Details on the "gold-farming" industry...

[Goronmon]

Ever wonder how much these companies make or how much the actual employees are paid? 1UP.com (http://www.1UP.com) has the story (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815)

Smooth Criminal's game cartel made $1.5 million from Star Wars Galaxies alone last year, and individually, he's made as much as $700,000 in a single year.

As bad as it seems, you have to wonder if the people working for these companies aren't better off farming for items than what they might be doing for work otherwise

[Heretic Machine]

More power to them...

[NACIONAL]

i'm not fond of MMO Games, but i never thought that tose things could be so profitable...

[Heretic Machine]

That wasn't an invitation to spam your gold farming sales... -.-

[Himsa II]

WHAT?!?!?! You mean people are whipped because they mine enough gold in the virtual?!?! Someone needs to revolt and throw the computer at the slavemaster or sumthin......damn.

[EDIT]it doesnt make sense because of my 1337 typing skillz, but Im too lazy to edit this rediculously long post. Im just too damn lazy.

[Crabby]

As bad as it seems, drug dealers may actually be making more money than if they found legitimate work.

I don't think it has ever been a question of economics rather than a question of ethics. At least in my view. Taking something with such pure beginnings as gaming and wringing the life out of it through personal financial profit doesn't sit well with me.

However, I think one balances on an even thinner thread when identifying the white to black between the actual farmer, the wholesaler, and the guy who buys the stuff (creating the market to begin with). Should that end consumer be stricken of his "gaming license" for corrupting the medium with greed? Maybe.


Someone go quickly and poke that guy above with a hot metal stick.

[EternalGamer]

I can't believe this many gamers are so damn lazy or instant gratification oriented that there can be multi-million dollar industries based people playing games to earn rewards <i>for</i> others. Are we are so damn lazy and spoiled that even our entertainment is too much "work" for us?

Perigon, I can agree with your sentiment, but these conditions to me seem only minimally better than those of sweat shop labor, which I have taken a much more agressive role recently in attempting to avoid supporting. It is not really empowering the people in these countries, since their ability to streamline this process is based on expensively built prescripted programs. These workers are being exploited by the people who have the capital to build these programs the same as any other corporation would exploit them to gain unethically large profit margins on their backs.

It apparently isn't enough that we have to rely on sweat shop industries to supply us with basic goods in our society, we now have created a demand for sweatshop entertainment. Unbelievable.

Dan

[netcraazzy]

My primary issue with gold farmers is that their gold sales often mess up the in game economy. Rare items become prohibitively expensive which in turn forces people to buy currency in order to be able to get the rare items and the cycle of item inflation goes on and on. 2nd, they often spawn camp monsters ruining legitimate player's chances of completing related quests or having the chance to go up against those monsters. Overall I'm against gold farmers and I think the industy that they operate in is very shady.

[Heretic Machine]

Well, think of it this way. For the most part in MMO's, you really don't need a lot of money to get by. But then there are these really big goals that are many times set at such a high price that it really isn't fun to get them. For an example of this, look at the mounts in WoW. 90g at lvl 40 is quite a bit, and many people would rather just pay $40 on eBay for 1mil in gold rather than spend thirty or so hours on grinding to get that mount.

Then there is player housing, which is almost always unrealistically expensive (with the exception of SWG). Many times this goes to the point that only guilds with 100+ members will be able to buy houses. If player housing was ever introduced to WoW, you better believe I would just buy the gold on eBay rather than spending weeks grinding for the money.

In conclusion, I think that MMO's have an inherent flaw that causes the gold market to exist. For these big goals to mean anything, they have to be hard to get, but at the same time players don't want to work in the game as if it were a job just to achieve these big goals. That's reasonable, especially in the case of casual players. But without the difficulty in achieving these goals, they become meaningless. Look at SWG, where I had a house and a vehicle within about four days of playing. Or CoH, where the only rewards that are comparable to this are entirely based on your level, meaning that all you have to do to get a cape really is achieve lvl 20.

