Research by Manchester University shows that the practice, known as
gold-farming is growing rapidly, reported by BBC News. The industry, about 80% based in China, employs
about 400,000 people who earn £77 per month on average.
Big industry
Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group at
Manchester who wrote the report, said gold farming had become a significant
economic sector in many developing nations.
"I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but
assumed it was just a cottage industry," said Professor Richard Heeks from the
University of Manchester who wrote the report.
"In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages,
there turn out to be tens of thousands."
In many online games virtual cash remains rare and many people turn to
suppliers such as gold farmers to get money to outfit avatars with better gear,
weapons or a mount.
Some gold-farming operations offer other services such as "power levelling"
in which they assume control of a player's character and turn it into a
high-powered hero far faster than the original owner could manage themselves.
Prof Heeks said very accurate figures for the size of the gold farming sector
were hard to come by but his work suggested that in 2008 it employs 400,000
people who earn an average of 145 USD(£77) per month creating a global market
worth about 500m USD.
But, he said, the true size of the sector was hard to estimate - it could
easily be twice as big.
The quasi-criminal nature of gold-farming made it hard to truly gauge its
extent, said Prof Heeks.
In most online games all the activities associated with gold farming -
gathering in-game cash to items to sell, buying game gold or sharing accounts -
are a violation of the terms governing that title.
Anyone caught engaging in any of these activities is likely to be banned from
the game and have their account shut down.
"I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it's a
significant phenomenon that academics and development organisations are unaware
of," he told the BBC.
Already, he said, gold farming was comparable in size to India's outsourcing
industry.
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