Chinese Prisoners Forced To Farm Gold?

from the forced-virtual-labor dept

There have been many, many reports over the years about just how much "gold farming" in online games comes from China, but a new report in the Guardian is getting plenty of attention for claiming that real world inmates are being used for gold farming in prisons, where the prisons or their bosses end up with the "spoils." A whole bunch of folks have been submitting the story, and it certainly could be happening, but it does seem pretty weakly sourced. It quotes one guy who was in prison half a decade ago and did the gold farming then. Is there any more contemporary evidence that this is happening?

Filed Under: china, gold farming, prisons, wow

But Who's Doing All That World Of Warcraft Gold Farming While WoW Is Down In China?

from the hit-on-the-economy dept

A few years back, we wrote about the rise of virtual sweatshops in China that involved "gold farming" in online worlds. The idea was that these shops would get people to do repetitive tasks in online games to create virtual wealth that could be sold in the real world for cash. Last month, there were some stories claiming that China was looking to crack down on gold farmers, but later analysis suggested it had less to do with gold farming and more to do with alternate currencies found online. Still, it's worth noting the reports claiming that World Of Warcraft has been down in China for a while, and no one's entirely sure why. The rumor is that the Chinese gov't believes that an agreement between Blizzard and another company is illegal, and during the investigation it has forced the site offline. Still, it does make you wonder what all those WoW gold farmers are going to be doing. Judging by how often they try to spam our comments, from Chinese IP addresses, they can't be handling the downtime all that well. Update: Cool. Folks in the comments come through again, pointing out that the gold farmers are connecting via US servers so this doesn't much matter. So now you know... Of course, if that's the case, then who cares whether or not the Chinese servers have gone down?

Filed Under: china, gold farming, world of warcraft

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.

Filed Under: china, gold farming, virtual currency