Gold farming is playing a massively multiplayer online game to acquire in-game currency that other players purchase in exchange for real-world money. People in China and in other developing nations have held full-time employment as gold farmers.
While most game operators expressly ban the practice of selling in-game currency for real-world cash, gold farming is lucrative because it takes advantage of economic inequality and the fact that much time is needed to earn in-game currency. Rich, developed country players, wishing to save many hours of playing time, may be willing to pay substantial sums to the developing country gold farmers.
Read more about Gold Farming: History, Figures, Rules and Enforcement, Law, Regulation and Taxation, Game Sweatshop, Development Potential, In The Media
Famous quotes containing the words gold and/or farming:
“Common experience is the gold reserve which confers an exchange value on the currency which words are; without this reserve of shared experiences, all our pronouncements are cheques drawn on insufficient funds.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“The measure discriminates definitely against products which make up what has been universally considered a program of safe farming. The bill upholds as ideals of American farming the men who grow cotton, corn, rice, swine, tobacco, or wheat and nothing else. These are to be given special favors at the expense of the farmer who has toiled for years to build up a constructive farming enterprise to include a variety of crops and livestock.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)