streamlined. In Wrath, you can stumble into that sum if you just keep questing past 80 or do dailies for rep grinds. It's just a matter of avoiding frivolous purchases, no AH savvy or intense play required. Not to mention mount costs are being reduced next patch, and non-epic flier speeds will be nearly tripled.

Now 1000g an hour I can not do, but remember that you're buying tainted goods. 99% of the gold out there is obtained from hacking accounts, fleecing them, and leaving the unfortunate player to deal with the leftover mess. I don't think anyone's time is worth putting another person through that.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[CTachyon]

I'm sorry, but no. My main just passed the 9400 gold threshold today, and will probably pass 10,000 in the next week or so. The secret to my success? Daily quests, and a little bit of auctioning. Epic flying is a sizable chunk of gold, but it's not particularly difficult in the post-BC world, and even before I had it I was making due quite nicely with a 60% flying speed mount (including the World Explorer achievement). Crazily enough, I did all this entirely solo, without playing through even a single Outland or Northrend dungeon.

Bad analogy time. Paying someone else to play WoW for you is akin to paying someone else to play your half of a game of chess, knowing that they'll just be running a copy of Deep Blue and moving the pieces like a good little monkey. Then, at the very end, they give your chess game back to you, just in time for you to make the actual winning checkmate in person. Chess is a mental battle of tactics and wills; if you pay someone else to play chess for you, you can't honestly call yourself a chess player. WoW is similarly a mental battle, but this time focused on patience and mastery of patterns, and pitted against the game's developers rather than a single opponent. The epic flying, the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, and all the other myriad status symbols are the developers' way of saying "congratulations, you win", meant to give you the same spark of victory that chess gives you when you call checkmate after a grueling session. To call checkmate against an opponent you didn't beat, or to buy epic flying with gold you didn't earn, is straight up dishonesty — borne from impatience and an unearned sense of entitlement.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but within a month it will be cheaper and the "slow" flying mount is getting a 2.5x increase to its speed modifier.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[L4t3r4lu5]

I achieve in real life. I make money to pay for my hobbies.

To me paying for gold so I can buy some really nice item is basically just turning that item into nothing more than a reflection of the size of my real-world disposable income.

So, you don't think investing money in a hobby is worth while?

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[funaho]

Spending money on hobbies is fine, I'm just saying I don't get why someone would want to play an achievment based game and then buy their achievements. It seems to me like buying trophies for your wall. Sure, it makes you look cool, but there's no real sense of accomplishment to go along with it, for me at least.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[idontgno]

Dailies produce gold.

True.

Heroics produce gold (hold on to that vendor trash).

Very true.

Raids produce gold.

You haven't seen my repair bills. Raiding is always a net loss of in-game cash for me, but I suspect someone well-geared AND well-trained in encounter tactics can win without expensively dying. I'm not either, yet. I do dailies to recover gold reserves to pay for raiding. But, obviously, YMMV.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[_Sprocket_]

You haven't seen my repair bills. Raiding is always a net loss of in-game cash for me, but I suspect someone well-geared AND well-trained in encounter tactics can win without expensively dying. I'm not either, yet. I do dailies to recover gold reserves to pay for raiding. But, obviously, YMMV.

Actually - you did catch me out being lazy. I'm (mostly) a clothie so my gear isn't taking an inordinate amount of damage short of complete and total wipes. Our plate guys (i.e. tanks) are having to foot much larger repair bills. It did dawn on me that I should check in with our tanks and see what their repairs run vs. the vendor trash they're picking up.

When we're doing Classic content or "farm" runs in Naxx, I notice a nice little handful of gold. Our tanks aren't usually beat up as much and so I'm guessing they're coming out ahead as well (again - being lazy, I didn't check and I can't say for sure).

In any case, the dailies are very good income producers. And that's not even bothering to gather resources and play the market (heck - even fishing is now an occasional profit generator).

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[L4t3r4lu5]

I don't think I articulated my point as well as I could... I consider WoW to be my version of reading a book, or watching a TV program. It passes time. It is a distraction from work.

Imagine reading "Magician" by Raymond E. Feist where you have to read about every single time Pug had to eat a dinner, sleep for a night, killed every monster and in which way, often the identical way as the last as it was the most efficient method of defeating that monster. That is the lower levels of WoW to me; A book with every spell cast, every road walked, every conversation had outlined in painstaking and monotonous detail.

I would buy gold because I don't want to spend months doing the same thing over and over again just to get to the interesting parts of the game. I've done that once before, with both factions. Several times, on several realms. DKs make it less painful, but I still have 55 - 70 to do. AGAIN.

Re:Gold farming is the fault of MMORPG companies

[funaho]

I see what you mean; I just think it's my different style of game play. As I mentioned in my original post I generally just play to 80 and start over again with a new class. The quests are the same of course, but I try to mix things up a bit by doing different zones, and I also enjoy learning the new play style of the new class. i must say though, one more time through Dragonblight and Zul'Drak and i might have to scream. With four 80s and a 75 so I've run Northrend way too many times in the past six months. :) I would love to try some of the endgame stuff again but it really is hard finding a good casual guild, and I don't want to join a hardcore guild that forces me to raid....once that happens it goes from being a game to being an unpaid job.

