Chinese Prisoners Forced into Online Gaming “Goldfarms”

wtf D=
 

haha man dont buy gold for world of warcraft anymore, because your buying gold from human right abusers

….  checking browser URL …

Nope.

This isn’t the Onion.  It must be the world that’s insane.

So the chinese are ruining video games killing our pets and trying to poison our kids.whats next?oh crap 4 more years of our commie president obama bin stealin.

So the chinese are ruining video games killing our pets and trying to poison our kids.whats next?oh crap 4 more years of our commie president obama bin stealin.

So the chinese are ruining video games killing our pets and trying to poison our kids.whats next?oh crap 4 more years of our commie president obama bin stealin.

So the chinese are ruining video games killing our pets and trying to poison our kids.whats next?oh crap 4 more years of our commie president obama bin stealin.

That’s  why any good gamer doesn’t buy farmed gold. If you can’t make it in an MMO on your own merits you suck. Besides. most of these gold farm selling sites are also just covers for account theft as well. You takes our chances visiting them.

That’s  why any good gamer doesn’t buy farmed gold. If you can’t make it in an MMO on your own merits you suck. Besides. most of these gold farm selling sites are also just covers for account theft as well. You takes our chances visiting them.

That’s  why any good gamer doesn’t buy farmed gold. If you can’t make it in an MMO on your own merits you suck. Besides. most of these gold farm selling sites are also just covers for account theft as well. You takes our chances visiting them.

This is such a waste of human resources!… people are been paid to “mine” something that doesn’t exist! Just virtually create some more and sell that!.. there’s no difference – and these people can do something productive instead!

This is such a waste of human resources!… people are been paid to “mine” something that doesn’t exist! Just virtually create some more and sell that!.. there’s no difference – and these people can do something productive instead!

The gaming companies should lead the way by either restricting “goodies” transfer between players, or by monitoring it (e.g. if some players’ activities seem to be nothing but ‘gold hunting’ then perhaps they can ‘time out’ the player for certain periods with warnings etc.). 
There certainly is something the gaming companies can do to discourage this.  It’s not money out  of their pockets so the moral imperative falls on them.  Saying “it helps people in the 3rd world make money” sounds pretty bunk.

The problem is that most often gold buyers are kids who want instant gratification (due to upbringing) and lack the basic IQ of patience/earning things themselves.
Heres how it goes: 13 year old spoiled brat kid whines to parents. Buy meee gold! Parent knows nothing about how gold is farmed or MMOS and just wants to satisfy baby bird. Cycle continues.
Someone SOMEWHERE needs NEEDS to start a database for goldsellers. Get banned for gold farmming/selling in WoW? Guess what? That info that was used to start the account (and the credit info used to pay) is now in a database and you are banned from EQ2, AOC, Rift, Fallen Earth… wherever. FOR LIFE. Oh, and stop the sales of gaming cards. This will help. Make people trackable. Oh, and also how about no asian IP’s allowed in NORTH AMERICAN servers plox? k thanks. You military types can play on asian servers while on your tour of duty K?

your a retard that would just ruin all mmos and its really racist

Old news is old. 

Be thankful you live on a country that doesn’t jail you for making a play on words associating your president with a terrorist… Teabagger.

Indeed, there is much to be thankful for… Lib Douche.

This ‘mining for pretend gold and beating with people with plastic pipes’ story may be one you want to tuck in your pocket for the next time you hear about how China is going to take over the world.

*Raises hand*
I have a problem with this. (It’s going to be a bit off-topic)

How much money do you have in your bank account? Answer: $0.00, using that logic; since it’s just numbers on a screen, it doesn’t really exist. You might say, but I deposited that money – it was real before I gave it away. First, you probably didn’t have that money in cash, so it’s hard to say that it was “real” if it was just a check, and if you’re being picky, why is cash real? It’s just a construct invented by nations to facilitate trade. Second, ignoring that, there are still problems concerning information degradation. What if I hacked the account and typed in random numbers, and it happened to be $100 less than you had before? You didn’t lose anything physically, I didn’t take anything from you. But we in Western cultures have some sense that currency, even stored virtually, has value. If you accept that, you also have to accept that virtual property is property. The story is sad, but their labor is definitely productive, in the sense that it produces value. 

