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China Bans Gold Farming

TrevorJ 17y ago
This is good news for gamers, I'd be interested to know what the impact will be in China in terms of human rights/living conditions. I have heard a little about some of the Chinese companies who hire people to farm gold for long hours every day for poor wages and worse living conditions.
- philwelch 17y ago
  But then you run into the question about sweatshops that no one wants to ask: if it sucks so much to work in a sweatshop, why do these people willingly do so? Answer: the alternative is even worse.
  - davidblair 17y ago
    Sweatshops are unacceptable even if no better alternative currently exists. This is not about what stage of develop an economy is in but instead it is about helping people see past present situation. How can alternatives develop when the current practice is so brutally efficient at keeping costs down making other choices inefficient by comparison?
    - mwerty 17y ago
      Better alternatives developing in the future is a fairy tale. This puts food on the table now.
    - dublinclontarf 17y ago
      Are... are you a politician? So if the alternative to a sweatshop is homelessness and starvation that's better? How does that help people "see past [their] present situation"? What does that even mean? Have you even been to China? Unless you have family or friends to support you the only alternative to employment is starvation or crime. I fail to understand how making someone unemployed will do anything BUT keep costs down(among other things). For some reason people think sweatshops are an awful thing, compared to working for MicroSoft sure. Look at Victorian Britain. Yes they had sweatshops filled with women and children, who without the work would have starved(to death). Never mind the affordable goods that those factories produced.
      - TrevorJ 17y ago
        "So if the alternative to a sweatshop is homelessness and starvation that's better?" No viable choice exists precisely because the current system is tolerated. Is this something individual workers can fix? No, maybe not, but as long as people collectively put up with sweat shops, companies who wish to treat workers better have a huge uphill battle to compete with the low overhead. Things can't get better till the practice is halted.
    - xenophanes 17y ago
      > Sweatshops are unacceptable even if no better alternative currently exists. So, you want the poorest people in the world to have a worse life, now, because it'll make you happier about the state of the world? You're asking them to give something up. The worst off people in the world should sacrifice for you?
      - davidblair 17y ago
        I applaud people working long hard hours to get ahead. I am not against working hard but instead the abuse on the part of employers. They hold the power in this situation, not the people. There are types of employment that are simply unacceptable. During the industrial revolution, ability to support ones family was used to justify young children working in factories. During the civil war, the south fought for the right to use slave labor in order to maintain their standard of living.
        berntb 17y ago
        Krugman's take on this: http://www.slate.com/id/1918 http://www.slate.com/id/1918 I'd also like to note that I am fascinated by people with high standards and willing to let others suffer for them. :-)
        xenophanes 17y ago
        Slave labor lowered the South's standard of living, btw. It's inefficient and costly compared to a free market. The view that slavery is practical, economical, or beneficial in any way is a pro-slavery myth! Sweatshops will go away when the country is richer, with or without laws. The hard fact is that nicer working conditions cost money. That means lower wages. If everyone is well off, like in USA, that cost is clearly worth it. If people are very poor, they may prefer the money (which they need to buy necessities) to the improved working environment.
        TrevorJ 17y ago
        "Sweatshops will go away when the country is richer, with or without laws" Explain to me what motivation a company with cheep access to unskilled labor has for improving conditions of it's employees please. What evidence do you have that low wages mean better working conditions for workers? What economic mechanism do you suppose will guide companies to pay unskilled laborers more as the company becomes more profitable? Or are you banking on the general goodwill and fairness of the employer here?
  - TrevorJ 17y ago
    It easy to answer. The existence of sweatshops as a culture means that companies that wish to treat employees better cannot compete with such low overhead. This is why there are no better options. No viable and humane solution can be reached while such poor working conditions are allowed.
  - GavinB 17y ago
    Often the primary goal of sweatshop bosses is not to maximize their personal wealth but to maximize their relative wealth and status. Those in charge are frequently unwilling to make changes that would benefit their net profits because it would give workers too much power and leverage and bring the workers closer to their status. Violence, intimidation, and misinformation are the tools used to pervert the free market and maintain the status quo. The free market is a wonderful thing but it's all too often used as the theoretical backstop for situations where the market is actually rigged.
