One afternoon in 2023, a player in Manila, Philippines opened their banking app and was stunned—their account had been frozen, with the reason given as “abnormally frequent cryptocurrency exchange transactions.” All they did was play a few hours of Axie Infinity each day, converting the SLP they earned into pesos to help with household expenses, so how could this be considered “abnormal”?

For them, it was a way to support their family; but in the eyes of regulators, this could be classified as “undeclared cross-border income activity.”

A leading gaming guild never expected to be associated with terms like labor law, foreign exchange controls, or securities classification. But the reality is: when it rents out NFT assets to players across 100 countries and takes a cut of the in-game earnings, it has essentially built a global, decentralized labor network. The problem is, the rules of this world are still dominated by centralized legal systems.

Is it leasing or employment? That is the core dilemma.

If it’s just “leasing,” then it’s a simple transfer of NFT usage rights, which isn’t much of an issue. But if players are required to complete fixed tasks, adhere to specific online times, and undergo earnings evaluations—the regulatory authorities are likely to classify this as a de facto employment relationship.

Each country has a vastly different attitude toward P2E income. Some EU countries have already classified it as “self-employment income,” requiring tax filing; Indonesia’s central bank has directly issued warnings: earning foreign currency through games may violate foreign exchange control laws; while in the US, the SEC has hinted—if DAO tokens are used to distribute “returns dependent on the labor of others,” it may be considered a securities issuance.

Faced with these challenges, gaming guilds have adopted a practical strategy: decentralize responsibility, localize compliance.