Guardian talks to Chinese goldsellers and UK buyers
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 5th 2009 at 2:00PM
UK paper The Guardian has a look at what life is like at a Chinese goldselling company. It's interesting, but we've basically seen it before -- the small room of young people working almost 24/7 to make and deliver gold in-game, the concerns about worker livelihood and the supposedly large amounts of money going through these businesses (there's one figure quoted of £700m, which is about $980 million, but that's an estimate -- no one really knows how much these companies are making).But what's really interesting about this piece is that it seems to treat goldselling as more of an "opportunity" than anything else. The people running the companies are making money, the employees are getting a roof over their head and a steady paycheck, and even the guy making the film talks about how governments should start taking a cut of this industry. Nowhere is it actually mentioned that Blizzard considers these companies to be against the terms of service, or that many times the gold obtained by these companies isn't earned through simple grinding, but by hacking, keylogging, and exploiting. Even if (emphasis on the if) these companies are making millions of dollars a year, they're stealing accounts and cheating in-game to do it.
Rowenna Davis also did interviews with both the gold farmer and a player in the UK buying money from him (bannz0red?), but again, there's no insight at all from the player whose account was hacked and bank was looted, or the player who is able to earn as much gold as they need and have a life outside the game (there are plenty of those to go around). Would have been nice to see the issue from players who aren't actually breaking the game's terms of service.
Thanks, Bryn!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Leveling, Making money, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Void Mar 5th 2009 2:08PM
980 million? holy shit.
Arktic Mar 5th 2009 3:07PM
At $980,000,000 this means that each of the 11 million subscribers has spent on an average of $89. If 95% of the WoW population are legit players, then the 5%, or 550,000 subscribers, are shelling out about $1700. That's alot of money just because you want EpIq LeWtZ. My advice to the gold buyers is to play on a private server. It's cheaper.
Sapkgo Mar 5th 2009 3:26PM
You'll find that the 'Gold Farming' is more of a 'Gold Dealing' business. Although 980M goes through these businesses, a lot of that would be through each other.
-Gold dealer A gets a client on Server Z.
-Gold dealer A has no gold on Server Z.
-Gold dealer A buys gold from Gold dealer B to supply to client on Server Z at a markup.
You'll also find that a majority of the Gold Dealing companies are very separate from the Hackers. However, the hackers use the gold dealers as instant cash supply for the gold they just looted from poor player on Server Z, before it gets traced and deleted by Blizzard.
Funnily enough, the client who buys the gold will lose, as Blizzard will do an investigation and trace the gold from the hacker, through gold dealer A and gold dealer B, to the client, and delete the gold ^^. However the hacker and the gold dealer have already taken their cut.
AyaJulia Mar 5th 2009 5:38PM
You've also got to keep in mind, when was the last time you saw a gold selling service that sold currency for only one game? Find yourself a reputable company (read: no such thing exists, just find a computer without wow installed and use firefox with noscript) and visit their site. You'll see at least a dozen games in the list. At least.
That $980bil isn't only WoW, guys. I know FFXI, at least, had a huge problem with real-money trading. The economy there is pretty ridiculous; there are no real vendors or gold sinks to speak of, so you're left with the average quest or vendor item giving you 100 gil if you're lucky, while that awesome high-quality item you want costs several million. I'm sure there are other games with this problem as well, and I suspect that WoW is a disproportionately small percentage of these companies' earnings. You're looking at 5% of 11 million vs. 25% of 200,000. :)
Zor Mar 5th 2009 2:11PM
nothing new....chinese only duplicate and replicate
look up chinese knock offs - google
the government endorces this very practise, to many years being cooped up within walls takes creativity out of ones soul
i question gunpowered's origins too....
Gessilea Mar 5th 2009 2:47PM
If you are suspicious of gunpowder, I would love to hear your thoughts on the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
Freedomfighter Mar 5th 2009 3:44PM
someone obviously doesn't understand china...
你是笨蛋.
Hoggersbud Mar 5th 2009 3:54PM
Gunpowder was a gift from the glorious god Stryphon. All hail Stryphon! Down with Hostigos and Kalvan the False!
Umrtvovacz Mar 5th 2009 4:09PM
FreedomFighter:
是他们无视这些愚蠢
sorry for bad chinese, its not easy language :-)
stevens.ce Mar 6th 2009 9:22AM
Hoggersbud wins this one - I salute your false god!
akw Mar 5th 2009 2:11PM
"many times the gold obtained by these companies isn't earned through simple grinding, but by hacking, keylogging, and exploiting. Even if (emphasis on the if) these companies are making millions of dollars a year, they're stealing accounts and cheating in-game to do it."
"there's no insight at all from the player whose account was hacked and bank was looted"
No to sound naive, but where is the evidence that this is the case? If "no one really knows how much these companies are making" how is it that even a Mike Schramm knows how they're getting it done?
eric_barbaric Mar 5th 2009 2:19PM
Well, think about it. If you are running a company that is shady at best to begin with, are you going to shell out $15 a month per employee to farm gold? No, you are going to hack someone's account so you don't have to pay a monthly fee, drastically reducing overhead and boosting profits.
