Is gold farming a $1 billion market?

What do we know for sure about gold farming? Not nearly enough, according to University of Manchester professor Richard Heeks. In a recently released 87-page analysis, Heeks calls for more research on the massively multiplayer online game practice, noting that he couldn't find a single journal...

What do we know for sure about gold farming? Not nearly enough, according to University of Manchester professor Richard Heeks.

In a recently released 87-page analysis, Heeks calls for more research on the massively multiplayer online game practice, noting that he couldn't find a single journal article on the subject. On the other hand, informal real-world gold mining in Ghana employs as many people as gold farming, Heeks says, and has been the subject of dozens of articles.

With a dearth of scientific research to work from, the report references a variety of sources, including scraps of online gaming research that happens to mention gold farming, mainstream media coverage (like NPR or CBS News), MMO-focused blogs (TerraNova and Play No Evil), Wikipedia, and even an individual poster on the GameSpot forums.

Despite that, Heeks cobbles together best guesses based on the information at hand. For 2008, he suggests that 400,000 worldwide farmers are earning an average of $145 a month to serve between 5 million and 10 million customers. He pegs the total revenue of the sector at $500 million, but adds that number could easily be more than $1 billion.

"The main uncertainty of estimation relates to the gold-farming market in East Asia, which appears much larger than that in the US/EU," Heeks said. "That uncertainty in part arises because gold farming operates at four levels – local, national, regional, and global. We should encompass all four but, to date, the focus has been almost entirely on the global trade."

Heeks draws parallels between gold farming and activities of varying legality, from actual farming to the drug trade. He also casts doubt on some conventional wisdom surrounding gold farming, specifically that it leads to in-game inflation. While he acknowledges short-term inflation happens, Heeks said there are few long-term examples of it, noting that games like Eve Online and Runescape have actually experienced deflation over multiple years.

The issue of publishers trying to crack down on gold farming is also called into question. "Put economically, gold farming is utility-maximizing for both parties--gold farmer and player-buyer--otherwise, of course, it would not take place," Heeks said. "Doing nothing about gold farming also costs nothing, whereas doing something costs money in staff time and other resources."

As for future research, the first thing Heeks calls for is a set of basic, reliable facts about gold-farming pay, locations, ownership, working conditions, and the like. With that taken care of, he wants to find out about the impact the work has on the individuals doing the farming, what its impact is on unemployment and poverty reduction, and whether it's something that should be supported as a socioeconomic strategy for developing countries.

105 Comments

  • solidstein

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 12:11 pm PT

    tinymogul look at eq they have enough twinks to keep them going and WoW too if i believe tho must epic and rare pieces are no drop atleast in the games i play so those can not be sold and if the game does not have no drop gear then that is a good way for them to combat gold farming but it is truly unfair for the casual player who can not dedicate there life to playing a game to not be able to get good gear im not saying a casual gamer should be able to get top end gear because that should be earned but any player shouhld be able to have good enough gear to where the can play in an area of there level without insane diffuclty

  • solidstein

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 12:05 pm PT

    i believe gold farming is our way as gamers to support third world countries u look at some countries in east asia where they make 10 dollars a week working a normal job and they can make 145 dollars a week gold farming. any one of us can become gold farmers all you need to do is go to an african village bring them 20 computer higher the whole village to farm gold 24/7 and pay them 50% of what you make. therefore you are helping a village in africa become rich and survive and help starvation all thru a MMO i truly believe its great and who care is some one gets ahead from buying gold they still are gonna need the skill to play at a truly high level to get the raid gear that can not be bought by gold or plat so keep it up if i had the international connections i would become a gold farmer

  • tinymogul

    Posted Aug 26, 2008 10:42 am PT

    There is a cost to gamers who use Gold Farmers to 'boost' their characters as well as a cost to the players who don't. The farmers have to play the game to earn their gold. They have to explore the world along side the regular gamer. The game will always limit the number of Rare and Epic items that drop to maintain a certain balance in the game. If those drops are going to Gold farmers who then resell them to earn gold, the average gamer has to spend more time grinding Instances trying to get that item to drop legitimately (How many times can you run BRD to get those shoulders to complete your set). These players want to the pride that goes with having 'earned' their epics. If the Publisher doesn't work hard to keep gold farming to a minimum, legit players are going to get more and more frustrated and eventually move on to greener pastures, leaving the game to the farmers and twinks...and there aren't enough twinks around to keep a game successful.