- jrockway 17y ago
  I have heard a little about some of the Chinese companies who hire people to farm gold for long hours every day for poor wages and worse living conditions. Yeah, these people should be making me shoes and tainted milk instead. (Gold farming is the least of China's worries.)
ckinnan 17y ago
From the ministry press release: Cui Ran, an expert on the Chinese online industry, said the regulation aimed to "nip illegal online activities in the bud," as current trading volume was still too small to shake the nation's entire financial system. But as the trade expanded steadily, with increasing conversions between virtual and real money, there would be an impact on the financial system, he noted. This is about maintaining state control over the currency and taxation.
- netsp 17y ago
  Very possibly. When I think about it, it's surprising that some form of virtual currency (it's interesting to actually think about what that term means) hasn't gained a stronger foothold. So many of the products we buy are virtual. I think if you sat down and thought about it when something like paypal was young, you would have predicted a huge virtual currency world.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    Chairman Mao once said, "Power comes from the end of a gun." There are a good number of groups who control millions of guys with guns. They use currencies as a tool to project their power and increase wealth. If you mess with that tool, they send intimidating messages. If pressed, they send the guys with the guns. These groups are called governments.
    - nopassrecover 17y ago
      See Max Weber's Legitimacy theory (government is about maintaining control of who can use physical force).
    - netsp 17y ago
      I don't think that it has gotten to that point or near it very often. These guys with guns also use other things like media & information to project their power. There have been many confrontations between governments and emergent media. It has been a very obvious occurrence. Keeping it contained is a constant battle. It doesn't seem that virtual currency has a very strong urge to be.
jackmoore 17y ago
Why would they do this? Seems like any money flowing into the economy would be a good thing.
- ArcticCelt 17y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. Not only money, but money in exchange of nothing of real value.
  - netsp 17y ago
    Nothing of value in what sense? It's clear that there is value to the buyers of the gold, they pay for it. It costs something (player's time & computers) to accumulate, they forgo value to create this.
- cmars232 17y ago
  So they can control it at will. By outlawing it, they can shut down whatever they don't like, and skim the top off the rest.
henning 17y ago
This won't change anything. Gold farmers already evade China's national firewall in order to access international game servers. Most of the currency the farmers sell is stolen from hacked accounts obtained by malware that the farmers actively spread for the express purpose of hijacking in-game currency. The rest is obtained by bots that they run en masse which really mess up the game for everyone else. Do you really think they'd sit there for 14 hours a day pounding away at buttons, earn their gold/gil/whatever legit, and sell the fruits of their labors? No way.
- ArcticCelt 17y ago
  >Do you really think they'd sit there for 14 hours a day pounding away at buttons, earn their gold/gil/whatever legit, and sell the fruits of their labors? No way. Gold farming is a real business model in china. Research it you will be surprised. Youtube video on Chinese Gold Farmers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4 "Estimates of 400,000 people working in China on gold farming/trading are seen as very realistic, and the number could be 500,000 up to 1,000,000" http://virtual-economy.org/blog/update_on_chinese_gold_farming http://virtual-economy.org/blog/update_on_chinese_gold_farmi...
- froo 17y ago
  The rest is obtained by bots that they run en masse which really mess up the game for everyone else. Back when I played wow, I could have sworn that there were a few botters that would use something like Auctioneer to make money by buying things that were undervalued for resale. So I tested out my theory (this was just post-BC) I created several dummy characters on my account and loaded them up with spare boar meats that I had farmed. 2 boar meats for 100 gold, so 50 gold a pop. I would constantly send the meats to newly created characters and start putting them on the auction house, 50 gold each. What this did was over the period of a week and maybe 15 characters (I'm not sure the actual number), I artificially raised the perceived value of the meats, so when I started putting them up for 200 gold for each stack of 10, I literally couldn't farm enough of them to keep them in stock as they were always bought by the same couple of people (botters?). The botters aren't infallible, you can break them - but I do agree that it's hard to compete with a 24x7 player, especially when you only played 2 hours at night yourself.

