Virtual Outsourcing: gold farming employs 320,000 Chinese cheaters

Davey Winder
Sunday, 24 August 2008 15:05

Business IT - Networking

It sounds like something right out of a Roald Dahl story, but this is much stranger than any fiction: gold farming has become a $500 million global virtual outsourcing business.

As the Beijing Olympic Games draw to a close, sitting atop the league tables if you use the only sensible metric of who has won the most gold medals, is China on 51. Which is kind of appropriate to this story, as it is China which also dominates the world of gold farming.

Gold farming is not as daft as it sounds. In fact, it has been a growing business for many years now. As many years as there have been Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games.

Think MMORPG, think World of Warcraft, think EverQuest, think Guild Wars, think the need for virtual currency in order to buy your way through the rankings instead of earning your level ups.

Virtual gold is, however, relatively hard to come by in most games. It requires combat skills, questing ability and a good measure of hard work. In other words it requires the player to immerse themselves in the game, and get good at it.

Unless, that is, you cheat.

Which is where the Chinese gold farmers come in. Researchers at Manchester University in England suggest that upwards of 400,000 people are now employed in developing economies to play games and earn gold.

According to Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group and author of the research report, some 320,000 or 80 percent are based in China.

The actual methodology of gold farming varies from operator to operator, but essentially involves employing people in sweat-shop conditions to play the games for hours and hours on end. These intensive players will progress through the game completing quests.

The goods and gold collected along the way is then pooled and sold via online gold exchanges, in-game interaction and online shops.

What can a Chinese gold farmer earn, and are any laws being broken? Find out on page 2...

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