  • ujustgotpwned12

    Posted Aug 26, 2008 7:34 am PT

    hahah anyone who thinks gold farming is a noob. Ask yourself this, "what is the point of playing and mmorpg?" well the answer is to have fun or to excel past the other players. everyone obviously wants to be the best so they may end up buying gold/accounts. This makes them better than many other players which makes the others mad but what they dont realise is that if they wanna be better than they have to buy some gold too. like all you have to do is compete... you take what the opposition is doing and perfect it noobs

  • Torsino

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 4:31 pm PT

    Sarcerok wrote:

    a) 'In making his case that gold farming does not cause in-game inflation, he fails to mention that all virtual worlds have an extreme deflationary trend even without gold farming.'
    >>Unlikely: trends differ and depend on the way the game has been designed.

    b) 'The author also states that gold-farmers are not actually adding any resources . . if the farmer was not on the node is NOT utility maximizing for me.'
    >>I think you are confusing two different 'parties' here: farmers are (largely) substituting in-game for the actions of non-buying players; the utility maximisation is for farmers and players who buy.

    c) 'In talking about the naturual deflation of currency in games (which he tries to credit to gold farmers in another section in some bizarre twist of non-logic)'
    >>Looks here as if you are confusing two different price changes: prices within the game, and the price of in-game currency vs. real-world currencies.

    d) 'Um, he forgot to mention that the main method farmers use to maintain profitability in the face of deflation is to hop to the latest, newest game . .'
    >>Um, so the bit on page 24 where it says, 'An alternative may be focusing on newer online games, where competition may be less and margins higher . .' must have been missing from the copy you read.

  • marco0798

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 1:57 pm PT

    no it simply needs to be banned. It is simply cheating, you arnt good enough to get items the way its ment to happen so u go out and buy em. anyone who buys gold/accounts deserves a perma band cos they are usually noobs who destroy other peoples experience, the number of times I've wiped in an instance because of some retards who cant do the basics of his class is pathetic.

  • Gribb85

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 1:27 pm PT

    More research needs to be carried out on gold farming organisations and the working conditions of their workers.

  • henry4th

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 11:07 am PT

    why are poeple here so stupid? What possibily a screen shot of auction house prove? When a game first come online, of course everything's cheap. Years later, when most players are at highiest possible levels, players will have a lot higher in-game income, of course it will then lead to inflation. It has very little to do with gold farming.

    When games are designed to reward time investiment instead of skill investiment, it of course innately encourage poeple who want to play games but don't have the time to find ways to circumvent the "time related" punishment.

  • KygonsCube

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 10:25 am PT

    yeah gold buying is what helped make wow ah prices of most items skyrocket up to 7x the price it was at the start of wow. Just look at the greens/whites for levels 5-20 and leather gear of almost any level =(

  • Mindchamber

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 10:16 am PT

    americans must look like the laziest people on the planet to these farmers.. I mean when you are paying someone else to play your game, you know somethings wrong

  • Ychi

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 10:00 am PT

    Drum beating so this guy can get funding? Can't find a single hit on gold farmers!?! That's insane, try sending an email with WoW gold etc and see all the advertisements pop up, do a search and you will find plenty of links.

    Reality: Yes it increases inflation, I have screenshots of auction house prices of MMO's that I have played at release vs present day, huge difference in prices for the most popular MMO's presently.

