Report: Gold Farming a $500 Million Industry
Report: Gold Farming a $500 Million Industry
August 24, 2008
The BBC reports that gold farming, a practice much despised by some MMO gamers, is a $500 million global business, employing a half-million people.
Citing research conducted by Prof. Richard Heeks of Manchester University, the BBC reports that 80% of worldwide gold farming is based in China. Workers there earn about $145 per month for their efforts. Said Heeks:
I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry. In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands... I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it's a significant phenomenon that academics and development organisations are unaware of...
It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld. Or at least the edges of a digital underworld populated by scammers and hackers and pornographers and which has spread to the "Third World" far more than we typically realise.
Heeks maintains that the worldwide gold farming business has already surpassed the annual revenue of India's booming software outsourcing market:
Meanwhile, Secure Play exec Steven Davis doesn't expect an end to gold farming anytime soon:
When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet... You could get rid of it," he said, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction.
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Posted 07/04/09 at 01:18pm
Andrew Eisen: Rodrigo - A fun idea but you might want to fix the typos.
Andrew Eisen: Rodrigo - A fun idea but you might want to fix the typos.
Posted 07/04/09 at 12:57pm
GRIZZAM PRIME: Happy 4th of July!
GRIZZAM PRIME: Happy 4th of July!
Posted 07/04/09 at 12:44pm
Yuuri: Happy Blow Crap Up Day!
Yuuri: Happy Blow Crap Up Day!
Posted 07/04/09 at 11:09am
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: I designed this shirt for Jack debate today: http://i44.tinypic.com/2552t89.jpg
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: I designed this shirt for Jack debate today: http://i44.tinypic.com/2552t89.jpg
Posted 07/04/09 at 11:06am
BearDogg-X: There's a one minute and a half preview of the video game episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! up at http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/home.do
BearDogg-X: There's a one minute and a half preview of the video game episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! up at http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/home.do
Posted 07/04/09 at 10:08am
Arcanagos: Happy 4th all
Arcanagos: Happy 4th all
Posted 07/04/09 at 09:32am
Firebird: Greetings GP community, and HAPPY 4th of JULY!!!
Firebird: Greetings GP community, and HAPPY 4th of JULY!!!
Posted 07/04/09 at 03:48am
Michael Chandra: I missed out on Jack? =(
Michael Chandra: I missed out on Jack? =(
Posted 07/04/09 at 01:52am
Escanor94: hmm, looks like when someone gets banned all their comments are automaticly deleted
Escanor94: hmm, looks like when someone gets banned all their comments are automaticly deleted
Posted 07/03/09 at 11:46pm
Arcanagos: aww, did i miss the JT party? :(
Arcanagos: aww, did i miss the JT party? :(
Posted 07/03/09 at 11:00pm
Leet Gamer Jargon: Where's the recent JT bullcrap? Which comments section has he vomited on? EDIT: Nevermind; it's in the "Radio" thread.
Leet Gamer Jargon: Where's the recent JT bullcrap? Which comments section has he vomited on? EDIT: Nevermind; it's in the "Radio" thread.
Posted 07/03/09 at 09:17pm
BearDogg-X: I wonder what the Metropolitian Moron of Miami said in response to my comment saying that he got a dose of his medicine on the SGC09 Debate thread?
BearDogg-X: I wonder what the Metropolitian Moron of Miami said in response to my comment saying that he got a dose of his medicine on the SGC09 Debate thread?
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:51pm
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He gets offended with a bunch of flowers.
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He gets offended with a bunch of flowers.
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:49pm
GoodRobotUs: LOL He takes offence at the fact he might have *chosen* to be crazy?
GoodRobotUs: LOL He takes offence at the fact he might have *chosen* to be crazy?
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:47pm
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He warned me to get a lawyer after I called him "crazy by his own choice"... that´s libel for him
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: He warned me to get a lawyer after I called him "crazy by his own choice"... that´s libel for him
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:45pm
HilaryDuffGta: "libel" what did he threaten now?
HilaryDuffGta: "libel" what did he threaten now?
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:44pm
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: Was fun to be threatened for "libel" again.
Rodrigo Ybáñez García: Was fun to be threatened for "libel" again.
