Tech | May 26, 2011 | 21 comments

Chinese prisoners forced into WoW "goldmining" scheme, says detainee

source: http://www.betanews.com/article/Chinese-prisoners-forced-into-WoW-goldmining-scheme-says-det...

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Vierotchka
In what could be considered the most modern form of prisoner torture know, prisoners in a labor camp in northeastern China have allegedly been forced to play MMORPG's like World of Warcraft in an elaborate scheme said to net prison bosses approximately $800 to $900 per day.

A former prisoner who identified himself as "Liu Dali" told the Guardian that guards forced prisoners to work 12-hour shifts on a procedure commonly referred to as "gold mining." The process essentially requires long hours of playing the game to build up credits, which are then in turn sold for real money.

Prisoners did not see any of the money they made for their bosses, he told the publication.

(read all about it at link)
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    Community,   News and Politics,   Entertainment,   Tech,   14 more
  2. tags:
    China,  Torture,  International News,  Prison,  5 more
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21 comments // Chinese prisoners forced into WoW "goldmining" scheme, says detainee

  • remanns
  • idealist
  • remanns
  • samthesixth
    • 0
      samthesixth  

    • Great post V. Years ago I read an article about people selling characters and specific items to other people for real currency. Is that type of selling happening in this case as well? If it is I would suppose that would make identifying those doing the "gold for profit" activity harder?

    • 1 year ago
  • Vierotchka
  • samthesixth
  • remanns
    • +1
      remanns  
    • Image

    • MORE background on this - - -
      " World of Warcraft: The Economy and You "

      The World of Warcraft economy is a virtual economy within the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG or simply MMO), World of Warcraft. Its fundamental unit of currency is nominally the gold piece, though we'll get into that below. As a player, there are many things that you should know about the economy. First and foremost is the fact that it's actually fairly stable for a virtual economy. This is an important feature in any market that you want to interact with for profit, and it has long been an assumption on the part of people like myself that such conditions would not exist within a video game market, especially when measured across multiple disconnected segments of the economy (e.g. faction and realm).

      This article will seek to analyze the results of the work that the author put in to create Wowstreet, a pricing history and database site for World of Warcraft. The lessons learned there will likely help all players to more productively interact with the economy.

      LINK - - -
      http://www.ajs.com/ajswiki/World_of_Warcraft:_The_Economy_and_You

    • 1 year ago
  • Varex_Sythe
    • +2
      Varex_Sythe  

    • The problem is that there really is no way that Blizzard can track cash transactions outside of their game, which is how gold is purchased, and large sums of gold, in game, can't simply be stopped because often enough people are sending gold to their lower characters or to a friends character. About the only way either party ever gets caught these days is if a gold farmer advertises their "business" by sending tells on a new character, created specifically for that purpose, and is immediately reported by the person they tried to sell to.

      Honestly, the best solution for this is for Blizzard to get into the gold selling business and outcompete gold farmers on price. It will make players who buy farmed gold happy and will prevent them from supporting slave, or slave like, labor and it is much more likely that these players will buy gold from a legitimate source than a illegitimate one.

    • 1 year ago
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • remanns
    • +1
      remanns  

    • Hmmmmmmm . . . .I somehow suspect that doing "hard WoW time" is NOT the worst that happens in Chinese prisons. When I think "Chinese Prison", my mind tends to conjure images of rice planting, the classic "rock breaking",... tunnel digging, industrial toxin concoction, munitions manufacture, discount orgy porn, and creative beatings classes. ( and someone has to add the chalk and pesticides to the dehydrated babys milk exports. )Just sayin.

      Still,.....only WoW fans should have to play. Paying MONEY for game trinkets IS weird though.

      p.s. - - - this sort of thing can be turned around the OTHER way to be abusive !

      "Dungeons & Dragons: A Threat to Prison Security"

      LINK- - -( c u r r e n t post )
      http://current.com/news/92940668_dungeons-dragons-a-threat-to-prison-security.ht...

    • 1 year ago
  • Mark701
    • +1
      Mark701  

    • Blizzards response to this should be to aggressively go after players who buy fake gold with real money. If it's discovered you have bought gold, you should be banned from the game. Blizzard can write a program tracking the number of consecutive hours played by a player then examine those accounts to see where their gold is going. If it's not kept in the game via in game transactions then the accounts should be banned.

    • 1 year ago
  • Vierotchka
  • Vierotchka
    • 0
      Vierotchka  
    • Mark701:

      More to the point, they should aggressively go after players who sell fake gold for real money, don't you think? I'm emailing the link to that article and your comment to my friend, perhaps he can do something about it by contacting the people to whom he sold Blizzard.

    • 1 year ago
  • remanns
  • Mark701
    • 0
      Mark701  
    • Vierotchka:

      I agree. That's what I was driving at when I indicated they should track accounts where players are always seem to be online for unusually long periods of time. Those would be the Chinese "farmers". In essence Blizzard should go after the buyers AND sellers of fake gold. Unfortunately there's a problem. They already know people are doing this but are reluctant to ban the accounts because it's their bread and butter. So unless people begin yelling long and hard, nothing will be done. Also this isn't specific to World of Warcraft. All online games that utilize an in game economy have this problem.

    • 1 year ago
  • Vierotchka
    • 0
      Vierotchka  
    • Mark701:

      I don't play any of those online games, but my guess is that players can buy "gold" online from Blizzard itself - perhaps such purchases should be restricted to buying from the game sites themselves and made impossible to buy and sell between players.

    • 1 year ago
  • Mark701
    • 0
      Mark701  
    • Vierotchka:

      Online games typically do not sell the currency that's used in the games. There are things called micro-transactions that allow the players to buy things used in the game, like armor and weapons but they typically don't sell the in game currency. Most, if not all of that is done by outside parties.

    • 1 year ago
  • figgdimension
    • +1
      figgdimension  
    • Image

    • the things people come up with to harm each other is incredible video games ,.really..? Geez nothing is sacred anymore ;( I'm going out like a samurai I play games for fun not points wicked shit thanks for sharing

    • 1 year ago
  • GISchmo
  • timetide
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