Virtual Sales Aid Poorer Countries - Or, buy WoW gold online to fund Asia!

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Avatar 720**

This could go in video games or off-topic, but it doesn't seem to really fit one category more than the other, so I chose here, move if needed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13012041

BBC News wrote:Virtual sales provide aid to poorer nations

Up to 100,000 people in China and Vietnam are playing online games to gather gold and other items for sale to Western players, a report suggests.

The global market for such virtual game goods is worth at least $3bn (£1.8bn) the World Bank study estimates.

About 75% of that comes from so-called "gold farmers" who stockpile game currencies to sell on later.

Encouraging these in-game services could aid development in many poorer countries, said the report.

Virtual farms

Popular online games such as Lineage and World of Warcraft revolve around the gear that players gather to outfit their characters. Better equipment makes characters more powerful.

Some of that equipment can be found on monsters, as well as being bought from other players who have found or made it.

Increasingly, the report said, Western players who have limited time for gaming are buying game cash, gear and high level characters from people in China and Vietnam that are paid to play as a job.

About a quarter of all players of massively mutiplayer online games spend real money on virtual items, suggests the report. Some pay significant sums, with one player splashing out almost 5,700 euros (£5,000) on a single account.

This has led to some of the biggest suppliers becoming substantial businesses, it said, despite the efforts of many game studios to snuff out a trade that they believe undermines the game.

The largest eight Chinese suppliers of game gold have an annual turnover of about $10m (£6.1m) each. A further 50-60 firms have annual revenues of about $1m (£600,000).

Billion dollar business

The most up to date figures for global virtual sales suggests that the market was worth $3bn in 2009.

About 30% of the virtual currency being traded is "hand made" by human players, said the report; a further 50% comes from "bot farms" that automatically play the game and 20% is stolen from hacked accounts.

The supply chain getting the virtual goods to players was very mature, said the report's authors Dr Vili Lehdonvirta of the University of Tokyo and Dr Mirko Ernkvist from the University of Gothenburg.

They gave the example of a 100 dollar payment made via Paypal for game gold. After processing fees, the cash would be split between a large retailer ($30), a smaller farmer ($45) and the individual ($23) who had gathered the gold.

Coffee comparison

The high proportion of money from such sales that reaches those in the country where the work was done might mean that it could aid development in many nations, said the report which was co-commissioned by the World Bank and development organisation InfoDev.

It contrasted this situation with that of coffee which was worth $70bn annually in 2009 but only $5.5bn of that reached nations that farm coffee beans.

"This suggests that the virtual economy can have a significant impact on local economies despite its modest size," it said.

I knew that people bought stuff like this, but never knew that it could be this lucrative or even (as BBC are portraying it) beneficial to a country's economy, but is there a line? There's one thing making a profit from growing crops, but it's another entirely to rip off westerners by stealing from their accounts or stealing their accounts altogether, which accounts for 20% of the returns, a giant 50% is made from bots (players of any MMO game like WoW will know that they are frustrating at the best of the times) and 30% is made by human players, probably from gold selling services.

There is no doubt that this rakes in money, but it breaks key game rules, so which comes first? Game rules or a few economies? It might be good for Country XYZ, but rules are rules, why do you get an exception and I don't?

Whatever happened to the phrase "crime doesn't pay" being just that, a phrase? This is a case of crime paying, and paying out big time, whilst honest people suffer. Even in an online game, do rich people and criminals continue to come out ahead of the honest and law-abiding? Or does fueling an economy somehow make it all 'alright' and paint the honest player as morally evil because they don't contribute?

Opinions?

**ShumaGorath**

One hundred million people between multiple countries (one of which being china) isn't really a huge industry. Roughly 300 times that number went unemployed and then regained employment during the financial crash and the three years following.

I do dislike MMO gold farm economies though.

**Cannerus_The_Unbearable**

I had a few friends over here that did it for a year or two and made a reasonable income. The whole thing is a little ridic IMO as you can play video games that don't cost monthly upkeep that are better designed. To each his own, I suppose.

