Could Gold-Farming Aid Poorer Nations?

We’ve talked a bit about MMO gold-farming in the past, taking a look at the practice from multiple points-of-view, but a recent article at BCC raises a couple of interesting points I didn’t consider before. Such as the fact that gold-farming could provide aid to poorer nations taking part in the practice. In fact, BCC reports that such activities could return more revenue than harvesting and selling coffee.

There are a couple of good reasons for this. A good one is that gold-selling on these shores is profitable, with some gamers paying upwards of $100 – or more – per purchase. And for anyone who hasn’t ever purchased gold online, its popularity is hard to miss. No matter the MMO you’re playing, you’re bound to be spammed by a gold-seller. In the case of Rift, a game I started playing on the day-of-release, I was getting spammed by day two. That’s the state things are in.

According to this BBC article, upwards of 100,000 people are gold-farmers, which is quite a large number given that gold-selling seems to be really prevalent in only a handful of popular games (I am sure that most MMO have gold-sellers to some extent, but you’d have to imagine the vast majority sell gold for the biggest MMO offerings out there).

The biggest problem I see with gold-selling isn’t so much the fact that people buy into it, but rather the fact that gold-farmers seem to be, for the most part, slaves. The same article mentions that on a $100 purchase, the farmer would receive $23. That doesn’t seem so bad, but take into consideration the fact that it takes hours and lots of man-power to gather said gold. If it took a mere couple of hours to accrue a set amount of gold, it’s unlikely anyone would jump at the chance to pay $100 for it.

It is important to note that bots can affect this number, however, with approximately 50% of gold-farmers being automated – not human. In addition, another 20% is gained from stealing accounts – thus, only 30% of gold is actually gained by hand.

The high proportion of money from such sales that reaches those in the country where the work was done might mean that it could aid development in many nations, said the report which was co-commissioned by the World Bank and development organisation InfoDev. It contrasted this situation with that of coffee which was worth $70bn annually in 2009 but only $5.5bn of that reached nations that farm coffee beans.