Online games are very popular in China. In fact, as of December 2009, around 265 million, or 68.9 percent, of the total number of Internet users in China played online games. At the same time, there are 750 online game vendors in China whose total revenue amounts to around RMB 25 billion.

Players spend not only a lot of time but also money to play online games. To enhance their online gaming experience, players shell out money to purchase virtual assets like gold, artifacts, and the like as well as services like power leveling, gold farming, and others via real money trading (RMT) on several online trading platforms. Most of the online trading platforms are open marketplaces wherein anyone can buy and sell virtual assets or services using convenient payment methods. These have made the RMT market bigger, resulting in a virtual asset revenue of around RMB 34 billion in 2009.