This is good news for gamers, I'd be interested to know what the impact will be in China in terms of human rights/living conditions. I have heard a little about some of the Chinese companies who hire people to farm gold for long hours every day for poor wages and worse living conditions.

philwelch 17y ago
But then you run into the question about sweatshops that no one wants to ask: if it sucks so much to work in a sweatshop, why do these people willingly do so? Answer: the alternative is even worse.
- davidblair 17y ago
  Sweatshops are unacceptable even if no better alternative currently exists. This is not about what stage of develop an economy is in but instead it is about helping people see past present situation. How can alternatives develop when the current practice is so brutally efficient at keeping costs down making other choices inefficient by comparison?
  - mwerty 17y ago
    Better alternatives developing in the future is a fairy tale. This puts food on the table now.
  - dublinclontarf 17y ago
    Are... are you a politician? So if the alternative to a sweatshop is homelessness and starvation that's better? How does that help people "see past [their] present situation"? What does that even mean? Have you even been to China? Unless you have family or friends to support you the only alternative to employment is starvation or crime. I fail to understand how making someone unemployed will do anything BUT keep costs down(among other things). For some reason people think sweatshops are an awful thing, compared to working for MicroSoft sure. Look at Victorian Britain. Yes they had sweatshops filled with women and children, who without the work would have starved(to death). Never mind the affordable goods that those factories produced.
    - TrevorJ 17y ago
      "So if the alternative to a sweatshop is homelessness and starvation that's better?" No viable choice exists precisely because the current system is tolerated. Is this something individual workers can fix? No, maybe not, but as long as people collectively put up with sweat shops, companies who wish to treat workers better have a huge uphill battle to compete with the low overhead. Things can't get better till the practice is halted.
  - xenophanes 17y ago
    > Sweatshops are unacceptable even if no better alternative currently exists. So, you want the poorest people in the world to have a worse life, now, because it'll make you happier about the state of the world? You're asking them to give something up. The worst off people in the world should sacrifice for you?
    - davidblair 17y ago
      I applaud people working long hard hours to get ahead. I am not against working hard but instead the abuse on the part of employers. They hold the power in this situation, not the people. There are types of employment that are simply unacceptable. During the industrial revolution, ability to support ones family was used to justify young children working in factories. During the civil war, the south fought for the right to use slave labor in order to maintain their standard of living.
      - berntb 17y ago
        Krugman's take on this: http://www.slate.com/id/1918 http://www.slate.com/id/1918 I'd also like to note that I am fascinated by people with high standards and willing to let others suffer for them. :-)
      - xenophanes 17y ago
        Slave labor lowered the South's standard of living, btw. It's inefficient and costly compared to a free market. The view that slavery is practical, economical, or beneficial in any way is a pro-slavery myth! Sweatshops will go away when the country is richer, with or without laws. The hard fact is that nicer working conditions cost money. That means lower wages. If everyone is well off, like in USA, that cost is clearly worth it. If people are very poor, they may prefer the money (which they need to buy necessities) to the improved working environment.
        TrevorJ 17y ago
        "Sweatshops will go away when the country is richer, with or without laws" Explain to me what motivation a company with cheep access to unskilled labor has for improving conditions of it's employees please. What evidence do you have that low wages mean better working conditions for workers? What economic mechanism do you suppose will guide companies to pay unskilled laborers more as the company becomes more profitable? Or are you banking on the general goodwill and fairness of the employer here?
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  It easy to answer. The existence of sweatshops as a culture means that companies that wish to treat employees better cannot compete with such low overhead. This is why there are no better options. No viable and humane solution can be reached while such poor working conditions are allowed.
- GavinB 17y ago
  Often the primary goal of sweatshop bosses is not to maximize their personal wealth but to maximize their relative wealth and status. Those in charge are frequently unwilling to make changes that would benefit their net profits because it would give workers too much power and leverage and bring the workers closer to their status. Violence, intimidation, and misinformation are the tools used to pervert the free market and maintain the status quo. The free market is a wonderful thing but it's all too often used as the theoretical backstop for situations where the market is actually rigged.
jrockway 17y ago
I have heard a little about some of the Chinese companies who hire people to farm gold for long hours every day for poor wages and worse living conditions. Yeah, these people should be making me shoes and tainted milk instead. (Gold farming is the least of China's worries.)

