South Korean Bill Would Legislate Gold Farmers
Gold farmers are like the weather.
Every MMO player complains about them from time to time, but no one ever seems to do anything about it. In South Korea, however, proposed legislation may force the national government to do regulate the controversial trade in virtual currency.
Ars Technica reports that South Korea’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism would like to prohibit the sale and purchase of MMO gold. Virtual exchange of in-game items like swords and armor would not be affected by the bill.
Understandably, the South Korean bill enjoys the support of the MMO publishers. They generally resent the impact of gold farmers on their carefully crafted in-game economies.
It’s no small matter, since Korea’s virtual gold and item exchange market is estimated to be in the neighborhood of one billion dollars (that’s “billion” with a “b”). 60% of that comes from gold farming.
A number of questions surround the bill, not the least of which is its ability to actually be enforced.
December 30th, 2006 at 11:44 am
I wonder how this would effect second life, I would guess since the Currency/Virtual Currency exchange is Official exchange the bill wouldn’t effect it…but of course it could close off SL’s south Korean market if it was accidentally made illegal.
December 30th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
THANK GOD!
I keep getting spam from these dudes and juging from a few mistakes in gamer I think some of them may be coming frome the east Asia area.
December 30th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
First: ROFL!
Second: agree @ pirra’s THANK GOD, im so sick of these guys.. screwing up the economy and spamming everything.. I hope they take em all down.
December 30th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
@Shaded Spriter
Good point, very good point. There’s a good number of games out there that allow people to buy virtual items with real money. For example I know there’s a lot of smaller MMO’s out there that support themselves with “item malls” (Gunbound, Monster & Me, Dragon Raja, etc.) that exchange real money for in game items. So it’s not the act that’s wrong, but who’s doing it. Hopefully they keep this in mind when making the bill.
December 30th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I’ve never seen the problem with this sort of thing, as long as the people doing the farming are being paid to do so (i.e.: not child labour), no one is being harmed. In fact, the person who first came up with the concept of playing a game to >make money
December 30th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
This is bullcrap. I don’t play mmo’s, but I can’t even figure out what’s going on here. So people get paid to play a game over and over all day? Big freakin deal. If people want to blow off money on virtual crap, let them. I honestly cannot figure out what these farmers do anyway, or how you would use real life money to buy virtual products…this is irrelevant.
December 30th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Abe, I’m somewhat in the same position as you. I don’t completely understand this, but I do think this is relevant. If publishers spend their time creating games that are being adjusted and twisted by in-game actions, I think we have a problem.
December 30th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Well, at least it’s not a nutpie like the idea to tax virtual money in MMOs, or to punish scams ingame as real crimes.
December 30th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Take ‘em down so they stop spamming the GP forums.
…….then again, their engrish is amusing.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:02 am
Abe & J-Guy
There are two sides tot he argument (from the point of view of players).
AGAINST: These games are about earning and acheiving what you can. If you want the best swords, the best armor, the best spells, a pile of gold, or whatever else - go out and earn them, fair and square, like everyone else has to do. If you can’t run with the big boys, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Buying gold or powerleveling robs you of the chance to properly learn how to play the game, and utilize your character. People who “buy” high level accounts or gear often get to the end game with very little clue how to REALLY play - which harms their group(s) and makes the end-game less fun for everyone.
Also, many times, gold farmers camp items that are uber-valuable, preventing “legitamate” players from being able to earn/win/capture/etc those items or mobs. This kind of bottlenecking detracts from the fun of paying customers.
FOR: Not everyone has 40+ hours a week to spend gaming. If I have an extra $100 lying around to help me remain competitive, it should be my perogative, if the option exisists, to use that to “catch up” to everyone else.
It’s really just an exchange of commodities. Some people have the commodity of time to spend playing all the time. I don’t have the time (or sometimes interest) to play for all the best items, but I’m still a player, and dont’ feel that my lack of time should prevent me from enjoying the game the way my friends do. Therefore, I should be allowed to use the commodity I *do* have, money, to catch up.
My take - good arguments on both sides. As a purist, I won’t be using any gold sites, and would prefer to see the TOS enforced and take no small amount of joy from hearing of mass bans of people who farm or use farming services. The strongest argument, for me, is the one about rare/expensive items being camped and denied from “real” players. Since an account can be run over several shifts, a farmer of group of farmers really CAN monopolize an item 24/7 - which forces players to “buy” that item or skip.
That simply isn’t fair.
December 31st, 2006 at 4:56 am
For those of you who don’t play MMO’s and don’t quite get it; I understand. You play single player games where your behavior, cheat codes you may use, etc. doesn’t affect anybody else.
In an MMO’s your game experience is greatly affected by things other players do. One player affects others all the time as that is the basis the games are built on. One aberrant player isn’t that bad, but when there are hundreds of players, working in shifts, making daily quotas, etc. it adds up. The frustration of trying to go out and get some money for repairs only to find 2 or 3 farmers monopolizing the entire area 24 hours a day gets old real quick. Having the prices on your trade goods undercut, advertising spam for www.wesellcheapgold.com in random /tells and in game emails and Rampant inflation and devaluation of items screwing up the economy. Eventually you start getting to the point where you almost have to buy gold from them to make up for the fact that you can’t earn it as readily yourself.