    The only thing positive out of this is it may finally present some hard numbers as "proof". Otherwise the government will look and go interesting how can we tax this again? Probably they have not already done this as most of the income goes outside the US. lol

    Reality check: there will be sellers as long as there are buyers. Source: This is from players that want to have their cake and eat it too. "It takes too long to get $$$, I want it now, I should not have to play a game by the rules that I agreed to when I joined up booo!"

    Lesson: If you dont like the game's rules then don't play. There are plenty of other games out there to choose from. Failing to follow the rules makes it pointless to play the game.

  • tek-9

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 6:03 am PT

    lol that is insane. has WOW become so huge that "in game inflation" is a word used not in jest? And the fact that make believe money affects real world economy? CRAZY CRAZINESS!!!!!

  • bassbomber20

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 3:41 am PT

    I'd say of all the games that I've played online that deal with this, Guild Wars Series, EVE-Online, WOW and FFXI, I think the most stable economey that I've been in would be EVE. True the main trade hub, prices are inflated etc. but you just make a few jumps to one of the lesser used hubs and you'll find it there cheaper. Honestly, I know the spammers used to be really bad a moth ago trying to sell ISK-for-cash, but I haven't seen them much at all lately. I know it's still going on, but atleast it's being delt with on some level. Now that people can actually sell Game Time Cards for in-game currency I think it's calmed everything down, that and the Devs are insta-banning anyone who recieves anything from a RMT. So I think things might look a bit more favorable. Either way EVE's eco. is completely player run, everything from the ships people fly, to something as simple as ammunition, everything is player-made, so I think that is one of the big pluses of the game that helps keep all the prices mostly stable...

  • Arco-Storm

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 12:23 am PT

    To Think that RMT (Gold Farmers) don't have effect on economies in MMO is just blind sighted. They most certainly have an effect a great effect. In FFXI before the introduction of the Special Task Force to deal with RMT you would need 1mill+ just to get mediocre gear just to get lvl30. I remember having to stop leveling just to go spend several days farming, what ever items i could at that level to scrounge up enough gold for gear for next 5 levels. Now a days can spend 100k witch at level 10 is not that hard to do. Another note is the Market used to fluctuate up and down almost weekly, now its more stable reliable and fare to everyone.

  • Ruqus21

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 11:58 pm PT

    I would have to agree that game economies are only working on how they are built, at best. There is a lot that goes on in real world economics that is VERY hard to duplicate in a MMO or any other game for that matter. Lots of fluctuations and variables come into play, yet very few MMO's actually have a economy that fluctuates along with it(notice how I said few, not all).

    Even WoW, for example, with its "stronger" economy, still can't keep its "gold farming" problem in check either. A lot of in game economies rely on flat rates (other than the trade world). Thats why you'll see such a game come out with updates that involve easier gold farming, or newer items and such to bring the game's economy back up to pace with such things as "inflation". Either way, this still only taps into part of the issue at hand and doesn't even include such things as serviceable jobs. (say for instance, cleaning your own house, or instead of utilizing your time, paying someone else to do it for you)

    Time and Money IMO.

  • Zloth2

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 11:04 pm PT

    Companies don't try to hard to get rid of gold farmers, Toddze? Guess you haven't been playing City of Heroes lately. They had a BAD gold farmer problem once they put a market into the game. Blind tells every hour from trail accounts, mostly. They put the clamps down HARD on trial accounts. The tells have all but stopped. We still get a few in-game emails but, once you mark them as spam on one character, all your other characters have the email auto-deleted. Gold farmers aren't dead but they are sure hurting over in Paragon City.

  • BigDaddy973

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 11:03 pm PT

    Very interesting!

  • leafdj

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 9:39 pm PT

    Wasn't this whole, "You can player longer than I can" thing the reason these games started adding that bonus exp for x amount of time thing?
    Maybe they should add something similar for loot, call it like, greed-rush, and for a while, you obtain extra loot by ripping the skulls off your foes.

