The nature, value and management of virtual property remain controversial due to the lack of legal definition.

"It's hard to determine the value of virtual money because it's not real money after all," said a player who calls himself CCT. "There are professional account thieves in online games who steal accounts and use them to make virtual money with the help of certain cheating software and at a striking speed. This can lead to a devaluation of virtual money. Besides, most online games have different servers. Therefore, prices of virtual items differ from server to server, which makes it harder to define the value of virtual money."

The ownership of virtual property is still uncertain. The majority of game players hold that they own the equipment and virtual money in the games because these things are obtained through their money and time.

But Huang Hua, an executive with Beijing-based NetEase, a leading Chinese provider of Internet services, contended that virtual properties belong to game developers as they are part of the software to run a game. Players are just users of the software, he continued.

In the user protocol of the game Legend of Mir 3, its developer, Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd., states that "Shanda has the ownership of any data and information that is produced and stored in the database, including information on an account, roles in the game and game items."

Tao Xinliang, professor at the School of Intellectual Property Rights of Shanghai University, said legislation is needed to clarify the ownership issue and settle disputes surrounding virtual property.

From Virtual to Real

"Virtual properties are something more than a stack of digital data inside online games," a man using the pseudonym Xing Yan, an engineer for the game operator The9 Ltd., told Beijing Review.

"Every day, tens of thousands of gold coins [the virtual money used in the game World of Warcraft, for which The is the local agent] circulate into the real world through conversion to a point card [a rechargeable card used in online games]," Xing said. ¡°About 250 golden coins can be changed into a point card worth 30 yuan.

"It's not the game operator but a considerable number of gold coin workshops that are conducting such virtual and real money exchanges," he added. "The workshops hire people to obtain gold coins in some manner and sell them to players for dozens of cents per coin. Some workshops help players improve their skills and upgrade their equipment; in return, players have to pay a certain sum of money to the workshops.

"It's a common practice for game players to exchange their accounts," Xing explained. "An account with excellent equipment can be sold at a price of over 1,000 yuan. However, these trades are individual acts, which are not admitted or protected by game operators. Therefore, game players cannot recoup their losses through game operators."

Some workshops have evolved into more organized and professional operations. They have developed an integrated trade chain by forming many agencies and hiring a large number of employees. In 2003, a trade chain began operating on the Chinese server for the South Korean online game Heaven. After harvesting a certain amount of Heaven money (the virtual money used in the game), they exchanged the virtual money into renminbi through domestic agencies with South Korean players. At the height of the business, the volume of trade amounted to 1.3 million yuan per month in South Korea and 5 million yuan per month in China.

In fact, the conversion between virtual and real money is prevalent in most of the current online games. Apart from individual trades, some game operators also started selling virtual items to gamers. Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd., China's leading online game operator, announced last December that it was making its most popular online game, Legend of Mir, free to all players. The company only makes money by selling virtual items in the game.