Game sweatshop

A game sweatshop is a business concerned with making and selling accounts and in-game currency on MMORPGs for real-world money. The term can also refer to a building containing computers installed with MMORPGs (e.g. RuneScape, World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc.), which generate money for the business. Laborers work on the computers to either collect in-game currency (known as gold farming) or to generate high-level characters (known as power-leveling). Organizations run like this are referred to as sweatshops because the gold farmers are usually paid very low wages.

Problems with sweatshops

While the MMORPG community is growing rapidly, another sector of the gaming industry is the online game merchandise industry. The practice of paying real money for accounts or money in-game is largely discouraged by many games, such as RuneScape, which prohibits this sort of activity. One reason is that buying accounts/money is considered by many to be against the spirit of the game; one can work for thousands and thousands of hours to achieve high levels and obtain gold, but another person can just buy gold or items without actually achieving anything. Another reason is the risk. When a person buys in-game currency online, there is no guarantee that they will receive their purchase; unlike in real life, online games have no way of making somebody come through with their trade, particularly because most games prohibit such transactions in the terms of service, eliminating the possibility of third party enforcement of the terms of the transaction. This, of course, applies to any on-line purchase, and many off-line purchases as well. Whilst discouraged in these games it is almost impossible to stop.

Effects on MMORPGs

Game sweatshops greatly affect the economies of MMORPGs. The reason such systems are able to persist is largely due to their cyclic nature. Players pay real money to buy in-game currency. They then use this currency to buy items from exactly the same people they just bought the currency from. An example of this is RuneScape. Around late 2006 to early 2007, there was a great increase of sweatshops that sold RuneScape currency. The laborers in these sweatshops work repetitively, which brings in a massive inflow of products into the economy. Following the laws of supply and demand, prices of specific items greatly decreased, while others increased. According to information released on the RuneScape website, they confiscated over 525 billion gold pieces to date in 2007, which has a real world value of over 2.6 million US dollars.

In contrast, player-groups in the MMORPG community who are opposed to what they call the 'secondary market' hold the view that "players with large bank accounts simply buy their way to the top, it ruins that element of the game for everyone else." Further player-groups are now taking legal action against purveyors of this secondary market outside the game. This has taken the form of a class action lawsuit against IGE initiated by longtime World of Warcraft player Antonio Hernandez. The game-maker, Blizzard commented recently upon this suit saying "Blizzard Entertainment strongly supports the goals of this lawsuit. We agree that real-money transfer is harmful to the game as a whole and to the experience of all legitimate players" showing such player-groups do have support within the MMO Industry against secondary market distributors.

In December 2007, a series of updates regarding player to player trade, dropped items, and the mechanics of items being dropped after a characters death were introduced into RuneScape. The dropped item changes took place immediately on the announcement of the update, while the trade changes took place in two stages. The first stage applied the trade limits to new or recently created accounts, while in January the trades were extended to all players. These changes were intended to make RuneScape the first MMORPG where it will be virtually impossible for gold farmers to trade their gold in game.

This led to a very strong response from players, causing a sizeable amount of vocal players to leave the game. However, as Jagex stated on the RuneScape website, without immediate action, the gold selling market would have become far too massive for them to continue to fight. In their view, this would have ultimately lead to the demise of the game.

See also

• Gold farming

External links

• Wage Slaves: From sweatshops to stateside corporations, some people are profiting off of MMO gold. - This article was written in 2005
• Chinese Gold Farmers in the Game World - by Ge Jin Consumer Studies Research Network - University of California, San Diego.
• Virtual Goods, Hard Cash: The Seedy, Startling World of Virtual Economies - FreeTimes: Columbia's Free Weekly
• FROM MEGS TO RICHES - FORTUNE Magazine: CNNMoney.com
• Real Sweat Shops, Virtual Gold - 3QuarksDaily : Atelier
• VIRTUAL PROPERTY: PROTECTING BITS IN CONTEXT - Richmond University, Australia: Richmond Journal of Law & Technology