  • invictuslemming

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 8:43 pm PT

    While I don't agree with gold farming, if someone wants to spend real money to buy fake money, that's their prerogative.

    What I do have issues with, however, is gold farming bots who replace human players in the game. This is crossing the line in my opinion, when a human player has to compete against a computer program then the farming has gone too far. At least if its a human gold farmer I can make their life miserable .

    Another bad side of gold farming is the spam advertisements which seem to appear in the games along with it. These spam messages piss me off more than the actual gold farmers, when my chat gets flooded with adverts, I have zero problems letting the companies (Blizzard, Mythic, FunCom, etc) swing down the ban-hammer.

  • iesexywarden

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 7:35 pm PT

    yeh gold farmers ruin video games...its so dumb having ppl with uncontrolable wealth and seeing bots everywhere. PRetty much half the game is fake. W/e happen to skill needed in these games...THats when i decided to say buh-bye to wow

  • toddze

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 7:06 pm PT

    What a sad day the MMO world has gone under. Now I understand why there is so many gold farmers running around. I though that gold buyers were in the minority, but after looking at all the people who voted “disagree†on any post against gold buying: It seems that the people who buy gold is the majority by far. Well now I don’t know if I even want to continue to play an MMO due to all the cheaters out there who cant earn their currency for themselves. Where is everyone’s sense of accomplishment? I guess I am an old breed of MMO’er. Now it makes sense why companies do not really try to hard to get rid of the gold buying.

  • foxglove1313

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 6:52 pm PT

    The idea of game economies in general just makes me angry. I have to slave away 40+ hours a week at a real job to make ends meet. So why is it that game designers want to make my leisure time more like the reality I'm trying to escape from by constructing game mechanics that make me struggle to buy gear for my characters in a game?? And let's be honest, restricting cash flow for characters in a game is just another time sink to keep players paying a monthly fee. Why don't game companies just wise up and sell the gold to players directly and cut out all the illegal business by undercutting them directly? Because of some imaginary worry about 'inflation' in their imaginary game world?? Get a grip, I don't care about pretend economies I just wanna have some fun for a few hours a night.

  • BenBenBen93

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 1:09 pm PT

    I think it is a rip off at the the same time time useful i've never really played full on MMORPG because ig got board leveling and had no money on the game.

    But the only thing is spend on gaming is on xbox games and XBL I would never pay for this sort of thing but i can see the useful side and profitable side although it not much but good enough for those WOW gamer who never go offline and will only leave to sleep I know one he missed his GCSE tests just so he could lvl on WOW shame

  • morewasabi

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 12:59 pm PT

    The ideal solution is for gaming companies to provide a "safe" alternative to gold farming that allows players to purchase gold without risking their accounts. Simply introducing massive amounts of gold into the economy would cause devastating inflation, and it is likely that farmers would simply lower prices and remain competitive.

    Some companies (most noticeably CCP) have created systems allowing players to buy and sell game time cards. This enables players to legally purchase gold, undercuts farmers by providing a risk free alternative, and ensures that more money winds up in corporate pockets.

  • Kh1ndjal

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 12:49 pm PT

    i think guildwars has taken a step in the right direction. in guildwars, you can pay for a PVP pack that will unlock all skillsfor your pvp characters, this gives you no gameplay advantage whatsoever but it will save you the time of unlocking the skills yourself, or not paying a 3rd party to do it for you

  • markrousseau21

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 12:40 pm PT

    azxcvbnm321
    I agree with your second paragraph but the first is an ideal. If there wasnt a chance for everyone to get these rare items then there wouldnt be as many players.... this is bad for those making the games as they want as many subscriptions as possible. The only way to get gold to be used up would be to impose in game income tax where you pay gold to the server as a percentage of how much you've earned..... that would never fly - unless you want to pay the tax man in your games too

  • azxcvbnm321

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 11:52 am PT

    Programmers often have no idea of even basic economic theory, which is why virtual economies get into trouble. Inflation is TOTALLY the fault of the developers, THEY are the ones who are pumping in gold and objects into the game. If people can earn gold and collect objects, then the amount of gold and objects in the world will gradually increase, there needs to be a way for gold and objects to be "used up" so that a balance can be achieved. Games that don't drain enough gold or objects run into trouble, rare objects end up becoming common as their quantity builds up if they aren't ever destroyed. The farmers aren't responsible for inflation/deflation, farmers can't control the total number of objects or gold in the world. It's the total amount in the world that makes the difference.

