A million gold farmers in China News
MMO PC News by Oli Welsh
In a revealing profile of the gold-selling industry - the second in our four-part feature series on the trade in in-game currencies and services - the number of gold farmers in China is estimated at one million.
A spokesperson for the gold-selling company SwagVault makes the claim in Nick Ryan's report. He says that larger gold-selling firms, of which SwagVault is one, use up to 1000 farmers to generate their product in-game.
"The yearly turnover for all these enterprises combined is estimated at over 10 billion US dollars," says the trader, 'Benjamin', trumping the 2 billion figure quoted in last week's piece, where it was also said that 30 per cent of all MMO players buy gold.
"World of Warcraft players make up 70 per cent of this RMT activity. So Blizzard really creates a miracle! I really can't believe that a game can generate such a large market."
Ryan also interviews a young Chinese gold farmer in this week's piece Gold Farming Exposed: The Sellers, alongside a British private seller of gold who automated his own operations in Ultima Online and EVE Online.
Stay tuned for future instalments looking at the gold trading business from the perspectives of players and game developers, and be sure to check out last week's introduction.
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Comments: 1-12 of 12 in total
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Blizzard will probably, in time, embrace gold mining and seek a way to make a profit off the gold miner's efforts. I mean... buyers could pay for gold through Blizzard's arena net, with sellers (miners) selling gold to in-game Battle.net reperesentatives (NPC's pf course), and with battle.net actually paying the miners too. After Blizzard takes a cut of course. Five pounds for 1000 gold sounds OK. Everyone is empowered, protected and enriched by it. Except the ones who regard gold buing as cheating, of course. Didn't Sony do something like this? Dont know if that was a success... but I think it is important to allow the gold miners to still make a profit here, and not undercut their market. Gold miners are viable customers too.
Personally I have never bought or sold gold in any game, but there's obviously a huge market there, so why not cater to that in an a responsible, safe and professional way that eliminates fraud and other potentially criminal activities? |
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DutchDemons
25/03/09 @ 14:45
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Out of interest; can anyone explain to me wtf this entails? how is it possible for someone to extract resources in a game, and then sell them via an external site to other ppl? and how are the buyers importing their bought gold into the game?
Just looking for a short answer, i know there's a feature on it, but i can't be arsed to read all that now. Also...i want in!
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 25/03/09 @ 14:46
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iokthemonkey
25/03/09 @ 14:49
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Just looking for a short answer, i know there's a feature on it, but i can't be arsed to read all that now.
---- Basically, somebody plays the game and "generates" gold by killing monsters. They then are paid in real money and the character sends an in-game message or meets up with the player that's paid for the gold and this "bought" gold is then handed over. |
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DutchDemons
25/03/09 @ 14:51
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ok then. simple and effective. tnx for that.
so now firms are on the rise hiring gamers to generate gold and sell that to other players...wow..what a strange world we live in:-) |
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Blizzard will probably, in time, embrace gold mining and seek a way to make a profit off the gold miner's efforts. I mean... buyers could pay for gold through Blizzard's arena net, with sellers (miners) selling gold to in-game Battle.net reperesentatives (NPC's pf course), and with battle.net actually paying the miners too. After Blizzard takes a cut of course. Five pounds for 1000 gold sounds OK. Everyone is empowered, protected and enriched by it. Except the ones who regard gold buing as cheating, of course. Didn't Sony do something like this? Dont know if that was a success... but I think it is important to allow the gold miners to still make a profit here, and not undercut their market. Gold miners are viable customers too.
mmo economies are delecate things. There is a limit to how much gold can be economically farmed, so there is a limit to how much extra gold rmt can put into the system. If Blizzard sold 1000 gold for £5 then the amount of 'new' gold is limitless. This is massively inflationary. Which in turn meens it devalues the gold of everyone. Which in turn upsets your non gold buying players. I believe Final Fantasy XI is an example of this. |
Comments: 1-12 of 12 in total
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