Massively^™

We all knew it was a big problem, but gold farming has reached record proportions, despite the constant enforcement by game developers. In a recent study by the UK's Manchester University, nearly 500,000 people in developing countries now earn their living by farming for virtual gold, with 80% of this industry centered in China.

Professor Richard Heeks, head of the development informatics group at Manchester and author of this report, says that gold farming has gone from a cottage industry to a significant economic sector in many developing nations. In fact, the industry has seeped into criminal gang territory with credit card fraud and violent crime being introduced to the mix. Yet despite this illegal activity, we get a nice summary quote from Steven Davis, the chief of game security firm Secure Play: "You could get rid of it, but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."

Unfair revenue distribution is a concern in many economies. In China's, however, it is a crime. Two gold-farmers, Li and Zhang, were arrested by Chengdu's Shuangliu county authorities after Li ratted on his partner Zhang.

Li and Zhang had gone into business last August, and with 20 employees had raked in around 1.6 million Renminbi (人民幣) -- that's getting towards a quarter of a million US Dollars. That's not bad for what amounts to seven months of gold and item trading on World of Warcraft, now is it?

With China cracking down on assorted online gaming activities that are either too intrusive, or have destabilizing economic effects, we don't think either Zhang or Li will get off lightly. Why, we wonder, did Li turn Zhang in? There's got to be a good story behind that.

[via PlayNoEvil]

As noted in our recent Guild Wars post, there's more than one way to skin an RMT cat, if you'll forgive a labored metaphor. Quite aside from simply hunting the farmers down and feeding them to the Sarlacc beast, banning and possible litigation are merely the most commonplace ways to deal with these issues. Clearly, this problem isn't going to just fix itself or go away, and many have lost accounts thanks to these activities.

Have we seen the best solutions to the RMT crisis? What hasn't been tried yet?

I was in the bathroom the other day, reading Games for Windows (because let's be honest, where else would anybody read GfW?) and they had an article on an extremely interesting, though vaguely troubling new shooter called Kwari. Its basic premise is that players pony up a small amount of cash, the amount varying depending on the stakes of the game, and players lose or gain a portion of the pot based on their fragging prowess. Or to put it more simply, it's like online poker, but instead of cards, there are bullets. Designer Eddie Gill of Kwari Limited was hoping that in adding a financial incentive to the basic shooter model, it would result in an experience that was much more intense for the players involved. And if he took in a cut of the profits as well, what's the harm?

By all accounts, Kwari utterly fails at delivering an engaging shooter experience, so whatever sociological implications the game would have had were rendered moot because of sloppiness on the developer's part. Still, this perception that online games could be tweaked to be a form of online gambling got me thinking. Is this business model just a developer supported real-money transaction (RMT) scheme, or is it even deeper down the rabbit hole of Shylock-esque shamelessness?

In news likely to have repercussions for similar cases, Blizzard has handily won their lawsuit against the gold farming outfit Peons4Hire (aka Game Dollar). The permanent injunction [pdf] they were awarded in the suit's settlement effectively means you'll never see a Peon spam message in your mailbox or chat window ever again. The original suit was filed because of Blizzard's belief [pdf] that this gold spam 'diminished players' game experience and cost Blizzard subscribers, bandwidth, employee time, and ultimately, revenue.'

The injunction deals with that by prohibiting Game Dollar/Peons from selling virtual assets from World of Warcraft, or powerleveling characters in the game. They're also legally enjoined from using the chat or in-game mail system to advertise their service ... possibly the first time I've seen a court case refer to a virtual world's specific forms of communication. Beyond all that, Game Dollar is further prohibited from investing in a new company that engages in these activities.

Read on for ... the catch. (There always is one.)

Word has it that, in response to the widespread use and abuse of trial accounts on the part of gold spammers, character-leveling outfits, and RMT humbuggery in general, Blizzard has eliminated the ability for users on trial accounts to invite party members to groups, which joins their recent embargo on broadcast communication in World of Warcraft entirely.

One can't help but wonder if there was a better way to go about achieving this same end of curbing the spammers. Perhaps they could have implemented more thorough standards for authentication prior to being given a trial key, or maybe implemented some sort of referral program where an existing player could "vouch" for a trial user and give them the full benefits they enjoyed before this hotfix. Trial users are usually the most vulnerable and least knowledgeable subset of newbies, and to remove their ability to communicate with the world around them just seems a bit cruel to me.

We all know the spammers are going to find another way around it, after all. They're quite the creative lot.

[Via WarCry]

Two very large names have joined forces to help battle the illegal (and increasingly annoying) digital Black Market that exists to sell virtual in-game goods. Backed by $24 million in investment money, Mitch Davis (the former Massive in-game-ad firm founder) and Sony Pictures Digital vet Andy Schneider will launch Live Gamer, a publisher-supported service that creates a secure platform for real-money purchase and the sale of virtual goods.

Already on board are MMOs and virtual worlds from Funcom GMBH, Sony Online Entertainment, 10Tacle Studios, Acclaim, GoPets and Ping0 Interactive (the company that provides access to the online, multi-player component of Hellgate: London), and they're willing to work with any publisher. With backing such as this, we may soon see a siesmic shift in the virtual goods landscape.

Nearly every MMO is now plagued by these despicable gold farmers and Real Money Traders bent on selling their warez, regardless of their legality. Even my beloved City of Heroes and Villains has recently been targeted with endless spam that fills in-game Email boxes and brazen "live" players (often named "jkjkljlkj") who will approach you trying to offer their services. A concerted effort from within the industry itself to stop these griefers is long overdue. Hopefully this will be the spark that ignites a widespread change.

Yesterday Gamasutra published a five page interview about The Lord of the Rings Online with Turbine's Jeffrey Steefel and Adam Mersky.

According to the interview, one third of LotRO players are over 35 because the license drew people new to MMOs -- people who came for "The Lord of the Rings first, the MMO second." Fans of LotRO often claim the game's community is more mature than that of competing games. "Sometimes game communities can be rough, just because of the nature of the competitiveness and the nature of the age range of people playing, and this is a pretty mature, fun place to be a part of," said Steefel.

Steefel and Mersky also talked about the challenges of dealing with gold farmers, what the real definition of "casual games" might be, the pluses and minuses of adapting a famous work of literature, the competition, and Turbine's option to produce massively multiplayer games for consoles. As is the case with most Gamasutra interviews, the discussion is an excellent read if you want an inside look.