    Also why is it cheating to buy gold and objects? Maybe I only have 3 hours a day to play, is it fair that you have 6 hours to play and therefore will always be more powerful and have more stuff? Under the logic of some of the posters, we should all be restricted to X hours a day or else it wouldn't be "fair". A much better way would be to allow those with more money to buy gold and objects while also allowing those with more time to play longer and get more gold and objects.

  • Vraeth

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 10:47 am PT

    Oh, perfect example of a game where buying money is better time vs. money-wise: Everquest, If you don't box, that is... but the cost for extra accounts would negate that anyway.

    People can bash plat buying in that game all they want, but in the end, people will spend 8-16 hours or more trying to scrounge together 100k, when in reality for $10 (easily made in under 2 hours even at federal minimum wage in US) you can have the same amount, but then spend the other 14 hours doing something useful.

    The fact that you can deck yourself out in decent gear to carry you to max level from 71 for $30 doesn't help the anti plat farm camp either. SOE killed their own natural economy.

  • Vraeth

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 10:43 am PT

    "That's not true, Jagex was being threatened by credit card companies to remove their ability to process cards because real world traders also have a habit of using stolen cards. Runescape would have arguably gone under if they hadn't done something."

    That logic barely qualifies as fuzzy.

  • death919

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 10:09 am PT

    Why is gamespot publishing this article? To get more people interested in buying gold?

    You people do realize that 99.5% of gold farming websites have a keylogger for simply going to them right? And that they make a large portion of their gold for "sale" by selling your hard earned items that you worked for hundreds/thousands of hours for. My guild's bank recently had about 15000g worth of stuff hacked from gold farmers. Personally I am disgusted that Gamespot is giving these people publicity.

    @ Kenji: I get the feeling you haven't played WoW in a while because these days you can solo about 10 dailies in about an hour on the Isle (which is about 100g... so I don't see where you're getting 6-8 hours for 130g from). Or you can simply run Karazhan in 4 hours (22 BoJ's), buy an epic gem for 15 BoJ's, and sell it in the AH for 300g (~75g/hour, with 7 badges left over), so 30g an hour is an extreme understatement. But anyways, an epic flying mount is supposed to be somewhat of a status symbol, you're SUPPOSED TO save up for it and show some dedication and restraint from buying other things, people trivializing it by saying "hey, im rich in real life so I just wanna buy it without effort" ruins the game.

  • Madjik2k2

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 10:06 am PT

    "He also casts doubt on some conventional wisdom surrounding gold farming, specifically that it leads to in-game inflation"

    There is a very notable case of it causing massive inflation and breaking an economy all the way up until the manufacture did something about it. Look up Final Fantasy 11, where up until about a year ago, RMT's were causing the prices of items to skyrocket. This happened for several YEARS, and didn't really start to decline until Square-Enix Set up a special task force to deal with it. RMT's have markedly declined after many, many, mass bans. RMT's have since moved on to easier markets for the most part and it has only improved the economy of Final Fantasy 11, and it's a massive improvement. The game is CERTAINLY more playable then it was a year ago.

  • Kenji_Masamune

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 9:57 am PT

    lets see here.. doing dailys = playing for about 6 - 8 hours a day (provided if you can group up to do the ones that you can't do solo... oh and let's not forget the 40+ hours need to rep grind to get to where you can get to do some of those dailys)and let's say you make 130gold (including drops, junk items and money from the slain mobs), so we'll just say you can get about 30g a hour. At that rate it'll take you at least 120 hours to get 5k gold or you can drop some RL money and save you the month or so play time needed. To each his own I guess.

