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:
“But tell me: how did gold get to be the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and gentle in its brilliance; it always gives itself. Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold get to be the highest value. The giver’s glance gleams like gold. A golden brilliance concludes peace between the moon and the sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue and useless, it is gleaming and gentle in its brilliance: a gift- giving virtue is the highest virtue.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“... farming conservatism, which consisted in holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)