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Virtual 'Gold Farming' Business Booming in Online Games

by Evan Shamoon on August 23, 2008 at 02:29 PM




New research by the University of Manchester in England has shown that almost 500,000 people in developing nations earn their living wage by making virtual goods in online games to sell to other players. Roughly 80-percent of the industry is based in China, which employs about 400,000 people who earn an average of about $142 per month.

"I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing, but assumed it was just a cottage industry," Professor Richard Heeks, who helped author the report, told the BBC. "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 massively multiplayer online games (such as World of Warcraft, pictured above), players often go to suppliers to get money to outfit their character with better weapons, armor, and other gear. Compared to the time required to actually earn that money, going through gold farmers is often a good deal.

While he estimates that the global market in gold farming could be worth about $500 million, he also says this number is inexact -- thanks to the pseudo-legality of the practice -- and that it could easily be twice as big. Already, he said, gold farming was comparable in size to India's entire outsourcing industry.

"It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld," Heeks 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 realize."

Globalization: it's kind of a bummer. [From: BBC News]

Tags: mmo, worldofwarcraft

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