“just create more virtually”… who exactly should do that? If it’s a player, they still have to play; a criminal player the same as an extremely dedicated non-criminal player – from the economic standpoint; obviously from the human perspective that almost sound like heresy. If it’s a developer – a person with access to the code, creating more items “manually” (without going through the features of the game designed to control scarcity) is inherently devaluing the items already in existence. Given that MMOs rely heavily, though not solely, on player interest in the economy, why would any developer want to do that? It runs in direct contradiction to their corporate interests.”there’s no difference.” There is a difference, and though its a subtle one, it’s one that will become more important as technology marches along: by creating the items manually, you eliminate an investment of time. In fact, time is at the root of every economic interaction. I hire a mechanic because my car is broken – I could have learned what the problem was and fixed it myself. But I am unwilling to put in that time investment, so I give money to pay off the mechanic’s time investment. A company hires that mechanic because then it can use its time more efficiently: by having more mechanics, it can service more customers per hour, and therefore make more money per hour. It trades money to get, basically, more time. The mechanic goes home and buys a sword for his high-level World of Warcraft character. He could have put in the time to get it himself, but all of his friends already have it and without it he loses time with his friends (since he can’t kill the same monsters they can or go to the same virtual places). So he trades his money for time with his friends. By extension, he has his money because of his job, so he accepts a time investment of labor in exchange for a time gain of entertainment and friendship; this is one of the most fundamental trade that humans can make: even prehistoric hunters made use of this exchange. They hunted to have food to keep themselves alive longer so they would have more time with their band/tribe/family.

“something productive instead.” What exactly is productive? I have made a lot of economic arguments because in Western cultures we tend to think of productivity in terms of economy. If we leave that foundation – and to be honest, its a very arbitrary one anyway – we have to replace it with a new, arbitrary foundation or else things get shaky very fast. Ultimately this question comes down to the more philosophical-sounding “What is value?” and so we see that one has to provide some frame of reference. I have given one based on economy because the majority of Westerners do feel there is a deep connection between value and money, so it would be more likely to resonate with you (and anyone else who might have similar feelings).

As a last bit of anecdotal evidence, I offer the following comment about Wall Street trading: 
This is such a waste of human resources!… people are being paid to buy and sell things that don’t even exist! Just virtually produce more shares and and sell those!.. there’s no difference – and these people can do something productive instead! 
[I did edit some of the phrases because I'm not trying to directly copy your wording but its spirit]
You’ll notice the above has exactly the same flaws as I pointed out:
1) No, it’s not a waste of human resources (the gold farming industry is worth $500m; the NYSE alone has stupidly high value)
2) The things they are creating do actually exist (for gold farming as virtual property; for Wall Street as stocks)
3) It is as unreasonable to expect China to “just virtually create some more [items]” as it is for brokers to “just” produce more shares – they do not have the access to those tools (they are held by Blizzard Entertainment and the corporations, respectively)
4) The difference is time investment, and that the realities are possible but the “just”s are not.
5) What they are doing is productive. You may have your own feelings about the morality of Wall Street trading or the legality of gold farming, but to flatly deny they are productive is to be severely elitist.
6) It arbitrarily draws a line between productive and non-productive activities. Again, there’s not much you (or I) can do about that, but it’s worth remembering.

Finally, I hope you don’t think I am attacking you. It’s just that I’ve been an advocate for legislation around virtual property for a few years, I’ve read quite a bit on the subject, and I’ve told everyone I know about the importance of virtual property. Sometimes I forget that people still don’t accept the legitimacy of this branch of property and so I feel like I have to evangelize for it, but I understand I can come off as harsh and aggressive. I understand if it all feels a bit abstract and a bit shaky. I compared it very naturally to the stock exchange, an analogy I’ve used several times, but on a purely intuitive level, they don’t feel exactly the same. I never feel the need to justify that brokers are interacting with “real” property, but I still feel sometimes that those interactions are equivalent to more “virtual” values. And there are important differences. However, as our world becomes increasingly “virtual,” we need to examine, as a species and as individuals, which divisions between virtual and real are legitimate, and which are -ahem- artificial. :P

On a related note, this ‘nifty ignorant retort said in a sarcastic voice’ comment may be one you want to tuck in your pocket for the next time you hear about how the internet makes people more informed global issues.

*informed about global issues

The referenced comment might be one you want to tuck in your pocket for the next time you hear about how the education system teaches students grammar :/

He’s not a retard. Now, it is really racist; the part about not letting foreign IPs in domestic servers (regardless of which country you’re talking about) is bullshit, to be blunt.

However, I don’t see why it would ruin MMOs. Yeah, “FOR LIFE” is a bit extreme, especially if it’s only for one offense. Obviously, the developers of the games would have to agree to punish those people, and to what extent those people would be punished in their own games. But it’s actually a really neat idea. How exactly one would compile it though – that’s the hard part. Including accounts that have been banned is a start, but it obviously only targets the smallest part of the problem.

Hm. I’m going to think about it. It’s a reasonable and simple partial solution.