There are many theories on how to eliminate this problem, but they would all result in very non-traditional games that would likely turn off a large part of the audience, which is a very bad thing for MMO's. Right now there is a post on the forums which mentions an MMO called Seed, which is very non-traditional in nature in that it has no combat system. Sounds neat to me, but will it have enough of a player base to keep it floating? I doubt it.

[rein]

IMO, the demand for gold farmers is placed on the blame of the companies that make games requiring someone to camp a spawn for days on end, or run through an instance 5000 x to get some stupid item.

I would like to see an mmorpg that instead of having one (or few) uber rare items available, they would have many items to chose from with similar stats or abilities. I think this would allow for more diversity and much less spawn camping. Really, does anyone have fun running an instance hundreds of times?

I want more pvp and story driven content to drive the game not the waste of time to get an item.

*** edited to make more sense after perigon's post.

[Goronmon]

For an example of this, look at the mounts in WoW. 90g at lvl 40 is quite a bit, and many people would rather just pay $40 on eBay for 1mil in gold rather than spend thirty or so hours on grinding to get that mount.
The problem is the player's attitude towards "minimum level" requirements. You'd think by player's reactions, that level 40 would be the only level that you could get a mount. Its just meant to keep people from twinking lower level players with mounts.

I mean, if there was no level restriction this would be a non-issue as gamers would just get it at whatever level they could acquire 90 gold.

[dr_wily]

damn why didnt i think of that first..
im all for people trying to make a career outta videogames no matter how shady.

[Deadend]

I don't like it, people selling items in these games destroy the world of the game, by making it like the real world, where the rich kid always has the best stuff.

Remember when MMOs first started?
The people with the good items were those with too much time on their hands and skill, now people can get ahead just by paying money.

Maybe if the fun in the game wasn't being lv 60, but the journey to level 60, which isn't the case, as everything has a marker out front saying "You gotta be this level to ride" so the entire goal of the game is to be the next level.

I want a game that is monitored to stop the sellers. It would be easy, set a auto-notice tag on anyone who grinds an area for a long time, or if a large value of game money/currency change hands, but without any payment, then research should be done, and if it was a out of game trade, ban them.

[Librum]

From the standpoint of the MMORPG game companies, as stated in their EULAs and TOSes, anything sales related is enough to get you booted and banned.

I'm guessing the only reason that said companies don't bring legal action against these farming companies is the expense of litigation versus what they would recover. It's far easier to just can the violating players when they are caught.

Though I'm sure when you get into the realm of millions of dollars of profit made from selling content that isn't theirs to sell, you may eventually see some sort of legal action taken. Either that, or they've decided that the 'black market' is really the best free advertising they could hope for and will leave it in place, while still punishing the violators.

[Ernst_Jager]

I hope all gold/item farmers enjoy the inner circle of hell to which they belong.

Ruins the game for the rest of us.

[netcraazzy]

Well, think of it this way. For the most part in MMO's, you really don't need a lot of money to get by. But then there are these really big goals that are many times set at such a high price that it really isn't fun to get them. For an example of this, look at the mounts in WoW. 90g at lvl 40 is quite a bit, and many people would rather just pay $40 on eBay for 1mil in gold rather than spend thirty or so hours on grinding to get that mount.


While I agree that there are always some goals in MMOs that are very hard to achieve I happen to like earning my reward. The problem is that people put more value in the item than they do in playing the game to get it. I enjoy doing long quests with elaborate storylines to earn a reward, if I just paid some guy $30 for the final reward I'd feel like I had paid the guy to play the game for me.

[PixelSamurai]

This article really puts MMO's into perspective. Decent games completely padded with boring timesinks to extend the life of the game, not necissarily the fun of the game. All at the expense of the monthly-fee paying customer, who then to avoid the timesinks, spends even more money and funds an entire industry that "works" inside the "game." I think it's time for me quit this genre.

Oh, plus, some assholes here in the USA are making bank off this while the people they are exploiting make "comparable" dirt wages over seas. Legal or not, these guys are pricks.

