A Chinese labour camp detainee says that after days of manual labour he would spend nights ‘gold farming’ in online games.
Liu Dali* was a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp in north-east China, and spent his days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmine.
At night he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells – to build up online gaming credits that prison guards would then trade for real money.
Liu, a 54-year-old former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown, told the Guardian prison bosses made more money from the games than off the manual labour.
He says there were 300 prisoners playing games in 12 hour shifts
“I heard [the guards] say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb (around NZD $1000) a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."
While in the labour camp Liu worked in the mines, carved chopsticks and toothpicks out of planks of wood until his hands were raw, and assembled car seat covers for export.
He says that the forced online gaming was the most surreal part of his imprisonment – while the hard work was virtual, the punishment was real.
"If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically,” he told the Guardian.
“They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes.
We kept playing until we could barely see things."
The practice of building up credits and online value through the monotonous repetition of basic tasks in online games such as World of Warcraft is known as ‘gold farming’.
Millions of gamers around the world will pay real money for the online credits, which they can use to speed up their progress in the online games.
An estimated that 80% of all gold farmers are in China, and there are thought to be 100,000 full-time gold farmers in the country.
Nearly NZD $2.4 million of online currencies were traded in 2008, according to figures from the China Internet Centre, and the lack of regulations around virtual currency trading has meant prisoners can be exploited for profit in the virtual world.
In 2009 the central government issued a directive defining how fictional currencies could be traded, making it illegal for businesses without licences to trade. But Liu, who was released from prison before 2009, believes that the practice of prisoners being forced to earn online currency in multiplayer games is still widespread.
"Many prisons across the north-east of China also forced inmates to play games. It must still be happening," he said.
Jin Ge, a researcher from the University of California San Diego, has been documenting the gold farming phenomenon in China and calls the country “the factory of virtual goods.”
"You would see some exploitation where employers would make workers play 12 hours a day,” Jin told the Guardian.
"The buyers of virtual goods have mixed feelings … it saves them time buying online credits from China."
3 News
*Liu Dali's name has been changed