US Congress to look at MMORPG's

Agent_matt · 19 Oct 2006 at 15:59

Just had a quick read of this article on the BBC site and noted it to be of interest to many on here. Found the following quote very interesting.

Studies of game activity suggest the time and effort put into these online worlds has an economic impact equivalent to the GDP of Namibia.

Read the whole article here.

Edinho · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:18

The only economic impact a MMORPG has is from never going outside ever again and spending money.

Taxing in-game currencies could only be thought up by the US, if its not real how you going to tax it?

scorza · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:46

Edinho said:
Taxing in-game currencies could only be thought up by the US, if its not real how you going to tax it?

In-game currencies are basically numbers in a database, which coincidentally is basically what real life currencies today are as well

Sure we have real notes and coins too but these are just tokens just like a number in a database.

I guess if people make serious amounts of income from farming online currencies its only a matter of time before the appropriate governments want to tax that income. Remember that story a while ago about a guy who discovered a dupe-bug in EQ2 and made approx $900k tax free by exploiting it IIRC? Dunno how true it was but stories like that are bound to interest governments.

Darkwave · 19 Oct 2006 at 17:50

If they plan to tax digital gold in digital gold then fine (since it would be impossible to call Azeroth or Ascalon etc. a place since they can't do it based on server location) but if they try to tax digital gold with a % in real dollars then I can see a massive (successful) barrage of lawsuits coming up.

Won't happen anyway, just won't. It's going to be about as successful as the RIAA and their crusade for copyright law.

afraser2k · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:01

I'd expect a tax on MMORPG currency to only be valid in games like Second Life where they allow currency/item selling for real cash. How would it work for games like WoW where it's supposed to be against the terms of the EULA and would this mean it would be legal in law to do so?

Mr Jones · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:07

Do one get taxed when one is dead during game play??
UK has the Death Tax...

Darkwave · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:09

afraser2k said:
I'd expect a tax on MMORPG currency to only be valid in games like Second Life where they allow currency/item selling for real cash. How would it work for games like WoW where it's supposed to be against the terms of the EULA and would this mean it would be legal in law to do so?

It is legal in law to sell game money for real money, it will just get you banned from the game if you're caught.