[kickmybum]

If anyone has the programming know how to sniff mmo packets and create decent leveling bots, I know for a fact that they'll be pretty wealthy.

[Heretic Machine]

It would be easy, set a auto-notice tag on anyone who grinds an area for a long time

How does that stop sellers? As I stated above, even if you don't intend on selling the gold, you still need huge amounts of it to achieve many goals. Hence the gold market.

While I agree that there are always some goals in MMOs that are very hard to achieve I happen to like earning my reward. The problem is that people put more value in the item than they do in playing the game to get it. I enjoy doing long quests with elaborate storylines to earn a reward, if I just paid some guy $30 for the final reward I'd feel like I had paid the guy to play the game for me.

What about the casual gamer who only plays a few hours a day? Is he supposed to spend his gaming time grinding for a few weeks? That just doesn't work out to enjoyment.

In my opinion, if you are having fun in a game whether it be by doing things yourself or by paying people to get you ahead, then that's fine by me. Gold selling has never had a noticable effect on any MMO market as only a few people who play the games are willing to pay for such things. Most of the time when people complain about someone buying gold they say somthing along the lines of "I had to work hard for my mount/house/whatever!" Which furthers the justification for the the gold market.

[Heretic Machine]

Oh, plus, some assholes here in the USA are making bank off this while the people they are exploiting make "comparable" dirt wages over seas. Legal or not, these guys are pricks.

They are happy to have those dirt wages, because in their country it's much better than the alternative. You want to do somthing about that? Then join the ONE campaign or somthing like that which is equally useless. It's not the Gold Seller's fault.

[EternalGamer]

Economic and political pressure is the only thing that will change labor conditions in third world countries regardless of the type of its manifestation. It certainly is not the gold seller's fault they are being exploited, but it is partially the consumers fault who makes the conscious decision to benefit from that exploitation. Only purchasing products from companies who pay employees humane wages (which I know is relative to the local economies), is one way to start helping change things for those workers rather than helping to financially support exploitation. This does not mean we demand they pay them all $20 an hour, it does mean we demand they pay them more than the 0.3% of the final market value of the product they are producing (ie. Nike).

Dan

[Goronmon]

Are the workers even being exploited in relation to wages/work that they would normally be doing in their country? Or is just in relation to the amount of money being brought in?

[XenonCJ]

This may be a dumb question, but still I wonder, do these gold farmers (the worker drones or the people that run the show) ever sneak some play in for fun? Or is it all just totally ruined for them?

[Paltry]

Everyone is talking about ruining the game economy. Christ get your priorities straight these are sweatshops. Supporting these farmers online is almost as bad as.... buying..... oh yeah any clothing sold in america.

*edited because i smart be not

[Heretic Machine]

Everyone is talking about ruining the game economy. Christ get your priorities straight these are sweatshops. Supporting these farmers online is almost as bad as.... buying..... oh yeah any clothing sold in america.

*edited because i smart be not

Ya, we should stop buying from sweatshops so these people will lose their crappy jobs and starve to death. Down with the man!

[Kelegacy]

MMO extremes: You get rich by playing a videogame in your underwear or you go into rehab because you play too much. Or maybe you lose your job or spend every free minute glued to your "Glorified Chat Room" MMORPG. Thoughts of vagina crumble.

I'm glad I havent been sucked into this genre. I'd be one of those guys on the street that is willing to give handjobs for a 5-day online pass.

[Paltry]

i was being sarcastic my man

[EternalGamer]

Ya, we should stop buying from sweatshops so these people will lose their crappy jobs and starve to death. Down with the man!

No, we should stop buying from sweatshops so companies will begin to pay the employees in these countries a humane wage, which they most certainly can afford to do. Nike, for example pays some of its third world labor $.08 cents to make shoes that sell for $60+ dollars. If they even paid them one-fifth of what first world country labor makes, the people there would be tremendously better off and the companies would still be making a larger profits for being there. If there is enough social pressure and economic responsibility things can change. Accepting the status quo doesn't do anything but give you a convienent excuse to not be an ethically responsible consumer. If corporations begin to get the message that consumers will not put up with unethical labor conditions no matter where they are located, perhaps we can begin to close rather than continually widen the economic gap, a gap that will (sooner or later) lead to very unstable societies for everyone. Preventing those instabilities is to everyones benefit.