But that's not an option

[TheNinjaroach]

It would not be a pleasant job, even if you got the same wage you do now. [...] I'd rather do straight data entry typing than be a gold farmer...

Data entry isn't even an option for these people. They get to choose from farming (real) fields for pennies or playing video games for the same number of pennies. Most of them who play video games for pennies are at least guaranteed to have a roof over their head because computers are expensive to replace even when the people aren't.

You don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This only applies to Chinese citizens regarding Chinese virtual commerce. China isn't banning bringing in money from outside countries. They are just cracking down on what they can't tax. All those rich USA lawyers who don't wanna spend time on WoW leveling up, and want to buy a pre-made character, China has NO problem accepting that money.

Prohibition

[future assassin]

So the price of game gold is about to sky rocket and those who don't care about being cought doing something illegal will make tons of more money just like ilegal drugs and other things.

...it's probably more effective...

[jeko]

When labor is that cheap, it's probably more effective to hire additional workers than it is to squeeze every last drop out of the ones you have.

Spoken like a man who's never had a truly crappy job. Squeezing every last drop out of your workers is its own reward. I knew a restaurant manager once who stole tips off the servers' tables "just to remind everyone who the big dog is." I knew a lawyer who refused to pay his staff a living wage or work them less than 60 hours a week "so they won't have time to go find another job." Hell, even John McCain refused to honor our commitment to pay for our soldier's college expenses because, and I'm paraphrasing correctly, if our soldiers knew they could come home and go to college, no one would want to stay in Iraq.

Sometimes treating your employees like crap is more about shoring up your own inferiority complex than it is smart business decision. If you haven't experienced it directly, go reread Thomas More and George Orwell to get the gist of it.

Re:...it's probably more effective...

[Red Flayer]

Sometimes treating your employees like crap is more about shoring up your own inferiority complex than it is smart business decision. If you haven't experienced it directly, go reread Thomas More and George Orwell to get the gist of it.

Of course, in a competitive system, the people who make smart business decisions end up being the successful businesses. And gold farming is a competitive business.

Just to note, I've worked my share of crappy jobs... I just knew enough to get the hell out. It became a lot easier once I had experience under my belt and knew I would land on my feet no matter what.

Re:...it's probably more effective...

[X0563511]

Your sig...
It's "Uruk-hai" not "Olog-hai"

Sorry, seen your sig a dozen times and it just -=bugs=- me.

Re:...it's probably more effective...

[Some Bitch]

Your sig...
It's "Uruk-hai" not "Olog-hai"

Sorry, seen your sig a dozen times and it just -=bugs=- me.

I'm afraid you're wrong. Uruk-hai and Olog-hai are not the same thing, the former are orcs while the latter are trolls.

Re:...it's probably more effective...

[L4t3r4lu5]

You should probably read The Silmarillion

Re:...it's probably more effective...

[X0563511]

Ah, I have not read that. I've read the the Hobbit and the trilogy, only.

Hrm. I stand corrected.

No, that is NOT what the press release says

[Anonymous Coward]

I have not read the press release in the original Chinese.

The article here states: http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/newsrelease/commonnews/200906/20090606364208.html

"The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services."

The article also specifically mentions a virtual currency called "QQ coins". It does not mention MMO's or gold farming.

All this article means is that you can not use your vast WoW bank account or your EVE Online ISK play time cards to buy real goods and services in China. It does not mean that that Chinese companies can't turn your real money into virtual currency or goods.

Crowdlaundering

[copponex]

God, that word makes me want to kill myself.

But the real trick here is that the world financial markets are getting gripped tighter every day, especially due to terrorism legislation, and new regulations from the shattering of the foundations of our financial system.

If Guido lives in Sicily, and has a few hundred kids on his payroll, he can give the gold in game to whomever he wants, let's say Freddie Crinkle Fingers. Freddie can sell the gold, and how would the police prove that Freddie hadn't been killing dwarves or whatever for six months, or made a good deal buying the account from some stupid kid?

Similarly, if you had those same hundred kids write a letter and drop $200 worth of cashier's checks in the mail, it's a novel way to move $20k. But it's highly traceable, and the final destination is somewhat out of Guido's control.

Re:Crowdlaundering

[Apache]

how would the police prove that Freddie hadn't been killing dwarves or whatever for six months

Because blizzard logs this kind of transaction. All they would have to do is subpoena the logs.

Did the check bounce or something?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> China Bans Gold Farming

Looks like someone didn't pay their local mafia bill!

After they announced the ban...

[Yvanhoe]

... they announced that they bought 3Drealms and will be releasing Duke Nukem Forever by Fall 2009

Gold farming is the fault of stupid people

[SL Baur]

Blizzard likes to state that epic flight skill isn't needed, but it is required to fly special mounts that attract a lot of interest from players, specifically dragons.

Epic flying isn't required, though it's very useful. I'm not sure what's "needed" about dragon mounts. My main rides a nether ray. Those were rarely seen even in TBC days. I like the uniqueness aspect.

