Every city seems to have one. That dirty street you walk down, you know there are prostitutes around, someone is selling drugs, sometimes it’s out in the open, sometimes it’s just beneath the surface. This weekend I was introduced to one such street online, while playing World of Warcraft.
How I Got Involved
It started innocently enough. My wife was trying to get her faster flying mount and it required a seemingly insurmountable amount of in game gold. She needed over 6,000 and working hard would take days and days. A quick search of the internet saw “Cash for Gold” and it was cheap. All the gold she needed was as little as $30. Since I had the PayPal account, I paid the fee and shortly an Asian woman speaking very poor English phoned telling us where to meet her “guy.” Then hung up, we went there, and got a message, “Will have to do it later.” and logged off. I tried to call the number back and it was disconnected. I filed a PayPal dispute and before long the woman called again, the guy showed up and Dawn got her gold.
This morning, selfishly, I was thinking about the cool gear I could buy with a little gold, so I searched again, found a top Google Ad, purchased some gold myself, promised as in stock, delivered in an hour. Time passed and I went back to the site, initiated a live Chat, and that’s where things got crazy.
It didn’t take too long to figure out that they lied about it being “In Stock” and had what turned out to be Chinese tweeners working their asses off to farm the gold I had asked for, but more on that later. So I asked for a refund, and seriously, no less than a dozen requests for a refund were met with apologies and responses that never once addressed me asking for a refund.
Next I filed a PayPal dispute for the company’s false advertising things in stock they don’t actually have. According to their website even right now they have up to 25,000 gold in stock right now, but they can’t fill my measly order for 3,000 in 7 hours.
5 hours in a get an email from the company asking why I had filed a dispute, they just didn’t understand. I responded with the full details and within a few minutes the woman in the chat window responded “Close your dispute with PayPal and we will refund your money at once.”
Of course I laughed and said, “That’s just not how disputes work, I’ll close it when I have my money back. At this point I was done with gold as I had started reading more about how this gold is acquired.
After 5-6 threats to “Close the dispute if I want my money back” I responded that I was fine, I was protected by PayPal, they would never get my money and were wasting their time asking. In an odd turn then they asked me to send an email to fig.dragon@gmail.com and then they would send my money back. I refused thinking this odd since they had my details and could easily revert the PayPal transaction, and then they responded “In order to preserve the evidence, we need you to send an email to us, thank you for your cooperation.” That’s when I said I was closing the Window, PayPal would ensure I got my money back, it wasn’t worth the trouble for $30.
Is it a Problem?
Absolutely, and it’s a two part issue. The first issue, and the minor issue to be clear, is that after reading and understanding more about in game economy, the massive amount of gold being generated and sold to players in the game has created inflation making normal items excessively expensive for players who earn their gold the right way.
This article has an interesting take on in game economy and the inflation, I recommend you read it.
The second issue is much darker.
What’s Really Happening
What might be a startling statistic. It’s estimated that nearly 1 million people in China are working for as little as $100 a month by farming gold for these places to sell to us lazy bastards in America and Europe. They sit in rooms described as looking like 24-hour LAN parties mixed with shabby dorm rooms, and they do nothing but play the game in a way that reaps the most gold profit. The trade itself is estimated at nearly $1 Billion per year.
The “gamers” typically work in 10-12 hour shifts and provide gold to well educated staffers at the brokerages that get the gold to the players who have purchased it.
That’s very sobering to me. I paid potentially a little kid, $0.42 per hour (assuming he works only 12 hours a day, 5 days a week) to save me a little time in the game.
Does World of Warcraft want it to stop?
Well, you would think they do. The humanitarian issue is something I sincerely hope they care about, but they have quite a pickle. It’s estimated that some 9 million subscribers pay for World of Warcraft. It’s also estimated that 30% of them are Gold Farmers. That means that eradicating Gold Farmers would eradicate 40.5 million dollars a month in revenue. You know they aren’t going to cut off their noses to spite their face.
