Gold farming is the practice of playing a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) to acquire in-game currency, later selling it for real-world money.
[6][7] The term has also been used to describe the wait times and chore-like activities players may perform in some freemium mobile phone games, allowing them to play without paying fees.
[11] This model, with full-time gold farmers working long hours in cybercafes, was outsourced to China and initially served demand from Korean players.
[11] Cheap labor from inland provinces had washed into more cosmopolitan cities, and these real-life farmers were promptly pressed into service farming gold.
According to the developers of World of Warcraft and Runescape, most gold-farming and botting accounts in those games were paid for using stolen credit card numbers.
[4] Another estimate, drawn from 2005/2006 data, valued the market at not less than US$200 million per year[22] and suggested that over 150,000 people were employed as gold farmers with average monthly earnings of US$145.
[32] Some governments, perhaps recognizing that current regulatory systems may be ill-suited to address activities such as gold farming, have made statements concerning the sale of virtual goods.
[35] Gold farming in China is done in Internet cafes, abandoned warehouses, small offices, private homes and even "re-education through labor" camps.
[37] In response to increases in gold farming, in 2006 the Japanese Government urged the computer game industry to self-regulate as well as vowing to investigate this species of fraud.
[38] A Korean high court's 2010 ruling meant that exchanging virtual currency for real money was legal in this country although subject to taxation.
[39] However, in 2012 this practice was set to be banned alongside a raft of other means to cheat in games, and gold farmers could face stiff penalties—up to $45,000 in fines and five years in jail.
[42] Due to hyperinflation in Venezuela and the devalued Venezuelan currency, popular MMOs like Runescape and Tibia have been subject to mass gold mining.
[49] Workers employed by these companies either collect in-game currency (known as gold farming) or generate high-level avatars (known as power leveling).
[59]: 253 In addition to these differences in play style, the game had no translation features for in-game chat and therefore there was little communication between English-speaking and non-English speaking players.
[59]: 254 In her analysis analysis of gold farming, media scholar Lisa Nakamura wrote that although "players cannot see each other's body while playing, specific forms of game labor, such as gold farming and selling, as well as specific styles of play, have become racialized as Chinese, producing new forms of networked racism that are particularly easy for players to disavow.