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:26pm
HilaryDuffGta: hey so what did i miss??? the usual spam of "crap"
HilaryDuffGta: hey so what did i miss??? the usual spam of "crap"
Posted 07/03/09 at 06:15pm
FlakAttack: Jack ruined his chance to have civil debates with us here. Glad you banned him (again).
FlakAttack: Jack ruined his chance to have civil debates with us here. Glad you banned him (again).
Posted 07/03/09 at 04:04pm
Krono: Unexpected is probably the best word to describe it. Particularly as no decent reason is given.
Krono: Unexpected is probably the best word to describe it. Particularly as no decent reason is given.
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Comments
"but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."
does this guy know what he's talking about? I wouldnt call spamming advertisements in major cities, ransacking people's accounts for every last cent, and botting items 24-7 "fundamental player interaction"
and by the way, yes, i hate goldfarmers, FERVENTLY, i have reason to after a friend's account got stolen by one
Have you tried Runescape lately? That MMO used to be pretty cool. Sure, there were farmers and people that used bots, but it was mostly fine. Then, because of the threat of "gold farming," Runescape took away many features that made it so fun. They took away the ability to GIVE OTHER PLAYERS ITEMS. All trades were regulated so I couldn't buy a pick axe from another player without it being in a certain price range. Eventually, they even took out PvP fighting to combat the "gold farmers."
yeah i played RS about 2 years ago, then moved to world of warcraft, a RL friend of mine moved to WoW about a year and a half later because of the exact reason that you describe
That's why the guy talked about how getting rid of gold farmers would detract from the real experience...Fucking Jagex...
meh, that doesnt stop me from hating them >.>
yeah i know there isnt that much they can do, but out of everyone, i think blizzard's done more to stop the goldfarmers , while keeping the game mostly the same. In the last year or so, they blanket banned several thousand accounts caught goldfarming, they sued one of the major goldfarming sites and won (peons4hire, that's why you dont see them around anymore), and they also added a report spam button to catch gold spammers quicker
Yeah, Jagex can't do that, they have to fuck over all of the loyal players (like me). Ah well, I've moved on to better games
Made me wish I hadn't bought a year membership to RS, I did so just before the "Grand Exchange" came out and the "wonderful" trade restrictions were announced. Then the killing of the wilderness, replacing it with stupid PVP mini-games made things even worse. Now they're going to make wilderness like worlds where you can fight all over but with some sort of tweaking to limit real world trading. Their excuse for it was that many of those accounts on the member side were made with stolen credit card numbers and costing them a lot of problems, I guess that's reasonable but I'm sure they could have found a better way to combat the problem than just screwing everyone and the game's economy over.
i would have to agree. this guy was spot on. i could think of ways to make gold farmers suffer withoud completely destroying the rest of the game.
You forgot massive inflation of the game economy.
Not in Runescape (okay I know a lot don't even want to consider it a MMORPG or a game) bots and gold farmers were responsible for keeping prices on many items somewhat low when it came to certain popular materials..
Yeah, now that Jagex literally controls the economy, I'm not sure if inflation can really happen in it...haven't played it in forever though
I don't really care about gold farmers unless they start endlessly spamming the game by typing in advertisements every 5 seconds.
Gold farmers can all go die in a fire. It's not a business, it's not a fundamental part of player interaction, it's a disease. Anyone who can't realize that is an idiot.
All MMO's are diseases. XD
It looks like I see a lawyer in all this... (JT, perhaps?) oh look, i see a huge pile of whale s^@!.... oh look i see a lawyer, HEY THATS MY LAWYER! It's JT, and besides him, that's his friggin' mother!
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson told me to do it!
"It looks like I see a lawyer in all this... (JT, perhaps?) oh look, i see a huge pile of whale s^@!.... oh look i see a lawyer, HEY THATS MY LAWYER! It's JT, and besides him, that's his friggin' mother!
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson told me to do it!"
You, sir, have just won the internet XD
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson... I don't know where I got that one from, but it was classic gold when I was listening to Jesus Jones and reading a JT lie on the 'net :D). I wish I had more jokes to tell as classic as that one. It's like Michael Jackson getting fresh with a idea and a boy!
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson told me to do it!
on a serious note, why don't they have a system like something to detect gold that was illegally counterfeitted or something, you know like something to tell genuine gold from "fool's gold" (as a result from gold farming). you know like write special code that detects genuine gold from gold farmed? i'm just shooting from the hip on that one... ;)
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson told me to do it!
