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Gold Farming Slavery in China

While Western audiences might be aware of prison labour in a traditional sense. In the US almost all military helmets are made in prisons, along with furniture and a plethora of other items; in China, they’ve been forced to gold farm in World of Warcraft.

However, none of this was sanctioned, in line with many a persons favourite movie, Shawshank Redemption, guards have been pocketing money after selling the in-game gold after it was farmed by the prisoners. “Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu Dali, a former prison guard who was jailed for unknown crimes in 2004.

“There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn CN¥5,000-6,000 [$770-925] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”

“Many prisons across the north-east of China also forced inmates to play games,” he said. “It must still be happening.”

This is the darker side of gold farming and shows there are harms beyond the inflation of the in-game economy.

“If I couldn’t complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. 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,” Liu said.

The gold farming industry – mainly focused around World of Warcraft, though other games are involved also – is thought to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year now, having grown from small scale sales to a full scale industry. There are certain players that will deliberately attack anyone thought to be gold farmin, certain clues being that a player will remain in a certain area “farming” certain mob spawns.

Industry