ckinnan 17y ago

From the ministry press release: Cui Ran, an expert on the Chinese online industry, said the regulation aimed to "nip illegal online activities in the bud," as current trading volume was still too small to shake the nation's entire financial system. But as the trade expanded steadily, with increasing conversions between virtual and real money, there would be an impact on the financial system, he noted. This is about maintaining state control over the currency and taxation.

netsp 17y ago
Very possibly. When I think about it, it's surprising that some form of virtual currency (it's interesting to actually think about what that term means) hasn't gained a stronger foothold. So many of the products we buy are virtual. I think if you sat down and thought about it when something like paypal was young, you would have predicted a huge virtual currency world.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  Chairman Mao once said, "Power comes from the end of a gun." There are a good number of groups who control millions of guys with guns. They use currencies as a tool to project their power and increase wealth. If you mess with that tool, they send intimidating messages. If pressed, they send the guys with the guns. These groups are called governments.
  - nopassrecover 17y ago
    See Max Weber's Legitimacy theory (government is about maintaining control of who can use physical force).
  - netsp 17y ago
    I don't think that it has gotten to that point or near it very often. These guys with guns also use other things like media & information to project their power. There have been many confrontations between governments and emergent media. It has been a very obvious occurrence. Keeping it contained is a constant battle. It doesn't seem that virtual currency has a very strong urge to be.

jackmoore 17y ago

Why would they do this? Seems like any money flowing into the economy would be a good thing.

ArcticCelt 17y ago
Exactly my thoughts. Not only money, but money in exchange of nothing of real value.
- netsp 17y ago
  Nothing of value in what sense? It's clear that there is value to the buyers of the gold, they pay for it. It costs something (player's time & computers) to accumulate, they forgo value to create this.
cmars232 17y ago
So they can control it at will. By outlawing it, they can shut down whatever they don't like, and skim the top off the rest.

henning 17y ago

This won't change anything. Gold farmers already evade China's national firewall in order to access international game servers. Most of the currency the farmers sell is stolen from hacked accounts obtained by malware that the farmers actively spread for the express purpose of hijacking in-game currency. The rest is obtained by bots that they run en masse which really mess up the game for everyone else. Do you really think they'd sit there for 14 hours a day pounding away at buttons, earn their gold/gil/whatever legit, and sell the fruits of their labors? No way.

ArcticCelt 17y ago
>Do you really think they'd sit there for 14 hours a day pounding away at buttons, earn their gold/gil/whatever legit, and sell the fruits of their labors? No way. Gold farming is a real business model in china. Research it you will be surprised. Youtube video on Chinese Gold Farmers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5Yxe6UVv4 "Estimates of 400,000 people working in China on gold farming/trading are seen as very realistic, and the number could be 500,000 up to 1,000,000" http://virtual-economy.org/blog/update_on_chinese_gold_farming http://virtual-economy.org/blog/update_on_chinese_gold_farmi...
froo 17y ago
The rest is obtained by bots that they run en masse which really mess up the game for everyone else. Back when I played wow, I could have sworn that there were a few botters that would use something like Auctioneer to make money by buying things that were undervalued for resale. So I tested out my theory (this was just post-BC) I created several dummy characters on my account and loaded them up with spare boar meats that I had farmed. 2 boar meats for 100 gold, so 50 gold a pop. I would constantly send the meats to newly created characters and start putting them on the auction house, 50 gold each. What this did was over the period of a week and maybe 15 characters (I'm not sure the actual number), I artificially raised the perceived value of the meats, so when I started putting them up for 200 gold for each stack of 10, I literally couldn't farm enough of them to keep them in stock as they were always bought by the same couple of people (botters?). The botters aren't infallible, you can break them - but I do agree that it's hard to compete with a 24x7 player, especially when you only played 2 hours at night yourself.