The hardest part is going to of course be enforcement. But this is very very interesting.

The QQ_Coin does look like the intended target of this then, and I was getting my hopes up that they would get shot altogether of gold farming just for public image reasons, fat chance of that.

I see the reason for it, by at least requiring that people transfer this virtual currency into a real currency they stop it from being able to inflate the money supply since the QQ_Coins now are not on their own worth anything, but I still think this law does not allow any virtual currency exchanges though in the way its being presented which could be the unintended consequence for gold farming.

As the Chinese government ministry says virtual currencies can only be used to buy services or items from the provider of that currency. Allowing a third party to perform the exchange would blow a hole through the entire thing since you could just take your QQ_Coin to the local corner shop, get them to change them to Yuan, and then buy the goods you wanted in the Yuan you have received.

That definitely leaves gold farming in a illegal position since Blizzard or SOE are not offering cash for their gold/platinum, although Eve can continue to offer game cards.

If they chose to leave a blind eye to an illegal activity though they risk increasing corruption, from what I've heard of China though this probably won't be much of a concern... It will be interesting to hear what happens the first time this law is challenged.

One other bit of interest, they are banning gold buying by minors (from a official Chinese site - wondering in the first story how much gets lost in translation!).

China bars use of virtual money for trading in real goods



They are cracking down officially on the biggest customers of gold internally, at the least I think all this government involvement is going to drive up operating costs for gold farmers, but the way I read it they still look likely to be shut down, at least the big outfits will be easy legal targets.