Because they dont actually counterfeit it, they usually earn it in ways that are perfectly legit (unless they scam it or steal it from a hacked account), and sell it online
well.... shoot, I'm out of ammo on that one, you won the internet back!
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson told me to do it!
Sticky situation for those involved with MMOs. It seems anything you do has some negative effects. You could always just sell gold to your fans which could either increase profits or destroy the gameplay experience thusly decreasing profits. You could continue banning users that are selling gold which costs money since you must employ someone to do this for you (And even so, gold farming remains a 500,000,000 dollar industry.) You could attempt to consolidate known gold farmers into your company which would make this money legal, would employ many people but wouldn't make a lick of business sense as you could simply cut out the farming activity and sell to the users directly. Perhaps instead of buying said gold farming companies you could simply partner with them to share profits which would again still have a negative impact on the gameplay (But would likely increase the quality of life for the workers at these gold farming businesses). Finally you could do nothing and their profits will increase and that will result in a greater negative impact on gameplay (Which might in turn negatively effect their business as well) .
Kind of a messed up situation. I'd just stick to the current method of banning users for violating the terms of service agreement and perhaps persuing legal action when and where it is possible. It would take a vast amount of creativity to fix this situation. Even in Virtual World Economics you have crooked business.
Anthrax - Gold Farming is a business. If you know how this gold is earned and distributed you do know it operates somewhat like a business. A dirty and illegal business, but still a business. I see crack dealers as a disease to society but technically they are salesmen working in the crack cocaine industry.
damned if you do, damned if you don't. the way i see it is your basically up s%^#!'s creak with out a ore. MMO's are a fun, but DAMN is it hard to maintain! thats why i cancelled my WoW account and made all those green things cry (i didn't play the game for very long so you can start spamming me about what those green things are...).
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson told me to do it!
*clears throat*
Orcs.
As for maintaining MMO accounts, I agree. I used to play Guild Wars for a while until I realised it took a major amount of time to properly maintain, manage and improve. So I switched to the FPS. And I never regretted it ^_^
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XBOX LIVE GamerTag: Harry Miste | Steam ID: Harry Miste | PSN ID: HMiste | EYE. HAVE. YOU.
ahh, Orcs, huh? Oh well... Two, I like your tastes in games... I hope everytime you frag somebody in a FPS, you crap in JT's mouth (I don't hate JT, I just detest him... thats all ;) ) I play too much condemned 2, i wish that game was more controversial than GTA 4. as for the Orcs... i was once a shaman, and people over at WoW always seemed like they gathered herbs... not WoW herbs i'm just talking about too! get it?! oh hell, i did it too! but since i gave up herbial-hydrates, i couldn't tolerate friggin' WoW drug free! honestly, i don't think anybody could with out it! (the Orcish herd at least, i didn't know ONE Orc that didn't smoke :D, but i don't advocate drug use, it ruins people's lives... like those FFXI people that tried to whack the final boss for 17 hours and could not get the job done)
Jesus Jack Jones Thompson told me to do it!
Add more risk to a game. If the 100$ worth of in game money you purchased could be stolen from you, or the items you purchased with it could be destroyed, it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
Um... Yeah, like that's going to fix anything.
The only thing that it would do is lowering the amount of people playing the said MMO, thus reduces the company income, something most companies would not do without a good reason; and gold farming is not a good reason to screw up their income. It's completely legit in most cases, and it keeps people playing.
I don't think that would work. I mean think about it: you spend countless hours grinding, questing and otherwise sinking time into an MMO for that <a href=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InfinityPlusOneSword>Infinity Plus One Sword</a> You're going to want to keep that. If all that hard work can just up an vanish because some random item destroying mob got lucky? Who'd put up with that? Playes would likely leave in droves for a game that doesn't do that.
Have you ever played Eve-Online before?
The exact game I was thinking of. Still not enough risk though.
Eve online is a small, sucessful, and constantly growing MMO. When you die, you lose your ship, your modules, your implants, and if you are an idiot, your skill points.
The loss of a ship can inflict anywhere from a few million, to a few billion in in game money. An average player can make 20 to 30 million an hour when played activly.
Most people when fighting only fly with the equivilant of wow greens and grays, and the occasional blue. People fly what they can afford to lose and they don't throw their ships away lightly. All in all a much more entertaining and in the end more rewarding form of player vs player combat.