**Kilkrazy**

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/7/16/
Contains swearing.

From one point of view, buying a good character/equipment/gold is cheating. From another viewpoint, it makes sense to save the money you would pay to the game company, and spend it on avoiding the boredom of grinding.

Charles Stross wrote a good novel about a virtual robbery in an MMORPG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State

Gold farming wouldn't be the only trade with some unsavoury aspects to it.

I wonder if Korean players buy a lot of gold.

**biccat**

Kilkrazy wrote:From one point of view, buying a good character/equipment/gold is cheating. From another viewpoint, it makes sense to save the money you would pay to the game company, and spend it on avoiding the boredom of grinding.

Well, it depends on if you're talking about "technical" cheating or about morality. On the technical side, if WoW says buying gold is cheating, then it's cheating, end of story. Morally, I would agree that it's probably not cheating.

I actually think gold farming (and this story) show how cool capitalism really is. A company creates a product that allows you to trade your free time for in-game wealth. Some entrepreneur realises that lots of people don't have loads of extra time, but instead have money, while others have time, but no money. So he creates an enterprise where individuals exchange their time for in-game wealth, then trades that wealth to the actual players of the game. It's a winning situation for everyone involved, and something that never would have arisen without the capitalist idea.

**Phototoxin**

Better equipment makes characters more powerful.

Therein lies the problem of MMOGs. Better gear should be 'cool' but it should be player skill that's necessary. Obviously MMOGs are made so anyone can play.

**ShumaGorath**

Phototoxin wrote:
Better equipment makes characters more powerful.

Therein lies the problem of MMOGs. Better gear should be 'cool' but it should be player skill that's necessary. Obviously MMOGs are made so anyone can play.

Grinding for gear is representative of time investment, not skill. Buying gear is the same. There is little skill metric in MMOs and it's a hallmark of the genre where bad players can do well based on their investment.

**BearersOfSalvation**

Kilkrazy wrote:From one point of view, buying a good character/equipment/gold is cheating. From another viewpoint, it makes sense to save the money you would pay to the game company, and spend it on avoiding the boredom of grinding.

Breaking the rules of the game is cheating, saying that you'd rather just get to a goal by cheating than by playing doesn't change the fact that you broke the rules in the first place. It makes sense to replace all of my pawns with queens in chess to avoid the boredom of setting up a proper checkmate, but that doesn't make my use of other pieces not-cheating.

**Grabzak Dirtyfighter**

I'm sure if you and your family lived in squalor, and your only options were to work in a sweatshop for $5 a day or farm gold and get more money for less work your priorities would change.

I used to play MMO's when I had all the time in the world to myself, but now I work, have kids, dogs, yadda yadda. If I really wanted to play an MMO I would rather drop a bit of money on good gear than invest my limited time into camping/grinding for it. Then I could have fun playing instead of "earning my dues" to have fun.

If these MMO companies really wanted to stop gold farmers all they would have to do is make the games more exp/skill based and less gear based, hence nothing to farm and sell other than leveled accounts.

**Sir Pseudonymous**

Gold farming operations are sweatshops, and in most places, $5 a day would be closer to the cumulative total of all the workers' salaries...

**Cannerus_The_Unbearable**

Kilkrazy wrote:http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/7/16/
Contains swearing.

This doesn't need pictures. It says the exact thing many people have already said. I really don't understand why Penny arcade gets credit for anything.

**rubiksnoob**

Avatar 720 wrote:
Opinions?

Ummmmmm, it's just a game and therefore not really a big deal?

If people can make a buck off of morons that are stupid enough to pay money for gak that doesn't really exist, then more power to 'em.

And in the end, it's just a video game. Breaking the rules of a video game doesn't equate to breaking the law. It's not a crime.

**Kilkrazy**

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/7/16/
Contains swearing.

This doesn't need pictures. It says the exact thing many people have already said. I really don't understand why Penny arcade gets credit for anything.

Please note the date on the cartoon.