Unpacking China’s Out-of-Game Economy

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
China’s virtual-item trading market reached a volume of RMB 74.25B (~$10.3B) in 2023, with the first half of 2025 seeing RMB 44.73B in transactions, a 12.74% year-over-year increase.
02
Publishers are increasingly formalizing secondary markets to capture revenue and mitigate risk, exemplified by NetEase’s Cangbaoge platform, which charges an 8–10% commission on virtual item and currency trades.
03
The gaming gray market is bifurcated into a large, goods-based trading sector (gear, currency, and consumables accounting for over 90% of volume) and a smaller, human-services sector that includes boosting and companion play.
04
While boosting services remain a contentious gray market—representing less than 5% of measured transactions—companion play has emerged as a legitimate, regulated industry with over 40,000 certified professionals in China.
05
Legal frameworks are shifting to hold third-party platforms accountable, as evidenced by a September 2025 Supreme People’s Court ruling that ordered a trading platform to pay RMB 3.03M (~$421,000) for failing to screen currency sources.
06
Unauthorized account sharing remains a significant regulatory and operational challenge, as it undermines real-name registration, anti-addiction mandates, and matchmaking integrity, leading to lawsuits like the one won by Tencent in 2023.

Summary

China’s out-of-game economy represents a massive, complex ecosystem that operates in parallel to the formal gaming industry. This economy is bifurcated into two primary sectors: the trading of virtual goods—such as currency, gear, and accounts—and the provision of human services, including boosting, escorting, and companion play. While virtual item trading is increasingly regulated and captured by publishers through proprietary platforms like NetEase’s Cangbaoge, the human services sector remains largely a gray market, operating through third-party channels like WeChat mini-programs and remaining difficult for publishers to tax or control.

The scale of this activity is significant, with virtual-item trading volume reaching approximately RMB 74.25 billion (~$10.3 billion) in 2023. By contrast, third-party account boosting services represent a smaller, though contentious, segment of the market, accounting for less than 5% of measured transactions. Despite the financial volume, these gray-market activities present ongoing challenges for publishers, including the degradation of matchmaking quality, the circumvention of anti-addiction regulations, and the erosion of revenue through unauthorized third-party platforms.

Legal and industry responses are evolving to address these issues. Recent judicial rulings in China have begun to hold third-party platforms accountable for screening listed items, rather than attempting to ban secondary markets entirely. Furthermore, industry associations are establishing formal standards for legitimate services like esports coaching and companion play. As the market matures, publishers are increasingly incentivized to integrate these secondary economies into their own ecosystems, transforming gray-market activity into a manageable and billable component of their broader monetization strategies. This shift suggests that while the gray market may never be fully eliminated, its activity is increasingly being brought into the official fold through regulatory frameworks and publisher-led marketplace initiatives.