I understand this may be viewed as idealistic, but one does what one can. To not do so is, in my opinion, to be complicit in creating the situitions you supposedly repudiate.

Dan

[IagoTheHunted]

A virtual economy endangering a realworld economy (via the process of useing resources to make and sell... lets see... absolutely nothing). Lovely.

[Paltry]

maybe i wasnt

[Heretic Machine]

No, we should stop buying from sweatshops so companies will begin to pay the employees in these countries a humane wage, which they most certainly can afford to do.

Or maybe these workers can take responsibility for their own lives, and start a union like every other group of workers in every other nation in the world had to do to get a decent wage. I don't think -my- apathy towards their lives should be an issue.

[Draft]

MMO extremes: You get rich by playing a videogame in your underwear or you go into rehab because you play too much. Or maybe you lose your job or spend every free minute glued to your "Glorified Chat Room" MMORPG. Thoughts of vagina crumble.

I'm glad I havent been sucked into this genre. I'd be one of those guys on the street that is willing to give handjobs for a 5-day online pass.Im fully confident that Kelegacy will make a comment in a MMO topic that DOESNT involve vagina.

One day...

[Rommel]

Excellent article. it ran in this month's copy of Computer Gaming.

[EternalGamer]

They are starving. You want them to form unions? The globalized economy has made unions almost powerless even in "first" world economies (thus the current potential split in U.S labor unions). Even if that were a feasible option, the companies would just ditch them and go somewhere else even if they did form unions AS LONG AS, and this is key, consumers are apathetic to these conditions. If you are buying cheap sweatshop labor products, you are creating the demand and your economic dollar unfortunately speaks immensely louder than all the impoverished voices in "third" world countries.

Ethical, social, and political power is dwarfed by corporate power. The only source of empowerment left to the individual in a world of global capitalism is consumer power. These people have none. I believe it is a moral imperative for those of us who do have it to at least use it responsibly.

Dan

[Kelegacy]

Im fully confident that Kelegacy will make a comment in a MMO topic that DOESNT involve vagina.

One day...

I cant form a single solitary thought that doesnt involve vagina. What makes you think I'm capable of a post without a vagrant vagina reference?

[Adewade]

Erm...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/Adewade/EvilFunny.jpg

[Plac1d]

That is priceless.

Here we are, bitching about the morale fault of Asian mmorpg sweatshops, when EvilAvatar is recieving endorsements from the very same company in turn for advertisment space.

[Paltry]

is it just me or is computer gaming monthly the only decent video game magazine

[Kelegacy]

is it just me or is computer gaming monthly the only decent video game magazine

it is you.

[51|RandoM]

People still buy video game magazines? I guess if you're a console person with no 'net access, it makes sense, otherwise, I just can't see the point.

[Heretic Machine]

People still buy video game magazines? I guess if you're a console person with no 'net access, it makes sense, otherwise, I just can't see the point.

Computer Gaming Monthly has subscriptions given away with just about anything... I had like three subs to it at one time, didn't pay for any of them, didn't really ask for any of them.

[Paltry]

computer gaming monthly used to be strategy plus right? way back when

[ElectricMonk]

If a single guy makes that much money, why dosen't sony just offer gold etc for purchase off their own webpage? It'd be a great way for them to make more money.

[Chiron]

If a single guy makes that much money, why dosen't sony just offer gold etc for purchase off their own webpage? It'd be a great way for them to make more money.

Wasn't Sony attempting to do that with EQ2?

[Crabby]

It is called the Sony Exchange and it will only be applicable on designated "Exchange" servers that they are going to be bringing up soon.

While they claim that the service is only going to act as a mediary between player trading, there is nothing stopping them from fabricating gold, characters, or items to sell.