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SHANGHAI (AP) — The buying and selling of the make-believe currencies used in online gaming has become so widespread that Chinese authorities fear it will affect the real economy.

Fascinating really. China is so worried about teh intarwebz that they believe their real gold backed currency will become obsolete. Now they want to regulate the "gold farmers". It reminds me of when Congress set its sites on all the Internet businesses. Yes they can smell the money but they can't get their grimy mitts on it. I'm sure that's infuriating.

The coin of fantasy realms have already moved markets here. So-called QQ coins — a form of currency produced by the Chinese Internet giant Tencent — have sometimes risen sharply in value against China’s official currency, the renminbi, alarming officials at the nation’s Central Bank.

Some people have even traded virtual currencies in China, and exchanged them for clothes, cosmetics and other goods.

Why is this strange? Banking is completely virtual these days, no one carries around gold bullion. People hardly even carry around cash. Still the idea of a non-metallic based currency is considered bizarre. Well to those who can't equate time and effort to value. See that's the rub, people are willing to pay real money for someone else's time and effort. That's what gold farming is all about. Instead of spending the hours of your life leveling a character, learning how to make one successful, joining a group, learning to team and maybe getting a nifty reward you can just pony up some cash and get it that way. It's no damn different than any other service industry really. Sure I could change my own oil, but it would cost me time and effort. I just pay someone else to do it.

“This action shows that at least one government is concerned about the way virtual worlds challenge its control of society,” Professor Castronova said in an e-mail message Tuesday. “As virtual currencies take over more and more purchasing power, control over the effective money supply shifts from the central bank to the game developers."

No what this shows is that Edward Castronova is an idiot who never played an MMO. Game developers are NOT rich. They never have been and they never will be. Even the damn companies that produce the game are in a violently Darwinian evolution, living and dying in a matter of years. It's brutal out there and they are the one group that is NOT getting wealthy.

On Tuesday, China said that new regulations would restrict the trading and use of virtual money, and that virtual currencies would be banned from being exchanged for goods.

The government also said it was moving to fight online gambling and disputes over virtual coins.

Well I can't wait to see how they try and implement that. From poker to simple algorithms built into the games themselves it's impossible to really distinguish gambling and trading. China already sucked the big on with their Green Dam software, seems like they're well on their way to the next big fiasco. ggs morons.