Chinese prisoners forced to farm gold
by Michael Gray 
May 26th 2011 at 4:00PM
According to the report, it's likely that the prison bosses made more money from the sales of these online currencies than they did even from prisoners' manual labor. If prisoners were unable to produce enough gold during their shift, they would be physically punished.
"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," said one prisoner in the report.
Blizzard's been fighting gold farming practices for a long time; we'll likely never see "legal" gold selling if Blizzard can doing anything about it. This story illustrates one more reason you should not support these services.
Note: Comments on this post will be closely monitored. Racial insults, personal attacks or any of that nonsense will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned.
Filed under: News items, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 11)
Golis May 26th 2011 4:03PM
I cannot tell you how angry this makes me. I used to dismiss gold farmers as individually reprehensible, but to believe that they are driven slaves (in at least this case) just makes me furious.
shadcroly May 26th 2011 4:31PM
Seriously? How low can some people get?
Grovinofdarkhour May 26th 2011 5:01PM
I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like to have a gold quota - like, if I was somehow required to produce, say, 2000g every day, by whatever means necessary, day in and day out. I'd probably hate the game and everything about it in under a week. And to anyone out there who has ever bought gold, apparently you've helped create the scenario where people are being forced into this situation.
I'm thinking that at our guild's next officer meeting I'm going to propose a rule that anyone buying gold is subject to immediate dismissal from the guild. And I'd encourage every guild officer reading this to consider doing the same.
Golis May 26th 2011 5:23PM
Grovin,
Even without this awful scenario, I would suggest that guilds should already adopt a "no tolerance" rule for gold buying.
The logic is simple:
1) Gold buying is against the ELUA which we all agree to uphold
2) Anyone who buys gold is knowingly violating their virtual contract with Blizzard
Doesn't matter how much Mad DPS they bring to your raid, you don't want your guild's reputation to be in the hands of someone who has no problem with honesty.
Now throw the fact that their demand has created a market that enabled human rights violations and you can dismiss any "victimless crime" rebuttals.
God speed on those new guild laws!
Boz May 26th 2011 5:28PM
The blame here is on the Johns and the Gold Farmers (the Johns create demand, the Gold Farmers meet demand), but the liability still falls on Blizzard. Blizzard has a fiduciary responsibility to its account owners, and by failing to properly supervise in-game transactions an environment has enabled this type of unethical behavior (I think I've worked in finance too long!).
Is it Blizzard's fault? Not necessarily, but ultimately it is their responsibility to respond appropriately. Control systems need to be put in place to prevent this type of behavior from occurring going forward.
Blizzard has historically been a decent company, what with revenue from pet sales going to relief efforts and so on, and I hope they will - somehow - do the right thing here, as well.
Diop May 26th 2011 6:04PM
"Now throw the fact that their demand has created a market that enabled human rights violations and you can dismiss any "victimless crime" rebuttals."
Maybe it was poorly phrased but the demand in no way 'enabled' human rights violations, those violations were going on already and would have happened in other forms with or without the gold market. If it wasn't wow they would have just spent additional time digging trenches or other manual labour or other such unethical practices.
Those who buy gold did not create this situation, it goes beyond gold buyers, beyond wow and beyond Blizzard, beyond even nationalities as many other nations have cases of unethical treatment for prisoners.
also the worst part of the article is without doubt "The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown", being imprisoned for hard labour for trying to prevent corruption, truly sickening
Dizzle May 26th 2011 6:29PM
forgive me if i find all of this a bit self-serving... i'm sure most of us hail from First World countries. and i'm quite sure all of us have some comfort aspect of our lives that is tainted by the aspect of rights violations and abuse of the majority for the benefit of the minority.
yet we choose to rage about this? and i don't want to hear "oh well i can't help that the crude that turns in petrol for my vehicle probably has about as much blood on it's retrieval and processing as a pig slaughter house" or that "this isn't the place for such moral outrage"
because quite simply... it is... and those of you who will rage about prisoners being forced to farm gold on threat of violence while much worse happens to our own general benefit... i digress. it's self serving and to act with indignation when some of us have or do benefit from injustices from beaten chinese prisoners farming gold to any number of things exponential more amoral is... short sighted... in my opinion of course.
i'm sure this will start a chitstorm but i am holey unconcerned...
more on this topic, those of you who say blizzard isn't at fault. you are correct. but they still have responsibility. there product is being used to abuse, manipulate, and profit. they talk of the nature of the game as if it's some sacrosanct concept that they must protect with there very lives. yet they are willing to have to blood and pain of others who are exploited while their vile masters profit tarnish the very name not only of the Warcraft Franchise but Blizzard as a whole....
Again... very short sighted.
Diop May 26th 2011 6:55PM
@Dizzle
Going off on a tangent every time you think of something more enraging about modern life is a good way to get no where slowly. We're getting outraged about Prisoner abuse because it's the subject at hand, and it's mentioned here because it's tied up with wow. Maybe wow insider is the only blog you visit and therefore think it should discuss everything but personally I visit numerous blogs, and when I want to discuss a particular topic I find a relevant article or blog about it.
Secondly you talk about this issue rather flippantly, so I'm going to re-quote what I just wrote quoted above "The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown" So we're most likely talking about an entirely INNOCENT man, who tried to do GOOD and fight some of the evil in the world you're so concerned with, IMPRISONED and BEATEN and forced to do grueling labour during the day and what is essentially mental torture at night. There are worse things in the world, but honestly not that many.
Finally what do you really expect Blizzard to do, they're already trying their hardest to stop gold selling, and I'm sure this article will make them re-examine what they are and what they could be doing to prevent such actions, but like I said before even if Blizzard stopped WoW over this, it would not end the prisoner abuse.
