China Tries To Ban Virtual Gold Farmers
from the good-luck-there dept
The "dark underworld" of online economies is the supposed "gold farmers" often found in countries like China, where people are working in sweatshop like conditions, "playing" video games to generate as much currency or valuable virtual goods as possible, that the gold farm operators can sell for real cash. However, the Chinese government claims it's cracking down on the practice, though it's not entirely clear how they'll stop it from going on. In fact, it's not even clear why the government is trying to stamp out the practice. At best, the claim is that it wants to avoid "possible impact on the real financial system." While any time you have "alternative" currencies, that's certainly a possibility, it's hard to believe that World of Warcraft gold would have any serious impact on China's economy any time soon.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: china, gold farming, virtual currency
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
There is a little bonus background on this: Many of these sweatshops are powered by stolen credit cards and other sneaky means to pay for access. They are not particular about how the job gets done. It isn't a victimless crime.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The post is about blocking Chinese gold farmers, not Chinese WoW players. What, you think that just because you live in China, you're automatically a gold farmer?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
critical reading skills are really lacking around here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Post from Jun 30th, 2009 @ 5:20pm
I don't think it would be particularly difficult to start blocking out WoW access in China.
Post from Jul 1st, 2009 @ 10:40am
[T]he Chinese government is likely to block WoW, as that is easier than trying to track down individual farmers.
You can claim otherwise but those two statements are not saying the same thing. In your first post, you did not say the Chinese government is likely to block WoW. You said that it would be easy for the government to do so. If you don't see the difference, I'm not sure what to say. Maybe if you read your posts before you clicked Submit, you'd realize what you've actually written doesn't match what you were thinking.
Personally, I wouldn't put it past the Chinese government to just block out all WoW access to ostensibly combat gold farming, but that's not what they said.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Once he was using a proxy in Taiwan and I do believe they were logging keys because his account became hacked and he thinks it was the guys running that proxy server. Now he just uses his companies VPN to play the game with a solid connection but too bad that VPN DCs you when he logs onto ventrilo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Heh
But I digress...
My suspicion is the Gov't thinks online video games in general are a vice and want to discourage people from playing. Farming is just a starting point.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Heh
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
...
Therefore, most of these "sweat shops" are actually functioning businesses but they don't pay taxes or anything because they are not regulated. Furthermore, it's a black market type of deal since Terms of Service for most MMO's are written to ban such ordeals.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ...
People were too embarassed to report, or knew they would get banned if they reported it because the TOS said to never give out that information in the first place, so if they complained they would get their character locked as well as money stolen.
Actually, it was more common to just rip somebody off than steal their credit. People would create accounts that had similar names to big-ticket players, then try to social engineer something expensive off other players like "can I borrow your mount/sword/epic jewel that there is only one of". Then they'd steal the item and sell it for gold, then sell the gold for IRL monies.
So you could compare these Chinese sweat shops with 419 scammers. They both use dirty tactics to make a quick buck and are a pest to everybody except themselves.
David T. says: "My suspicion is the Gov't thinks online video games in general are a vice and want to discourage people from playing. Farming is just a starting point." WELL - Everytime somebody gets ripped off, the gov't gets involved and they have to spend resources fixing the issue or at least looking into it. Plus scammers make the country look bad.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ...
Case and point
Point # 1 - Only a dumbass would use a stolen credit card to fund a world of warcraft acct. You would of course use gametime cards PURCHASED w/ stolen credit cards. Since game time cards are not individually tracked or tracked in batches for that matter. I can go to a local frys with a stolen card, purchase 100 of these cards and walk out and be able to fund 100 accts for 2 months each... enough time to level to 80, farm for a month and 20 days and then recyle accts.
Ever see a toon named something like aabbxa usually a lock, a hunter or a mage
WTS 20x Stack of Titanium. 800g low price AH, akt naow
... smells chineese and fishy all at the same time... maybe is just my sushi
And acct that was to for more then 500 dollars would have to be a fully ulduar epic geared TOP dps with rare mounts, rare titles, and a legendary or more - don't believe me... check out craigs list and look at the 10000's of posts of accts out there. All this takes hours and hours of playtime and not making gold i.e. farming
Closing argument....
You sir... are ignorant... crimnals are criminals, they could care less if on of their 100's of accts get banned... they are leveling new ones just to have in case they get banned... gold farming, as the article stated, is against rules which could mean ban also. Let me not even get into the quickest way to farm gold... by stealing accts... but that is another story for another noob to argue me on
Quit being a noob and ignorant about life... why
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: ...
