Buying Gold? I see you support beatings...Follow

Most gamers are familiar with the practice of 'gold farming' - building up game credits in multiplayer games that are then sold on to other players.

But according to the UK's Guardian newspaper, the Chinese government has noticed this happening too - and realised that it could be a great deal more lucrative than sentencing criminals to hard labor.

The paper cites Liu Dali, who says he was forced to break rocks all day and play online games at night.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the paper. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [$765-$928] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

He said that if players failed to earn enough credits, they would be punished by beatings.

Gold farming's not an new issue: as far back as 2005, games developers were banning players for the practice.

Recently, two University of Michigan students were investigated by the FBI, which accused them of "potentially fraudulent sales or purchases of virtual currency that people use to advance in the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft".

But it seems the practice has now become big business for the Chinese government, with the China Internet Center estimating that nearly $2 billion worth of online credits were traded in the country in 2008.

One wonders how many players would be happy to buy credits if they knew how they were being generated.

Haha, a guildie just emailed me this story this morning. Though hell I'd probably rather play wow while in prison than do manual labor or get abused by some big beefy dude.

Selling in game currency for out of game currency is against ToS. While the prisoners themselves aren't doing anything against ToS they are aiding in something that is not allowed. So that is reason enough for a ban.

Sadly I could see that happening. I could also see the news try to spin it as mmo's force prisoners to do certain tasks for 12 hours a day. /rolleyes

And then dying because they did not stop to drink or go to the bathroom for 3 days straight?
It has "the sun" written all over it.

This sums up the average "news" Fox covers. I feel as though a news organization should be providing an independent view on subjects not a biased one. It is for that reason, and that reason alone, that I dislike Fox news.

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20110523

Hehe I considered calling them that Mazra, but I decided against it. :P

If a news corporation is seen as slanted or biased by a person, it's the person's fault, not the news corporation.
I log on the foxnews and cnn websites a couple times a day, read the headlines. If there's a headline that looks interesting (See: 17 lost pyramids found in space), I read the words in the article.
If you just read the words and siphon out the facts, and ignore the comments at the bottom, both 'major' news websites have an equal share of interesting and in depth stories.
Now, MSNBC never has the up to date news, and NEVER has interesting stuff that isn't about the pop world, so I avoid them.

Watching the news on TV is for people too incompetent to use a computer to do it, IMO.