| In recent years,the online game industry has developed rapidly,and new types of virtual goods emerge in an endless stream.Many of the new types of virtual goods have not been widely concerned,which brings inconvenience to the development of online game industry.At the same time,due to the different nature of online game business model and real economic behavior,it has certain particularity in accounting treatment,and there has always been disputes about the revenue recognition methods on various online game business models.This situation makes online game enterprises adopt inconsistent revenue recognition methods,which is not convenient for investors to obtain correct and comparable information from financial reports,and also increases the difficulty for accountants and auditors to deal with relevant problems.This paper selects a newly emerging type of online game virtual good as the research object,and takes a new product named"WOW token"launched by"World of Warcraft”,a famous online game owned by Activision Blizzard,as a specific example.Through the analysis of the using process,functional mechanism and user benefit mode of this new type of virtual good,this paper investigates the using effect,revenue recognition method and financial information influence of this type of virtual good.It is found that there are two different application approaches of this new type of virtual good,and these two different application approaches not only have advantages and disadvantages in the using effect,but also have different applicable revenue recognition methods which will influence revenue and profit figures.Besides,there are obvious differences in the time point of revenue recognition between the two application approaches.Based on research results above,this paper gives recommendations on the application approach selection of enterprises from the perspectives of using effect and financial impact.At the same time,this paper reminds investors to pay attention to the different impacts of these two application approaches on the income and profit data of online game companies.When analyzing the income data of enterprises using dif’ferent application approaches,reasonable conversion methods should be adopted for data adjustment,so as to obtain meaningf’ul data.This paper also suggests that information disclosure regulators should ask online game enterprises who use this new type of virtual good to disclose the specific application approach and relevant numbers in their information disclosure to avoid misleading investors. |