Do people with the oversized mounts (mammoths and dragons) who routinely block mailboxes, etc., whether they are trying to or not, really think they're impressing other players?

Re:But havent banned willy smacking

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to have a willy first don't you, douche.

weinerdude virtual gold .. it figures

[noshellswill]

... musta been designed by the same slabbering fool who designed the new /. [login] Play the feckin-A game ... cue the feckin-A login_button. WTF

I totally agree

[Anonymous Coward]

For once China has done a good thing. I totaly agree with this.

Laugh at me if you will

[CrazyJim1]

I made 10$/hr playing Asheron's Call. I tried hiring my friends, but no one wanted to give me a cut of their ebay gold. You can't hire Americans to play video games for .50$ an hour, but Chinese will. So I was honestly considering opening a gold farming business for the next big MMORPG. I guess since China banned them, I will forget about starting my own business.

Slaves of the Cyberworld?

[denzacar]

Doesn't really sound like that one, but I assume that they are somewhat similar.

SotC deals with various "online jobs that anyone could do", from taking thousands of photos hoping some of them will be bought for photo stocks (and paid in pennies), through Amazon's mTurk (and their policy to only pay Americans and Indians in cash, while others get gift certificates) all the way to Chinese who build custom characters and farm gold (I only assume that they do gold farming part as well, though the film only shows what seems to be like character leveling).

Actual work is being done by kids coming in to the cities from provincial towns and villages for about 95 Euros a month (~135$).
Their daily lunch costs about 0.35 Euros, so in average they end up with about 60 Euros (~85$) earned each month.
Their employers try very hard to show in front of the camera how they only hire kids older than 18, but they don't really succeed in that as they hire the minors (right in front of the camera) for "a trial period".
Workload of such establishments where kids work their nearly entire waking day (in front of the camera we are shown that they work 12 hours a day) is bought off by a company situated in Shanghai.

Which is actually an outpost of ige (Internet Gaming Entertainment Ltd.) - an L.A. based MMORPG gold-selling company founded and run at the time by Brock Pierce - of Mighty Ducks and First Kid fame.
He has since sold the company - but kept the shares.
BTW, they have been failing to pay their employees in their gold-digging sweatshops for months.
And while "Find excuses first, attack and insult later" tactic works on some, others take a more aggressive approach when asking to be paid.

Namely - they come to their Shanghai HQ with guns.

The best part is, that while the local SWAT team arrives to handle the guy holding a gun to the secretary's face - journalists get a confirmation from another female employee that things like that happen all the time.
Oh, and once confronted with tale of their disgruntled subcontractor coming to their Shanghai offices with a gun, Brock Pierce and John Maffei used the same "Excuses, attacks and insults" combo.

One would think that someone in the MMORPG business would understand a practice of having secondary attack skills.

dead people or money?

[markringen]

people get killed in china over these things, it's time to shut these bunch of bandits down.

Ancient Chinese secret

[Anonymous Coward]

:)

May I be the first to say...

[DarthVain]

IT'S A TRAP!

Uhh..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Chinese government has declared a
ban on the sale of virtual goods for real currency."

I know software such as MS Office is a "virtual good" so what are they going to use to buy that? Will they have to work in the MMO's for online gold to buy software now?

1 Night in $hooker

[tepples]

That discrepancy may also provide a way for people to beat the rap on prostitution charges: don't solicit someone for sex, tell them you're making a porno flick and you want them to be in it.

So a hooker sells erotic videos, not sex, to the john. Sort of like a triple-X version of SuperStar Studios booths at amusement parks. Genius.

Almost. There are a few problems with the business model of selling copies of 1 Night in $hooker on DVD-R to johns, which a pimp will have to work through before beginning to offer the service through his "actresses":

• State laws ban trade in erotic videos that lack artistic value, which is usually defined as some sort of excuse plot. Actresses will have to learn to act in more S&M scenarios to keep the videos legally interesting. And what happens when the john derails the plot?
• Hookers will have to verify state ID closely so that they don't make child porn.
• Repeat business might decrease, as the john can just beat it to the first video he made with the actress.

This seems exploitable

[ipooptoomuch]

1. Buy large amounts of gold that is going to be on sale because it might be banned soon.
2. Wait for the ban to take place and prices to skyrocket due to 80-85 percent of the gold supply being removed.
3. ??????
4. PROFIT!

China Has Not Banned Gold Farming

[Torsino]

The interpretation that the new regulation is about gold farming has spread like wildfire. Unfortunately, it is not correct â" the regulation is about the Chinese government staying in control of currency movements within the country; and probably more about gambling than money laundering. Itâ(TM)s not targetted at gold farming, and unlikely to have much of an impact on gold farming. More details at the ICTs for Development blog: http://ict4dblog.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/china-bans-gold-farming-er-but-in-fact-it-hasnt/

The rationale behind IMO...

[adlist]

The reasons behind the ban is simple: China government cannot or have difficulties to collect tax from these virtual transactions. Regulation is not easy to have control over them. So, ban...