The game market fled before being fined, Telegram became a new "meeting place".

Group meetings, players stop trading

Regularly participating in groups that buy and sell virtual items, Trung Duc (22 years old), a player of the game Play Together, suddenly received notices from many administrators about suspending trading activities from the end of June.

Typically, at a trading group with nearly 1,000 members, Duc said that the group leader recently sent a notice that he would stop all buying and selling of virtual items, game accounts and leave social networks for a long time.

According to Duc, this decision was made after the administrator said they had a meeting with the authorities and realized the serious legal implications of online transactions.

At the same time, they also admitted their mistakes and recommended that the community comply with the law and should only consider games as a simple form of entertainment.

In fact, the market for buying and selling virtual items and game accounts has long been active. Just go to social networks and search for the keyword "buy and sell accounts" with the name of the game, users can easily come across a series of groups with a number of thousands to millions of members.

Buying and selling virtual items and game accounts has been strictly prohibited since Decree 147/2024/ND-CP on Management, provision, and use of internet services and online information. However, these transactions are still quite popular in the gaming community.

Only recently, when Decree No. 174/2026/ND-CP was about to take effect with specific sanctions, many groups and players began to react.

As noted by Dan Tri reporter, a number of parties purchasing and trading game accounts in large quantities have begun to officially announce their closure.

"Important announcement for you guys, as I said from June 28, our company will officially close," posted a social network account with more than 70,000 followers.

In addition to the above posts, some "shop acc" websites (stores that sell game accounts) also give information such as "From 0 June 30, 2026, the shop will have long-term maintenance, if you still have a balance in the shop, please use it" or permanently close the website.

For trading groups with many members on social networks like Facebook, at present, some users are constantly posting articles warning the community about upcoming changes.

Preparing to "discharge" the account

While a part of players and trading contacts choose to temporarily suspend operations, many others take the opportunity to liquidate their accounts before the new regulations take effect.

Surveys on game account buying and selling groups show that the number of people liquidating their accounts is higher than usual.

In particular, many large-scale trading agencies have offered preferential prices, accepting to sell accounts at lower prices to liquidate in time before July 1 to recover capital.

A party specializing in selling shared game accounts has liquidated more than 500 game accounts and will offer a 50% discount to buyers at this time.

"Maybe it's okay to reduce losses, now hurry up, there's nothing left to lose," the seller said.

Notably, at a time when many players choose to liquidate their accounts, some previous account purchasing agencies continue to post notices to collect accounts in large quantities.

Some units also made commitments to continue purchasing, even at high prices.

However, the wave of liquidations may not mean that trading activities completely disappear. On the contrary, the reporter's notes show that some communities have a tendency to shift to more closed communication channels.

At a Facebook group for the game Identity V, a post recommended that people transact via Telegram to reduce the risk of being fined. This person commented: "Nowadays, trading via telecommunication is the most stable."

Meanwhile, in another group of the game Play Together, the administrator suddenly made an announcement: "Everyone via tele, please help me, starting tomorrow I will be active on tele."

Telegram was once blocked in Vietnam, due to features such as strong end-to-end encryption, high anonymity, and easy creation and management of groups with a large number of members, making this platform an ideal environment for bad actors to operate.

Therefore, when groups that buy and sell game accounts tend to move to this social network, it is possible that managing transaction activities will become more difficult to monitor than before.

Instead of taking place publicly on Facebook groups, Zalo communities or account buying and selling websites, many transactions can be carried out in closed groups or private messages.

However, at the present time, both buyers and sellers need to be careful before every transaction to avoid the risk of falling into fraud traps.

A series of sanctions in the gaming industry from July 1

From July 1, Decree 174/2026/ND-CP regulating penalties for administrative violations in the fields of postal, telecommunications, radio frequency, electronic transactions and information technology will officially take effect. Accordingly, the decree adds many new sanctions regulations, focusing on the management of cyberspace and the field of electronic games.

According to new regulations, players can be fined from 2 to 3 million VND for buying or selling virtual items or virtual units or reward points.

Decree 147/2024/ND-CP clearly stipulates that "Virtual items, virtual units, reward points can only be used within the scope of online video games and according to the purpose reported by the enterprise. They cannot be converted back into money, prepaid cards for mobile telecommunications services, bank cards, purchase cards, game cards, gift cards or objects with transaction value outside of online video games."

Thus, buying and selling game accounts also includes buying and selling virtual items, so this is also considered a violation of the law.

In addition, players who register incorrect personal information when playing G1 video games (games with interaction between many players) will also face a warning.

In particular, non-compliance with regulations on management of playing hours at public electronic game service providers will result in a fine from 600,000 VND to 1 million VND.

At the same time, taking advantage of video games to commit acts that violate the law, causing disorder, social safety and national security will result in a fine of 2 to 3 million VND.

In addition to sanctions for players, the Decree also clearly states regulations for video game service providers, i.e. game publishers.

By tolerating the purchase and sale of virtual items, businesses will be fined from 60 to 80 million VND if they design features or allow players to arbitrarily buy and sell virtual items, units, and bonus points in their game system.

Notably, the maximum fine is from 170 to 200 million VND for the act of converting virtual items, virtual units, reward points into money or prepaid cards for mobile telecommunications services, bank cards, purchase cards, game cards, gift cards or artifacts with transaction value outside of online games.