According to a UK Guardian report, prisoners in China's Jixi labour camp are forced to gold farm in online games, so the guards can sell their harvest for real money. And here is the punishment for prisoners who do not meet their daily quota of virtual gold:
"[T]hey would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things," he said. [emph. mine]
I'm somewhat skeptical of the claim [see update below], if only because it's single-sourced. Then again, only a few years ago, people were skeptical that gold farming was an actual cottage industry (especially in China), and now it's taken for granted. Speaking of which, the Guardian quotes US documentarian Ge Jin on the general topic of gold farming (but not apparently about gold in prisons); I interviewed him in 2006, and am checking with Ge now for an update.
Update, 6:00AM: Just heard from Ge Jin: "Yes, I think the article is plausible," he tells me. "Actually back in 2005 I already heard about the use of prison labor in gold farming. At that time, a gold farm owner told me that one of their competitors put thousands of computers in a prison in the city Hei Longjiang of Liao Ning Province... It's great that the Guardian journalist found a political prisoner and got first-hand confirmation on the story."
Hat tip: Boing Boing. Image: UK Telegraph.
For a far more selfish perspective, nearly all game developers ban this behavior for the sole reason that it ruins the game for legit players.
Posted by: Adeon Writer | Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 08:39 AM
If you're a player, don't buy in-game currency from third-party vendors.
If you're a designer, be aware that highly-desired, big ticket "gold sinks" can have unintended consequences.
And if you're a community manager, auto-flag huge level-inappropriate money transfers for manual review, and apply the ban stick with gusto.
Some games have had great success in clamping down on farming because of the active buy-in of honest players, smart designers, and active enforcement staff.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 10:04 AM
However no one would invest so much into farming and even force people to do it if there would not be huge sums of moeny involved. So I guess that it can only stop if people finally realize what they are contributig too when engageing into this trade.
No one would sell if there is no one to buy....
Posted by: Rin Tae | Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 12:27 PM
That's half the solution. The other half is to press China hard, with meaningful sanctions, on their blatant disregard for human rights... and to clean up our own act so we're not two-faced hypocrites in doing so.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Wednesday, June 01, 2011 at 07:17 AM