  • Avenger1324

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 8:38 am PT

    The problem is because people are willing to buy it.

    Gold farming is little different to being able to buy a complete unlock package in NFS Prostreet, that only contains things you can unlock by playing the game. I can't see why people buy it, but clearly enough people do for EA to decide it is going to make them money.

  • ciaxhieu

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 8:37 am PT

    looks like the University of Manchester have nothing better to do than research gold farming

  • nescgi

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 8:31 am PT

    I've played Runescape for 5 years and no one ever complained about farmers causing inflation. More items in game = cheaper items. I don't know how it is for other MMOs. When Jagex stamped out real world trading prices went higher, much higher in some cases.

    "Doing nothing about gold farming also costs nothing"

    That's not true, Jagex was being threatened by credit card companies to remove their ability to process cards because real world traders also have a habit of using stolen cards. Runescape would have arguably gone under if they hadn't done something.

  • DuaneDog

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 8:14 am PT

    I'm against any gold for myself to play a game, period. Just like I never use cheats in a game. What's the fun and satisfaction if you know you are a cheat? Now if other people do it, I'm not so sure I care that much. The economics of paying someone to buy gold for you should somewhat balance out in the game world economy. For example if it only takes 10 minutes to get 1,000 gold the value of that gold in real world terms is going to be very, very low. Perhaps 25 cents at most. If it takes 100 hours to obtain that same amount of gold in real world terms it's going to be very high. Perhaps $100 or more. I mean a $1 an hour isn't much income incentive to make a living mining gold. So I guess I WISH that it wasn't a part of the MMO games, it's not the end of the world. The wealthy and people that have money will always get perks and benefits in real life so why should we expect that would be different in a game? Time IS money afterall. What I DON'T GET is how anyone, rich or poor, could get satisfaction out of cheating in a game. It just ruins it for me personally; but others obviously have no problem with it. To each his/her own.

  • thekodaman

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 8:00 am PT

    Ah you're quite right SylvanC94 but you have to realise that in many MMOs cheapen and devalue their own "experience" as it were by releasing expansions that completely render prior content useless *cough WoW* or by a lack of real content. For example The Burning Crusade was by and large a reasonable expansion, however far too much of it involves endless grinding for obscene amounts of in-game cash that very few players can realistically get hence why players buy in-game gold with their own money to circumvent these ridiculous situations.

    The fact of the matter is developers are more often the architects of these Gold Farming economies than their customers are as opposed to only "lazy" players.

  • SylvanC94

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 4:41 am PT

    The argument that "I don't have enough time to play, why can't I just pay to get ahead?" isn't really valid for MMOs. In a single player game, you are entitled to cheat and play the game as you would like to play. In an MMO, the developer has designed a game experience for you and everyone else, and you are expected to play by the rules, to ensure a fair and equal experience for everyone involved. By circumventing normal play mechanics you negatively affect everyone else's gaming experience and that is not acceptable. So you don't have enough free time? Too bad. Advancement is supposed to take time and hard work.

    The buyers are the ones to blame from this problem, in my opinion. Those who are too lazy to play the game as it was intended. When you play Monopoly with your friends, do you spend real money to buy more Monopoly money so you can afford those properties? Of course not, that would be retarded. Well, buying gold in an MMO is equally pathetic.

  • Gladestone1

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 4:35 am PT

    Gold farming was at its peak during the everquest days..When normal people would make cash gold farming..I remember a dude who bought a house doing just that..When it was hard to make armor in eq live...One guy had a shop alone an just made armor..He grossed over 100k a year..Thats how gold farming really started..Way back when people would ebay items...Now though a 145 a month isnt crap..

