With the advent of videogames, specifically, online role playing games and other genres where you have virtual items which belong to you, developers have found a new way to capitalize on that. So they started creating games where people could pay for virtual items. Thus came to be the "free-to-play" games, with some of them being dismissively called "pay to win" games. There have been some interesting events in the world of online gaming due to the new concept of virtual property. Listen on air and read more on our daily Runet review '.RU' at the voiceofrussia.com. Let’s look at an example, using the immensely popular multiplayer game World of Tanks, created by Belarusian developers, is somewhat like World of Warcraft and it’s free to play – which is just a nice way of saying "you have to pay for premium content which will give you an advantage over regular players." Instead of orcs and elves people play as, well, tanks. And one Belarusian citizen had his tank stolen and reported the crime – surprisingly, the authorities initiated an investigation. Long story short, the thief was discovered and apprehended and all was right once again. But he wasn’t charged with theft, actualy. Not surprisingly, the crime, essentially, is hacking – the Criminal Code article is called "unsanctioned access to digital information." Actually, this is the third time Belarusian authorities reported such a crime – although back in 2012 local media reported investigators were looking for a tank thief, this is the first time an actual criminal case into World of Tanks theft has been opened. Other games deal with virtual property on a whole other level, creating massive player-regulated virtual economies. You might have heard about some of them. For example, EVE Online, a massive spacefaring economic game complete with conglomerates, pirates and starship battles, where in-world currency is linked to real world money. Well, the latest gigantic battle resulted in destroyed spacecraft evaluated at $300,000 – there’s now even a monument to that battle in the real world. Another popular online game is called Entropia Universe. It uses Project Entropia Dollars, which can be converted back into real world currencies according to a fixed exchange rate, minus transaction fees. This game happened to earn an entry in the Guinness World Records Book at least twice, for the most expensive virtual world objects ever sold. In 2009 a virtual space station set the record with a price tag of $330,000 USD. But in November of 2010 a virtual resort on a virtual planet was sold for a whopping $635,000 USD in chunks, with largest costing $335,000 Anyhow, the issue of virtual property being, you know, property is quite complex. Especially considering legislation. You know what they say – only two things are certain: death and taxes. Well, in this case, no one is quite certain about taxes. You see, regulators are more than willing to consider anything resembling property or goods as such. However, common sense suggests that pieces of code are hardly the same as a physical object. Or perhaps not – at least, that’s the stance adopted by media companies in Russia. Games division of Mail.Ru, has filed a lawsuit against the tax inspection, claiming that the latter had no right to force the company to pay value added tax for virtual items in free-to-play games, claiming that the items are actually software, sale of which is not taxed under Russian law.
Peter Lekarev,
Source: The Voice of Russia
