5 ms·

Reminds me of when kids were doing the same on MySpace https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352/ceo-whatever-17-year-old-runs-1m-business-d

Reminds me of when kids were doing the same on MySpace https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352/ceo-whatever-17-year-old-runs-1m-business-designing-myspace-pages https://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20070917/SUB/709170352... https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/ https://mixergy.com/interviews/andrew-fashion/

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
Or RuneScape.
- Jabrov 7mo ago
  RuneScape millionaires?
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    I had swim teammates who made at least hundreds of thousands minting and selling autominers on eBay. I assume if I knew a couple who did that well some made millions.
  - draftsman 7mo ago
    RuneScape private servers used to bring in tons of money. I helped manage one when I was in my early teens, and I can confirm the owner (who was only a few years older than I) was bringing in mid six-figures annually. Then of course there was the rampant gambling. The founders of online casino Stake and streaming platform Kick both started their “careers” in RuneScape gambling. IIRC they invented “staking” which was a method of gambling gold against other players, before they were banned. But the gambling economy in RuneScape used to IRL mint millionaires for sure.
    - quackware 7mo ago
      Staking was a built in feature of RuneScape in the duel arena before it was removed. They did not "invent" it themselves.
      - jonasdegendt 7mo ago
        They did run a dicing clan as well, FWIW, although I doubt they were the first to do it.
  - jonasdegendt 7mo ago
    There were dozens of ways to make money off of RuneScape back in the day. Selling bot scripts, running bot farms (this is still very lucrative to this day), running gambling rings, bulk buying gold and reselling, the list goes on. The ecosystem was incredible and it was basically a crash course in Anarcho-capitalism, I'm pretty immune to any kind of scam because of having been in that environment. I made close to 20 grand as a 16 year old through some bug abuse, over the course of 2 weeks if I recall. But alas, I blew it pretty quickly because easy come, easy go.
    - isolli 7mo ago
      I probably lack imagination, but how would gambling work in this game?
      - jonasdegendt 7mo ago
        The whole game is basically one giant random number generator, so there was a lot to gamble on. E.g., two players put one million gold pieces in their inventory, equip no equipment (so no attack bonuses), every hit on each other is now an RNG roll with identical odds for each player. Battle to the death and voila. That one's quite basic but there were more elaborate games such as flower poker. The game had a flower seeds item which when planted would spawn a flower on the floor. The flower would be of a random color (e.g. red, blue, white, ...). People would bet on which color flower would pop up, or plant plant five flowers sequentially and try and get something akin to a poker hand (e.g. three of a kind, full house). Quite silly, in retrospect, as I'm typing this out.
        isolli 7mo ago
        Quite imaginative, too... thanks for answering :)
- aj_icracked 7mo ago
  I just laughed out loud. My friends and I LOVED RuneScape in middle school. I'll meet yall in the wilderness to trade armor.
  - hsuduebc2 7mo ago
    I love the comeback of old school RuneScape! The good kind of nostalgia.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    Maybe every generation feels this. But I really think ours lucked out. We were shielded by childhood from the worst of the early times and then bolstered with past success for the worst of the later times.
    - spaceribs 7mo ago
      I was big into the WC3 custom maps community back in the day, the idea that you could make money doing any of this was silly. The point when I was growing up was two things: 1. Make something fun to play 2. Make something I could put into my college portfolio I did both things, but it was never about making money or being exploited, and I think I prefer that.
- Ameo 7mo ago
  So true. A member of the clan I was in was operating a proper hedge fund, taking in investments from the clan and using it to flip on the Grand Exchange. Iirc he was even doing sorts of arbitrage, market making, and other advanced stuff. Now he works at Google doing quantum computing research lol
- monster_truck 7mo ago
  Used to sell cooked lobbies to friends for cash back in the first few years of RuneScape. Good times

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago

Or RuneScape.

Jabrov 7mo ago
RuneScape millionaires?
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  I had swim teammates who made at least hundreds of thousands minting and selling autominers on eBay. I assume if I knew a couple who did that well some made millions.
- draftsman 7mo ago
  RuneScape private servers used to bring in tons of money. I helped manage one when I was in my early teens, and I can confirm the owner (who was only a few years older than I) was bringing in mid six-figures annually. Then of course there was the rampant gambling. The founders of online casino Stake and streaming platform Kick both started their “careers” in RuneScape gambling. IIRC they invented “staking” which was a method of gambling gold against other players, before they were banned. But the gambling economy in RuneScape used to IRL mint millionaires for sure.
  - quackware 7mo ago
    Staking was a built in feature of RuneScape in the duel arena before it was removed. They did not "invent" it themselves.
    - jonasdegendt 7mo ago
      They did run a dicing clan as well, FWIW, although I doubt they were the first to do it.
- jonasdegendt 7mo ago
  There were dozens of ways to make money off of RuneScape back in the day. Selling bot scripts, running bot farms (this is still very lucrative to this day), running gambling rings, bulk buying gold and reselling, the list goes on. The ecosystem was incredible and it was basically a crash course in Anarcho-capitalism, I'm pretty immune to any kind of scam because of having been in that environment. I made close to 20 grand as a 16 year old through some bug abuse, over the course of 2 weeks if I recall. But alas, I blew it pretty quickly because easy come, easy go.
  - isolli 7mo ago
    I probably lack imagination, but how would gambling work in this game?
    - jonasdegendt 7mo ago
      The whole game is basically one giant random number generator, so there was a lot to gamble on. E.g., two players put one million gold pieces in their inventory, equip no equipment (so no attack bonuses), every hit on each other is now an RNG roll with identical odds for each player. Battle to the death and voila. That one's quite basic but there were more elaborate games such as flower poker. The game had a flower seeds item which when planted would spawn a flower on the floor. The flower would be of a random color (e.g. red, blue, white, ...). People would bet on which color flower would pop up, or plant plant five flowers sequentially and try and get something akin to a poker hand (e.g. three of a kind, full house). Quite silly, in retrospect, as I'm typing this out.
      - isolli 7mo ago
        Quite imaginative, too... thanks for answering :)
aj_icracked 7mo ago
I just laughed out loud. My friends and I LOVED RuneScape in middle school. I'll meet yall in the wilderness to trade armor.
- hsuduebc2 7mo ago
  I love the comeback of old school RuneScape! The good kind of nostalgia.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  Maybe every generation feels this. But I really think ours lucked out. We were shielded by childhood from the worst of the early times and then bolstered with past success for the worst of the later times.
  - spaceribs 7mo ago
    I was big into the WC3 custom maps community back in the day, the idea that you could make money doing any of this was silly. The point when I was growing up was two things: 1. Make something fun to play 2. Make something I could put into my college portfolio I did both things, but it was never about making money or being exploited, and I think I prefer that.
Ameo 7mo ago
So true. A member of the clan I was in was operating a proper hedge fund, taking in investments from the clan and using it to flip on the Grand Exchange. Iirc he was even doing sorts of arbitrage, market making, and other advanced stuff. Now he works at Google doing quantum computing research lol
monster_truck 7mo ago
Used to sell cooked lobbies to friends for cash back in the first few years of RuneScape. Good times