What’s Next
I don’t know to be honest. It was awful easy for me to go out and buy gold without thinking about it. I am sure it is for millions of players, especially when they get to where the gold becomes an inhibiting factor to their enjoyment experience. When I played several years ago, expensive things on the auction were a few hundred gold, now seeing things for thousands of gold is common, that makes even legitimate players think about buying gold just to keep up, only exacerbating the problem. The more we buy, the more poor kids play the game for little to no money to provide it for us.
I hate to end an article with no answers, but awareness is good. Before you sign in to PayPal to pay for some in game money, think about who is getting it for you, what it’s doing to the game itself, and hope you actually get it. These people turn over accounts like you go through Toilet paper, customer service doesn’t rate very high as a priority. In my case they even resorted to extortion to try and keep my money.
I don’t want this gold now, I just want my money back, hopefully PayPal will be sure to make sure that happens.
Details
I dealt with Gold4Power.com, they have turned out to be a company with decidedly no scruples in lying, false advertising and trying to bully customers. In the past few hours they have:
sent emails trying to get me to confirm I accepted shipment of the gold, which I obviously didn’t.
They tried to get me to close my dispute I filed at PayPal by saying the couldn’t refund my money until the dispute was closed because PayPal wouldn’t allow them to see the transaction until it was closed.
They tried to tell me it was a Chinese holiday and that’s why they couldn’t give me the gold yet, nobody was working (even though this person was obviously working logged in to the game to tell me this.)
They told me they did not have the gold and were trying hard to get it together for me.
They told me they did have the gold and someone was in the process of delivering it.
A pattern of lies.
Related Reading
NY Times – The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer
Chinese Gold Farmers in the Game World
Fox News – Chinese ‘Gold Farmers’ Play Computer Games for Cash
Tweet
Sure makes me think twice. The comment that resonates with me:”1 million people in China are working for as little as $100 a month by farming gold for these places to sell to us lazy bastards in America and Europe”. The humanitarian in me thinks geez, why I am paying someone such a nomial fee to do something I can do myself? Oh yeah, cause it will take me 72 hours instead of 5 minutes. 72 hours of my time is worth a hell of a lot more then $30.00, of course that’s only because I have $30 to spend on a dumb video game. Is $100 a month in china actually a living to these people – or is it poverty? I bet they count thier lucky stars for us “lazy Americans” that dont take to the time to earn thier own gold. I don’t if I should feel guilty or offer to add a tip to my order.
Good article.
But you also have to think about it, $100 is worth a lot more there than it is here. So that might not be a bad salary in the end. Still the whole idea behind such companies is appalling i think.
If you want to play a game you should play it and not “cheat” your way ahead with buying gold. That’s like taking a shortcut through a wall because you cannot find a key in a quest.
And apparently there is no obvious way to stop the madness, like you said. As long as Blizzard makes money, they don’t care too much. Players still want to get ahead quick so they won’t stop either.
It may be the tip of an iceberg. Wonder if PayPal knows. It stays an open question, though, whether this is good for the Chinese. It doesn’t take much for them to feel things are looking up. They keep income tax to about a 10% level, and National Geo says they’re really racing ahead as an economy at large. They aren’t, however, very sensitive to working conditions or business ethics. They’re new to the idea of profit, and Americans can use that to make money, and sweep the details under a carpet.
What do you mean the humanitarian element? If you didn’t buy gold suddenly these kids would get well paying jobs?
You’ve come into contact with exploited people – severing contact isn’t a humanitarian option. Fair enough if you want to get away, but it’s not humanitarian to just cease buying their farmed gold.
just because they need the money doesn’t make treating them poorly, working them long hours is ok.
Seem to me asian contries have the same working conditions, japaneze work more hours than was said in this article.. sleep in “hotells” with small spaces.
Shure sallery is better but then life in japan costs more than in china.
And I am also guessing that they have it better working than being out of employment, one could argue we are helping thier economy.
Only thing I see that makes me wonder is that China actually is trying to stop these farm companies, atleast thats what Ive read.
About shady companies, I think they exist all over internet. Ive not had problems with the places Ive had contact with. But then I read reccomendations on other sites before buying.