Thursday, March 22, 2012

Modern day hard prison labour, clicks as well as picks

A recent discussion about MMORPGs (and in particular Star Wars The Old Republic) reminded me of two articles from last year : one about the practice of 'gold farming' whereby people spend hours playing these games in order to amass virtual resources which can be sold in the real world, and another story about prisoners in a Chinese prison being made to do exactly that, for the benefit of the prison guards, a story which definitely is symbolic of the modern age :

How gold farmers reap huge harvest from online gaming
Estimates suggest 400,000 people are employed to build up credits in games such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/25/gold-farmers-online-gaming

China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

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