Diop May 26th 2011 9:45PM
By the way, anyone who would like to do more than feel a little outrage at actions such as this could do a lot worse than visiting amnesty international http://www.amnesty.org.uk/
They do a lot of work in defending the rights of humans everywhere and cover a wide range of injustices from homophobic attacks to women's rights to working to bring war criminals to justice.
(I am in no way affiliated with amnesty by the way, I just think its a worthwhile charity that people offended by this story should check out, if the staff have a problem with this kind of advertising I apologise and respect their decision to delete this if needs be)
Sarabande May 27th 2011 4:00AM
Grovin,
Excellent.
While we don't have an official rule, (though it IS a good idea) everyone knows my very strong stance AGAINST gold buying. God knows, I lecture and rant about it ad nauseum.
I think the community . . . whether within a guild or out in public . . . can do something, even if it's a little, to combat gold buying.
Gold buying encourages Gold Farming / Selling. And whether it's done through slave laborers "playing" (what an odd word when used to describe forced labor . . .) for hours making money for someone else, low-paid workers toiling in 21st century sweatshops, or through the use of Botting or Hacking/Phising, PURCHASED GOLD is ill-gotten. While the strongest argument is that it's against the rules, it goes even deeper than that in that it harms the WoW Community and as we see in the article, much much further than that. If you or a friend has ever been hacked, there is a good chance that someone BUYING gold has had a hand in making that happen. Gold sellers only do what they do because it's very lucrative.
We can discourage our friends and guild members from buying gold. While we can't control what goes on once we put items up in the AH, if you KNOW of a Gold Buyer, refuse his offers . . . and it'll probably be difficult since the offers will most likely be quite good. If they ask for favors for gold - having your guild run them through for hard content, running their alts through dungeons, farming for them, etc. just say no . . . "go do it yourself." They can still buy goodies from the AH of course, but as their gold becomes less valuable, maybe they'll think twice about the value of the real dollar they are spending. If you know of a guild with leadership that encourages or easily tolerates gold-buying (I don't know of any personally) discourage people from joining them.
Also, many new players may not know where the gold comes from. Educate them. If any express some plan to buy gold, tell them "That's a VERY bad idea." And explain all the reasons why.
I know that many in the community couldn't care less. More dps. More easy mounts. Sick of farming to make gold or for mats. Need for progression (and the expenses that go with it). Paying for run-throughs . . . it's all too tempting. But those thing are also part of the game. And there is no excuse for buying.
If the raid schedule of your guild takes up so much time in the week, provide a bit of breather so people can do a few dailies or a bit of farming or whatnot, so they can earn gold for flasks or whatever. Or if the guild can sell items (purples, maelstroms) and help with repair and flask costs, it might ease some of the temptation for the people with very little time to play or people near burnout from raiding. Encourage the gatherers in your guild to keep their professions (and yes I know . . . their bonuses won't add much to their dps . . . ) so they can help with mats for the guild.
If we can take steps . . .either with penalty or through positive enforcements, or just by letting people KNOW how gold is acquired, we may (at least I hope) decrease the amount of people who buy gold.
WaterRouge May 26th 2011 4:04PM
That's....very surprising.
ddbrown89 May 26th 2011 4:25PM
The lengths to which people will go to satisfy greed are always appalling.
Tangled May 26th 2011 4:06PM
I can think of worse prison fates than being forced to play WoW...
Andrew R. May 26th 2011 4:13PM
They aren't really playing WoW so much as being forced to do a job. The way they are partaking in the game is by no means fun I'm sure. Add to the fact that you have to meet a quota or you face punishment? That's enough to make anyone miserable when they think about being forced to farm in the game.
zweitblom May 26th 2011 4:15PM
Hey, could you be bothered to read at least up to the effing SECOND sentence of the article? The one which reads
"After spending their day doing backbreaking labor, they would spend the evenings farming gold in games like World of Warcraft."
Stuff your 'witty' remarks.
Kialla May 26th 2011 4:21PM
All the bad stuff still happens. They still have to do that monotonous physical work. Just on top of all that, they are forced to do monotonous farming or face even more abuse.
Matthew May 26th 2011 4:19PM
That is your idea of playing wow?
chaosdefined May 27th 2011 5:31AM
Do an experiment, if you don't feel that this is a violation of human rights and a horrible, evil thing.
Spend every day at the gym for about 10 hours lifting weights. Then spend about another 10 hours with your face in front of your computer screen when you're sore and tired, your eyes are straining to even focus anymore, your head is aching from the lack of sleep and the glare of the screen cutting into your eyes.
Try that for a week and see how little a hell you think it is.
And we won't even start on the beatings when you don't do enough.
Senotonom205 May 26th 2011 4:05PM
It makes me sad to read this, and it makes me more sad that there are people that play WoW that actually participate in this nonsense. Are you really that greedy, or that into this game that you want to buy gold from people like this?
JattTheRogue May 26th 2011 4:25PM
I think buying gold shouldn't happen (and that it's sort of foolish anyway), but regardless, I'm pretty sure most people who buy gold aren't thinking, "Let's see what the Chinese slaves have got for me today." I know that before reading this I never once imagined that people would be forced to farm gold. I always assumed that gold that people sell came from people farming as some low-paying job/hacked accounts (and I still assume that's where most of it comes from). So don't start saying gold buyers are all morally reprehensible and "that greedy" that they would support slavery. That's completely ridiculous. You can sort of make the point that they support account hacking since it's pretty widely known that that's where a lot of it comes from, but I'm guessing that you, like me, had never even considered that it was supported by slavery, so why would the people who buy gold think that?