People don't leave in drove, they thrive on it.
Though keep in mind, a casual player (as opposed to a well equiped hardcore L4 farmer or null sec miner) pulls in closer to 50M/month
EvE also has the problem that while there is lots of PvP, the majority of the population actually avoids it as much as they can. The cost is a little too high for many people (esp in terms of loosing learning implants)
Which is why I don't considere EVE online in my argument. I know of it, but it doesn't sound like much of a solution from what I've heard: People avoid the main part of the game? The risk makes high-end content useless? I could go into what I've heard of the gameplay as a possible third problem, but open PVP is one flame war I don't want to get into so let's not go there.
I'll admit people might like that sort of thing. I'll even admit it could help solve the gold farming problem. But look at what you take on in return. Trading One problem for two is a bit of a rough deal, don't you think?
I think people tend to overlook the big problem with MMORPGs that gold farming kinda covers up.
If you are willing to pay real money to get around playing integral parts of the game (i.e. the gold/ISK grind) then it is the game designers that have done something wrong.
Gold farmers exist due to game design flaws. Not weakness in players, not weakness in enforcement, not greed,.. they exist because the games have grind where you have to do something unpleasent in order to get to the fun content.
No, man, Gold farmers do not exist because of design flaws. Gold farmers exist because of lazy people. That is the end of it. If you're too lazy to farm your own gold that you'll pay someone else to do it, you're playing the wrong game.
Hear hear, I just got my 5200 gold epic flying mount in WoW the honest way: farming, and i'm quite possibly one of the least patient people around, if I can do it, anyone can
Bah, come play on a private server, get it the easy way :)
Lazy? perhaps. But the work/reward system is what I am attacking.
yes, put in 80 hours and you get the widget you want, and if someone else pays money for it that is game breaking. But on the other hand, what was that 80 hours? Why is one rewarded for doing 80 hours of boring repeditive 'gameplay' a good thing?
Yes we humans get a sense of accomplishment when you get rewarded for suffering, but that doesn't make it a good design. A game that actually _works_ will have people who actually want to play those 80 hours because they enjoy the game and PLAY for that time.. not because it is the price to pay for getting the sword of "I played a long time"
If grinding is common then your work/reward system is out of wack. It could also mean that equipment is too expensive. It could also mean that your gameplay is too difficult. It could mean that your game is to reliant upon upgrading your characters equipment/level. It could mean that the gameplay actually sucks, but people think if they get better equipment that it will somehow improve the quality of gameplay.
If a player can play a game in a way that is destructable to the experience of everyone then I think that is a design flaw. This isn't something that many predicted would get so out of hand but it happened.
Granted it is a complex problem in terms of game design. So you are making an MMO and you want there to be an economic system in which players can exchange items and money with one another. It is a good idea because it richens the gameplay experience and gives the players an additional reason to interact with one another. However, they also created a game that has a very strong competitive nature, especially on PVP servers. Most players want to have the best equipment so that you can be efficient in battle. Using WoW as an example, they have created a game in which is extremely competitive in terms of who has the best equipment and they also have a economic system in which players can trade items and money in a fairly open manner. Now it is so competitive that it drove WoW's economy to really boom. This causes more competition in the game's economy so people begin digging into their pockets to get an edge on everyone else that is trading in the game. Where is the design flaw? Part of it is the game's economy in my opinion. It is obviously a design flaw because people are using the game's economic system in a way that is destructive to the experience of everyone. Free Markets work in real life, but not in MMORPGs. People will find a way to manipulate it for their own personal gain and in this case they are benefiting for gain outside of the gameplay experience. In the future I expect Economic systems in MMOs to be more regulated and less open. People will surely find one way or another to get around it but hopefully you will be able to be sure all of these manipulations will be kept in-game.
Perhaps some of it is also the fact you are somewhat reliant upon your equipment being good. Now I'll argue against WoW being simply a "point and click" experience in terms of gameplay (If you argue that you could argue all games non-Wii console games are a "push a button" experience). But I will support the notion that if perhaps more success was derived off of reaction skill rather than tactical use of equipment then some of the problem would go away. However, I think most of the blame could be placed upon the economic system and it's lack of regulation (You'll never hear me say that about real-life economics btw..)