I really love the way the World of Warcraft fans have come out to pontificate so passionately in the comments, putting down others who may have been a little off the mark. "ignorant about life"? Really? Given the most recent subscriber numbers for World of Warcraft are approximately 12 million, that puts the world wide relevance of World of Warcraft at approximately 0.2%. World of Warcraft doesn't mean anything to the 99.8% of the rest of the world. Get over your own self importance.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: ...
Stolen credit cards can be used to buy game cards. You can buy 20 game cards... or more... on a stolen credit card and have MONTHS of "free" game time.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It will do nothing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Simple Solution
Brilliant !!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple Solution
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple Solution
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Simple Solution
i'm not sure what type of cap you would be talking about but unless it was 50MB / month, you would never reach it and probably get to the cap trying to check your guild forums before logging on
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't be an idiot. Protect your personal information.
On a side note: AC - Can I have your CC info and any relevant information to use that CC? I'll send you a $1,000,000 check for it - but send 10% my way as a cut.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Really ?
What if it was your grandmother ?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Some scams are not worth pursuing. This (the scam, not Chinese gold farmers who can/can't be classified as a scammers) is one such scam and towing companies are up there with it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Chinese Motives
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Chinese Motives
you guys should get out into the real world more often.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
lame assed douchebags
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: lame assed douchebags
In fact, I don't even hate the farmers. There's a market for what they do.
And that's the problem, I think. You have lamers (see what I did there, gamers, heh) who would rather pay than play. The gamers reject this. The farmers (for gold and levels) meet a market need. The fact that it's an actual industry worth the notice of anyone other than blizzard is amazing.
But as long as there's a profitable market for it, what does it hurt? Slight inflation of AH prices? Guys camping certain mobs you need for quests?
I actually enjoy the leveling more than endgame or pvp, but some people just want a high level character to pvp with. Why not let them have it?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
or..
Once they steal your account, they take all your gold, sell all your items (and, eventually even get somebody with guild bank access and take all the guild stuff)
They then transfer all that gold a few times to different characters, and then sell it.
By the time you complain and get it all back, it's already been given to other people as well, so you both end up with it.
The accounts they use are 30 day free trial accounts. It doesn't cost them anything and there's no need to use stolen credit cards. You don't have to be top level to farm effectively, so they can do it with 30 day free trials.
Heck, my character doesn't even farm - he just plays the auction house by buying things low and selling them higher. Artificially controlling the price of goods on a server is way more profitable than farming.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not impacting China's economy?
Removing or criminalizing these activities is bound to affect economies all over the world in some way - I'm thinking primarily China, the US, and the EU.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There is gold in other hills besides WoW
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There is gold in other hills besides WoW
Entropia Universe was touted as the first virtual world to have a real wold economy of its own. Farmers can trade, create or work (hunt/mine/farm) for real monetary gain as there is a direct exchange rate with external economies.
Second Life is much the same. There is a exchange rate between the currency in SL (Lindens)and real word markets. Second life may be harder to exploit as there is no game given items, almost all items in-world are created by its inhabitants. the sytle of play also makes it hard for farmers as there are no goals set in-world, so valuable accounts and rare items do not exist.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In the USA, the counterfeiting laws would cover the use of virtual coin to purchase real world goods just as it would paper printed by an individual or Monopoly paper money. It would not need to have a major impact on the USA economy for the US Secret Service to go looking for the people to stop the use of what the USA would consider counterfeit money. The USA counterfeit laws would not cover the sale of virtual coin for USD with subsequent use of the virtual coin in the game. It is legal to play Monopoly and use the Monopoly paper money in the game and you purchased the Monopoly game,which included the virtual paper money, with USD. However, try to use the Monopoly paper money to open a bank account or pay your bills and you would be in violation of the counterfeiting laws, if anyone accepted the Monopoly paper money in place of USD. The counterfeit laws would only cover use of the virtual coin to purchase real items and this is because this action would have an impact on the economy. As long as the virtual coin is used in the game, it is equivalent to using Monopoly paper money while playing the game.
In my opinion this is something that we will be hearing about from all the countries as they pickup on the idea that the use of the virtual coin in their economy, instead of just the game economy, is equivalent to counterfeiting of the coin of that country.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]