tax-law currency netherlands
Is it legal to earn money via selling online currency (videogame)?
<p>(Europe/Netherlands)</p>

<p>Let's say I'm a World of Warcraft or Runescape player, in these games there are certain prices for gold, for example a X amount of ingame Runescape money might be worth a Y amount of real money. The game does not allow you to "Real-World trade" the money, this is written in the ToS you accept. Often getting caught leads to termination of ones account.</p>

<p>I have read this question and answer <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/8992/is-legal-to-sell-virtual-goods">Is legal to sell virtual goods?</a> but  I'm wondering about the legality of earning money this way. If this is not illegal how would you do this legally? I guess it would be comparable to earning tickets at a arcade (you don't have to pay to earn them) the arcade says you can't sell the tickets for money but you do so anyway.</p>

<p>Let's take Runescape as the example, because there's some guidance about the Dutch legal status of items in that game: the ToS terms do not alter the fact that within Runescape, <a href="http://tweakers.net/nieuws/79678/hoge-raad-wegnemen-virtuele-goederen-in-games-is-diefstal.html" rel="nofollow">items are under the <em>actual and exclusive control</em> of a specific player</a>. That is to say, we can treat these virtual goods as if they were non-virtual. </p>

<p>Now what is the legal status if I try to sell something which by contract I'm forbidden to sell? Such contracts are not illegal per se, but the bar(*) is rather high. As an example, a ticket scalping law is <a href="https://www.eerstekamer.nl/wetsvoorstel/31461_initiatiefvoorstel_jasper" rel="nofollow">discussed</a>  because concert and sports ticket vendors currently cannot ban resale by ToS. By analogy, games cannot ban resale by ToS either (There is neither a general law nor a law specific to in-game items).</p>

<p>(*) Resale restrictions can apply to houses as they are a recognized scarce good.</p>