  • Gothichell

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 4:03 am PT

    Buying gold is a waste of time and money plus you can do dailys in WoW now you can make more then 100G per day.

  • smfes

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 3:29 am PT

    I have never my self purchase ingame gold for my world of warcraft EU account and will never support whats destroying the game ever !

  • GolgoThirteen

    Posted Aug 24, 2008 2:26 am PT

    Gold buying is cheating it's as simple as that. Like svaubel says, it's all well and good talking about how the business affects hundreds of thousands of poor people in Asian countries, often being their sole income etc etc, but he doesn't talk about how that affects the business that runs the game, or how other players who play by the rules are negativly affected. His report is almost purely based in economics.

  • gandalf_storm

    Posted Aug 23, 2008 11:52 pm PT

    i have never purchased any ingame money, for any game inc. wow

    Ive just come back to wow after a year and half away (approx) - the trade channel seems to be a fairly regular place for advertising gold. I dont agree with commnets below stating its ok to buy gold if you dont have time to purchase items, what a pathetic excuse, most of the decent stuff is drops from instances or pvp reward related anyway, you dont need money for this. Its taking the fun away in my imo, its no different to cheating.

  • svaubel

    Posted Aug 23, 2008 11:01 pm PT

    Publishers crack down on gold farming/selling because not only is it against an EULA, but it costs the publisher a lot of money because of credit card chargebacks. A seller buys an account, if a trial one doesnt serve their purpose, then soon after calls the credit card company and claims that an unauthorized purchase was made, and so they get their money back, while the publisher losses it, and repeat.

    This is bad for the buyer because their card information could be potential stolen by the sellers.

    A good article and one I would like to see more research on, but Heeks doesnt really look at the negatives of these gold sellers from the perspective of the gamers or the publishers being targeted.

  • ValKilmerStyle

    Posted Aug 23, 2008 10:50 pm PT

    Maybe the reason for the huge difference of opinion here is the differing images of those involved. These people are branded as thieves, hackers, and vandals, but in reality almost all of them are poor as dirt with no other means of bringing in money, so they turn to the only companies who will pay them. These are the people the article is referring to and these are the people who would benefit (in theory). It disgusts me that so many of us are willing to dismiss them as thieves because we can't always find a decent place to mine virtual iron, or that we have to pay twice as much virtual money for a virtual sword. We've become far too privileged and selfish.

  • Red_Jester

    Posted Aug 23, 2008 9:38 pm PT

    I repeat, if we are unwilling to make a tiny sacrifice in a virtual realm to help others in the real world, then THAT would make me uncomfortable about where this world is headed. So to answer the question: yes, you need to bring in more examples. Then I challenge you to think on this: How arrogant, ignorant, and spoiled would we be to think that the livelihood of our WOW characters is more valuable than the livelihood of real people? NONE of the above examples are more important than someone bringing home food to his/her family. If they do it by hacking our video games then so be it. You can make the argument all you want that a game experience is changed or worsened by gold farming, but REAL LIFE experience has a chance to be IMPROVED, or so the article suggests. If this is true, and the situation of others CAN be improved, then gold farming is brilliant. I play MMOs too, but I like to think I can distinguish my time with them from my time out of them. And out of video games, gold farming only affects people in a positive way. If gold farming affects your real life experience negatively, you should get help. No one should be so invested in a video game.

    Conveniently ignorning the issue of them being thieves and attacking the virtual and material property of others. How fitting.

  • fazedjb

    Posted Aug 23, 2008 9:26 pm PT

    I play WoW and gold farmers and power leveling is just a way to cheat imo, Players should earn thier gear/gold/levels not just pay for it.

  • prolerproler

    Posted Aug 23, 2008 9:09 pm PT

    They should let me handle the economy of video games. I work for the Federal Reserve and I am an expert at manipulating economies to maximize productivity (in this case people playing games) by minimizing the amount of wealth the majority of the population has. Its all very simple.

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