Now that I think about it, Virtual Socialism might be part of the solution.... Goes against so many of my beliefs...
Wildlife regulation might be another solution. Player can only kill X amount of certain creatures before they are fined.
Screw it, you might just have to put a governing body in place to control these things.
On a related-but-not-at-all-serious note, have you heard about the greatest gold farmer of all time? His character name is MichaelPhelps.
Okay, so I couldn't resist showing that.
Clever. It got a laugh out of me. I think Michael Phelps jokes might be a refreshing break from Chuck Norris jokes.
Micheal Phelps has swam to infinity. Twice.
lol, Phelps IS the new Chuck Norris.
Why did I think of Fred Thelps when I saw that?
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XBOX LIVE GamerTag: Harry Miste | Steam ID: Harry Miste | PSN ID: HMiste | EYE. HAVE. YOU.
I suddenly feel like making a druid named MichaelPhelps and lvling to get aquatic form.
Old news. A big groweing industry in China seen as a legitimate wway to make enough money to feed your family; gold farming & level-grinding. Who does it hurt? Strictly MMORPG companies who have free-to-play games with in-game content you have to pay for. The latter hurts no one, but annoys people who grind the old fashioned way & hate cheating.
I sell cocain to feed my family. Does that make me a good guy?
And yet I still can't find more than two people at once willing to help me grind out some Burnout Paradise challenges.
It's an obscenely thorny system. If I felt like going out into the ether, gathering up some items, then returning to a player hub to sell them on to someone else, I'm playing the game. If I ask someone to go out into the ether and gather some items for me in exchange for something they want, I'm working in a team. If I make an uneven trade with a friend because we know each other offline, I'm being sociable. If I do it too often though, or do it for something outside of the game with someone I don't know - a situation entirely undetectable by the game - then I'm gold farming.
Solution - Separate regional servers. Completely cut off access from asia and there would be no cheap labor to do it.
except asia is the largest market for MMOs...
Right, cause there's absolutely no way they'd piss off all the legit asian players.
"Sorry, but because some people in your country are doing bad things, we have to move you to a separate server."
Sounds like the old World War "round up all the asians just incase" camps to me....
It needs to be regulated better, offer farming accounts that have certain limits on them (how much funds can be transferred a month,ect) these accounts would cost alil more than half normal and need a business address ect to get, forcing them to have 2-3X as many paid accounts this meant for tacking and regulation purposes.
Now from there you can build a script to kick ban IPs that spam out ,out of region for sale posts or try and transfer large sums of funds without a GM/mods ok, normal players that get spam heavy with for sale and such will get kicked from the server less frequently, kick bans can last for a max of 30 minutes, its rather simple what’s going on the developers are not dealing with the issues and the publishers are not paying out enough to have paid staff policing the games, if you do not step up you have to provide better ways for people to do what they are doing within better rule sets elast you get swarmed by things out of your control..
I is fuzzy brained mew =^^=
http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/
(in need of a bad overhaul)
Gold farmer scum. They all need to be locked up.
Yeah, we need punish all those poor bastards in sweatshops barely making ends meet.
Here's the solution...
Have all the workers making that paltry $145/month come over here to the States and start working in fast food restaurants. No more gold farmers plus cheap labor...give them folks $5/hour and they will think that they just hit the lottery
thats pretty sad...
I raised the question on my blog: to what extent is the game design culpable for gold farming?
Personally i dont have a problem with Gold Farming, Gold Buying, Gold selling, etc. I do have a problem with spammers ingame though. They got really bad in EQ2 for the while that i played it. The people that get paid to advertise gold with a special "discount code" (tracking code for comisions) are the ones that annoy most players.
A system to automatically parse the chat log, report the offender, and summarily delete the account if it's a trial account, or suspend the account if it's not, would clean up a LOT of the problems.
I want to $500 million...:)
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karınca yağı - karınca yumurtası - karınca yumurtası yağı
Gallagher can araç kiralama say all he wants, but I strongly rent a car believe it's due to his crappy leadership and E3 being a joke. ESA's Board of Directors need to find a way to get out rent a car of this horrid contract with this Bush cronie before there's no one left on the Board.
Btw, I think Atari and Midway will drop out too, but mostly travesti because these guys have done nothing ttnet vitamin or little and need to start saving costs.