[Jarre]

Found this artical on teh BBC news website (availiable here) on the increasing amount of poor people earnign a living by playing games to get virtual currency to sell for real money.

Poor earning virtual gaming gold

Many online games have tried to tackle the trade in game gold


Nearly 500,000 people in developing nations earn a wage making virtual goods in online games to sell to players, a study has found.

Research by Manchester University shows that the practice, known as gold-farming, is growing rapidly.

The industry, about 80% based in China, employs about 400,000 people who earn £77 per month on average.

The practice is flourishing despite efforts by games companies to crack down on the trade in virtual goods.

Big industry

Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group at Manchester who wrote the report, said gold farming had become a significant economic sector in many developing nations.

"I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry," said Professor Richard Heeks from the University of Manchester who wrote the report.

"In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands."

In many online games virtual cash remains rare and many people turn to suppliers such as gold farmers to get money to outfit avatars with better gear, weapons or a mount.
Many gold farmers focus on World of Warcraft


Some gold-farming operations offer other services such as "power levelling" in which they assume control of a player's character and turn it into a high-powered hero far faster than the original owner could manage themselves.

Prof Heeks said very accurate figures for the size of the gold farming sector were hard to come by but his work suggested that in 2008 it employs 400,000 people who earn an average of $145 (£77) per month creating a global market worth about $500m.

But, he said, the true size of the sector was hard to estimate - it could easily be twice as big.

The quasi-criminal nature of gold-farming made it hard to truly gauge its extent, said Prof Heeks.

In most online games all the activities associated with gold farming - gathering in-game cash to items to sell, buying game gold or sharing accounts - are a violation of the terms governing that title.

Anyone caught engaging in any of these activities is likely to be banned from the game and have their account shut down.

"I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it's a significant phenomenon that academics and development organisations are unaware of," he told the BBC.

Already, he said, gold farming was comparable in size to India's outsourcing industry.

"The Indian software employment figure probably crossed the 400,000 mark in 2004 and is now closer to 900,000," said Prof Heeks. "Nonetheless, the two are still comparable in employment size, yet not at all in terms of profile."

Prof Heeks suspects gold-farming might be an early example of the "virtual offshoring" likely to become more prevalent as people spend more time working and playing in cyberspace.

"It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld," he said. "Or at least the edges of a digital underworld populated by scammers and hackers and pornographers and which has spread to the "Third World" far more than we typically realise."

Cashing out

Steven Davis, chief of game security firm Secure Play, said gold farming had been around since the earliest days of online gaming but had mushroomed along with the popularity of gaming. The trade was clearly meeting a real need, he said.
Economic depth in games such as Eve Online means it is not as prone to gold farming


"When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet," he said.

While exchanges of goods and gold take place inside game worlds the deals are typically done via one of many hundreds of online market places and shops. Some gold farming sites employ just a handful of people but many were large businesses with hundreds of people on their books.

A hierarchy of gold farmers arranged by where wages were lowest was starting to emerge, said Mr Davis. For instance, the low wages gold farmers in Vietnam will accept means they now do for Chinese gamers what many in China do for those in the West.

"It's moving down the chain," he said.

Gold-farming was proving so lucrative that criminal gangs were cashing in on it, said Mr Davis. These pay for their accounts with stolen credit cards, take money from players and do not hand over gold or goods in return and fill chat channels with adverts for websites hawking game gold.

There were also significant problems in tracking down and prosecuting those behind the gold-farming, he said.

Games makers had tried to limit the amount of trade in game gold and gear, few had reported significant success, said Mr Davis.

"You could get rid of it," he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."

[Neomage]

"You could get rid of [RMT]," he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."

. . .

[KingOfZeal]

Yes, that is true Neo -- the one way to stop RMT is by removing the ability to trade (and, in FFXI, the AH as well). But, it's rather fundamental to not only the economy but also for basic interactions.

[MrMageo]

Its a good article, Ive been saying it for years. I hate RMT, but these are peoples jobs. Its not like any other company in the world follows the rules, hi 2 u enron. I don't know if it is respect, or pity but ive always felt something towards RMT companies even though they disrupt the balance of the game.

[Jarre]

I have no respect for them, think about these chineese guys packed into a room and getting a emasly £77 quid a month, convert that to chineese money and its still a low income. they are expected to put long hours in appalling conditions and who wins in this, the workers? no the fat cats that are running these, they get 95% of teh money from selling a person the currency. the problem is that at least 40% of these are run by criminal gangs, so not only are players who buy virtual currency breaking the terms of service, there also funding criminal activity.

[Mhurron]

Originally Posted by Neomage

""You could get rid of [RMT]," he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction.""

. . .

That's not what he said. He said -
"Games makers had tried to limit the amount of trade in game gold and gear, few had reported significant success, said Mr Davis.

"You could get rid of it," he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."

Or, to put it the way you did -
""You could get rid of [trade in game gold and gear]" he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."

He's acknowledging the fact that RMT are just players with a different agenda. As such, the only way to really stop them is to stop all player activities, in this case he's focusing on the social aspects. If you removed them, there isn't really any point to playing the game. Hence the problems that every company in stopping or limiting RMT activities.

[Neomage]

Oh. I get it.

I retract my previous statement.

[Feba]

Originally Posted by Jarre

no the fat cats that are running these, they get 95% of teh money from selling a person the currency. the problem is that at least 40% of these are run by criminal gangs, so not only are players who buy virtual currency breaking the terms of service, there also funding criminal activity.

I'm 99% sure that you're just pulling percentages out of your ass.