
China used prisoners as gold farmers - ssclafani
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam
======
Luyt
The solution is simple: Don't buy virtual gold. And Blizzard should be way
more vigilant in shutting down accounts which do so.

Virtual Gold has become cheaper and cheaper over time (you can't fail to
notice this, if you're standing around in a city you see all communication
channels spammed with offers, which mention current pricing). If we assume the
Law of Supply and Demand works for the virtual gold economy too, we could
conclude that supply is rising, and vice-versa that Blizzard is not doing
enough to stop the suppliers and gold farmers.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Perhaps someone ought to start a service that verifies that your online gold
was ethically obtained.

Then again, people buying gold in online games probably don't care very much.

~~~
ChuckMcM
"Fair Trade" WoW Gold, not _that_ is a confluence of rackets.

Given the information Blizzard has about gold creation and spending there
isn't any reason they couldn't algorithmically 'fix' this problem both from
the buyers and the sellers perspective.

------
pavel_lishin
Charles Stross's commentary, though it doesn't really add all that much:
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/05/cruel-
an...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/05/cruel-and-unusual-
punishment.html)

