A sensational title, to be sure, but this is insane.
BBC News reports that nearly half a million people make a living supplying lazy first-world gamers with monopoly money.
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
"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.
Analysts estimate that the magnitude of gold farming rivals that of outsourced call centers in India. Criminy! 400K? These numbers are unreal, and I took my glasses off, rubbed my eyes, and put them back on to make sure I was reading them right.
I just don't think I could ever enjoy a game in which skill and dedication mean nothing in the face of expendable cash. The world is unfair enough. I play games to escape the harsh reality of the distribution of wealth. The last thing I need is for this imbalance to infiltrate my fantasy worlds.
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