Anonymous Poster Mar 5th 2009 2:23PM
@Eric
It requires more skilled labor to write a malware program than it does for a person to farm gold in wow. Given the evolving nature of virus protection, it would not be a one time fee and risks violations of national and international laws. These costs will not deter everyone, but they will be enough to create a difference between companies that want to just farm, those that hack, and those that do both.
mensrea Mar 5th 2009 2:28PM
"Well, think about it. If you are running a company that is shady at best to begin with"
Have you stopped to consider that not everyone lives by Blizzard's Terms of Services as their moral code?
Schramm pretty routinely spouts off about things he knows nothing about (see, e.g., copyright and glider) and this is just another example. Even if we assume that there are gold-farming companies that get their gold through hacked accounts, it's stupid to assume they all do it that way.
You might as well be saying that everyone steals to support their drug habit since some people do. Feels good to say, but it's not accurate in the least.
Jhestor Mar 5th 2009 2:32PM
I understand what everyone is saying, that we can't demonize gold-sellers without being completely educated about it.
But I will say that a good friend of mine had his account hacked, and all of his character assets liquidated into gold, then transferred somewhere.
Gold-sellers are most likely at fault there.
akw Mar 5th 2009 2:50PM
All I was getting at was it is so easy to make gold in wow through legitimate in-game mechanisms (such as smart AH buying/selling, daily quests, etc.) that any alternative would have to be easier or scale much better for it to account for a significant amount of the contraband being traded. Hacking into individual accounts, which have no guarantee of being particularly ripe fruit, to manually sell off the bagged, banked, and equipped gear and other items, does not sound like a better business process than paying the $15/mo + $1/hr per employee to farm it up the 'hard' way. Not only does it require more technical expertise, but it also infuriates the victims which in turn raises eyebrows at Blizzard which my try to track suspicious transactions on affected accounts... in short, it increases the already substantial risks of doing this business.
I'm not suggesting that gold selling is fine and should be tolerated. I'm just suggesting that there is a lot being claimed and little being shown to support those claims, and the claims themselves are dubious.
Hoggersbud Mar 5th 2009 3:14PM
There is nothing dubious about hacking and malware being a problem. First off, there is relatively little technical expertise needed. You only need the one person to create a webpage, e-mail, and code whatever exploit is being used to find out passwords. That's work which is done by a relative few, but can reach thousands. It's like Spam, botnets, and other such activities. There may be some start-up problems, but it is incredibly cheap and easy to keep going.
Now as for morals, I believe that anybody who does not care to abide by the moral of "I follow the terms I agree to obey in order to play the game" is not somebody I care to interact with. If you think you should be allowed to sell gold for a real-money profit in an MMO, find one that allows that, make your own, or protest Blizzard's TOS but don't expect me to not disapprove of you doing it.
Sorry, but while taking the position that "Gold-selling" is ok may be acceptable, I can't agree with the position of "And it's ok for me to scoff this contract of yours" . This isn't to say all contracts are fair and reasonable, or that they can't be unjust. But Blizzard's isn't.
If you can't live by it...don't play the game.
JALbert Mar 5th 2009 3:21PM
What's great is that the research paper that this is based off of says that there's no real evidence to support the claim that hacking and such are what drive gold farming companies. Every indication from people who have researched it is that it's simple economics. Cheap manual labor being outsourced to meet a demand on a good with an absurd quota.
Elgrend Mar 5th 2009 3:24PM
@ mensrea
Mike doesn't say that every gold seller uses malicious practices to obtain gold to sell to players, only that many times that is the case. While it may be true that there are "reputable" gold-sellers out there, how are you to determine which is which? Anecdotally, friends of mine have had their accounts hacked, their toons moved to another server, and every item and ounce of gold removed from them. While it's possible that these might be the actions of individuals, I would put my proverbial money on gold-sellers.
akw Mar 5th 2009 3:33PM
@ Hoggersbud
The dubiousness about claiming that gold sellers acquire a significant portion of their inventory through theft, for my small brain at least, is in the part of the process after they have surreptitiously acquired the log-in information of thousands of money-dripping player accounts and now they must liquidate those accounts and transfer the money safely to some other account from where they will offer the gold for resale to the public.
Show me how easy it is to scam the account info, liquidate the accounts, transfer the money, and resell it, without Blizzard catching on. Show me that it's easier than just sitting down and doing the most efficient, legitimate in-game gold farming technique.
I haven't even broached the subject of morality in discussing this so far. Morality, however, is not a binary condition. There are degrees. People have different limits. It is very much within the realm of possibility that someone may consider it morally 'ok' to violate the EULA on a piece of software but draw the line at hacking their personal account. Don't pretend that just because someone ignores the ToS then they must be equally quick to ignore all other laws or boundaries of acceptable behavior. Not that I disagree with your sentiment (just to illustrate the point, I don't even download music from 'teh internet' without paying for it, on principle).