Prisoners buy wow gold with video games and in cell televisions often bear the brunt of public outrage. But in China that disgust was turned on to prison guards, who were making money off the video game prowess of the incarcerated.
At Jixi labour camp, prisoners were forced to break rocks and build trenches from daybreak. When the sun set their nighttime labour began: playing video games to build up lucrative virtual gold that was sold online, reports the Guardian.
"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," former prisoner Liu Dali told the paper. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12 hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000 6,000 renminbi [$750 to $900 CDN] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off," added Dali, whose name was changed for publication.
Dali was jailed for three years in 2004 for illegally petitioning the central government over corruption in his hometown, the Guardian reports.
How can you make cash from playing online games? Known as gold farming, gamers build up virtual gold by repeating basic tasks in games such as World of Warcraft. These points are then sold to gamers around the world eager to enter new levels or be granted the new virtual weapons they provide.
Quasi legal and against the terms of agreement attached to most online games, the virtual gold industry is estimated to employ hundreds of thousands globally and rake in $200 million annually.
Gold farming is largely based in China, according to research conducted by Dr. Richard Heeks, Director of the Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester. Gold farmers typically work in groups of five to 50 people, says Heeks; their salary is based on results. Some companies sell directly to players while others go through traders like ige and SwagVault. sales from China to Japan and South Korea)," Heeks wrote to the Star in an email.
The practice is thought to have emerged in Korean cybercafs in 2001 with the farming being outsourced to China the same year.
Gold farming isn't all backroom dealing. Today, the practice is recognized as a legitimate business in South Korea and China, where the earnings of gold farmers are now taxed.
"(In China) some gold farms were set up with the assistance of local governments seeking to boost employment; at the other end of the spectrum, there are informal, unregistered activities," Heeks wrote to the Star.
The cost of credits varies according to the game: A level 75 Final Fantasy XI account costs around $400 and $1,000 worth of World of Warcraft gold selling for 70 cents.
But Liu says prisoners never saw any of that money, and they were beaten:
"If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically,' Dali told the Guardian. "They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things."
Game developers have little control over gold farming, other than closing the accounts of those who participate in the practice, violating their terms of use.
"What many people don't realize when buying gold is the large impact it has on the game economy, and also how the companies selling gold obtain it. Our developers, in game support, and anti hack teams work diligently to stop the exploits these companies use and help players who have become victims of their services. We regularly track the source of the gold these companies sell, and find that an alarmingly high amount comes from hacked accounts," World of Warcraft said in a statement on their website.
"Players who buy gold are supporting spamming, botting, and keylogging activities that diminish the game experience for everyone else," the statement reads.
Was Heek's surprised by the "gold farming" going on in China's prisons?
"Not greatly. First, I see all this (as noted above) as part of a larger public relations game being played about the nature of gold farming, with various stakeholders seeking to make it seem criminal and others trying to portray it as virtuous," he wrote to the Star.
"We're all aware of China's laogai ("reform through labour") system, so it shouldn't be a great surprise that some enterprising guards or prisoners should come up with the gold farming idea."
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