Gold farmers top the 500k mark worldwide
We all knew it was a big problem, but gold farming has reached record proportions, despite the constant enforcement by game developers. In a recent study by the UK's Manchester University, nearly 500,000 people in developing countries now earn their living by farming for virtual gold, with 80% of this industry centered in China.
Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group at Manchester and author of this report, says that gold farming has gone from a cottage industry to a significant economic sector in many developing nations. In fact, the industry has seeped into criminal gang territory with credit card fraud and violent crime being introduced to the mix. Yet despite this illegal activity, we get a nice summary quote from Steven Davis, the chief of game security firm Secure Play: "You could get rid of it, but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."