The developers have to hire extra customer service staff to handle all the extra issues caused by professional farms. They also have to take steps that may hinder and annoy the honest game player in order to curtail the practices of the farmers. In the end they have a big impact on the games. The whole thing is not a good for games in question nor the industry of online games as a whole.
All that being said, whether or not this legislation will have any effect if it is even passed is another mater entirely. Prohibition sure didn’t stop alcohol.
December 31st, 2006 at 2:00 pm
My main problem with gold farmers is the spam. I had no problem with them until I started receiving in game spam. If only I could kill people in my faction, every day in Warcraft I’d collect the skulls of Korean and Chinese bastards gold farming.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:34 am
Yes, there is the argument that people might be busy. But guess what? That doesn’t justify cheating. Using real money to buy yourself extra in game resources is just that. And it definitely is cheating as gold selling is specifically banned in the End User License Agreement.
It does hurt honest players by giving buyers a leg up they shouldn’t have, by supporting farming which takes away those sites from the honest players (and adds to in game and out of game harassment of honest players), and en masse can cause out of control inflation on a server.
If you have a great 40 hour a week job, congratulations, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to cheat.
I recommend all WoW players to download the UI AddOn SpamSentry. You can block all spam over say, yell, whisper, General and other channels. You get a spam button for mail. And you can report spammers to GMs instantly at either a button press or typed command.
January 1st, 2007 at 8:13 am
i hav only just started playing WoW and havnt run into farmers who sell gold. but, and this maybe a stupid question, is farming ingame to earn money ingame to buy items ingame isnt wrong right, coz i hav to do alot of that lately
January 1st, 2007 at 2:04 pm
@Melior
absolutely you can go for the gold. In fact, you have to… especially when Lvl 40 comes around and you need 90g to buy a mount.
You don’t usually see the farmers selling gold in WoW itself. Although you will probably eventually see some people who are obviously farming as you get deeper into the game.
Horde or Alliance?
January 2nd, 2007 at 1:28 am
Bit of free advice to everyone… get the Auctioneer addon (especially once they have a Release version compatible with 2.0). Once you get going with it the money ROLLS in.
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:17 am
In addendum to everyone who really doesn’t see the problem with gold farming - let’s not forget the fact that any “gold” or “items” from a virtual game are copyrighted to the MMO maker/publisher. Gold sellers are in effect selling a product that does not belong to them, thus infringing copyright, as well as anything else. If gold selling were to be legal, all profits should be going to the copyright holders, not people who just exploit the game by playing it 40 hours a week (and making money with no tax deductions, no doubt).
It’s not really a question of the ethics of selling and buying gold, although personally I feel it spoils the game for everyone else (rewards in-game should be derived from your efforts in-game, not your real life cash flow). Even if gold selling were legal, it still would be illegal for anyone to go and farm gold and sell it independently because they do not own what they are selling and none of the profit is being redirected back to the actual copyright holders.
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:17 am
alliance, dwarf warrior, lvl 12 atm., i think i might go for hunter as a new character, or something less gear dependant
January 2nd, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Yeah, they get paid to play games all day. 20 people crammed in a tiny, hot room, for 12+ hours a day, doing what they are told. Its more like a sweatshop
January 3rd, 2007 at 1:24 am
Maybe…. just maybe….
Inflation will slow down in WoW.
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:53 am
@Samantha
The dodge they usually use is “oh, you aren’t paying for the gold, you’re paying for my time and the gold is a bonus” or they sell a pen or piece of lint with the in-game item as a “free bonus” or some other mix of sophistry and bullshit.
I suspect that if this sort of thing were to be brought before a judge, and I pray it is not because that would open a can of worms that I don’t think anybody wants to see opened, they would point out that it is a bullshit excuse and it’s obvious that it is indeed a transaction of money for gold.
Fortunately, game companies don’t have to deal with that shit, they can just say “you’re RMTing, you’re gone.”
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:56 am
So whats the difference between large guilds camping an area or powerleveling characters then using a farm service? The fact that in South Korea alone there is approximately a billion in sales tells you how many MMO players use this service. As far as game economies I have seen a friend who had acquired so much plat in EQ have the ability to control any item he wanted and great great demands and then over supplies of that item just because he was bored. I guess he should be banned as well. Regardless of how you feel about these gold farmers they are here to stay. Game developers instead of fighting a losing battle need to figure a way to include thier activities or curb them within the game content.
January 7th, 2007 at 12:52 am
farming for gold is ok, so long as u dont try to make real world profit from it. if u hav that much money that u can control supply of an item the real problem is that u need to get a life
January 25th, 2007 at 9:02 am
[…] GamePolitics Arstechnica […]
February 25th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Having been made aware of this gold farming issue through the school website dedicated to gaming industry related topics, I wanted to comment that the employers already have laws describing what would be considered fair employee treatment conditions. Instead of people hired to make items that are mass produced in factories at a lower cost being competed with by employees that get worked inhumanely, should it not be considered humane to allow people to interact and become aware of different cultures through stimulation of the economy of another country, and interacting through a virtual world? If government is interested in legislation, it should first start by looking at what it can do to ensure that the laws it puts in place would replace the jobs and the peoples livelihood if they made it illegal. Instead, they should realize that the income spends very well in their real world economy.
August 8th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
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