Gold Trading Exposed: The Sellers 2009-10-20Page 1 of 4.
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Last week, we kicked off our four-part weekly feature series on gold trading - the grey market for in-game currencies, services and items in MMOs - with an introduction to a shady business that's outwardly condemned by players whilst being supported by 30 per cent of them.
Future instalments will look at real-money trading from the perspectives of MMO players and developers, but this week, Nick Ryan talks to the the farmers, spammers and website entrepreneurs who fuel this trade. Are they evil hackers and credit card fraudsters, downtrodden workers, or neither? And what do they have to say for themselves?
What do "gold sellers" actually do? Sit in a den somewhere, plotting crimes and flogging victims' credit card details, in order to fund their drugs and prostitution empires ... or is the picture of the hard-pressed Chinese worker on the edge of starvation wages more accurate? The truth is, probably, a mixture of both, with many "legitimate" gold farming and selling businesses keen to distance themselves from the criminal element in the industry. No-one knows for sure, because that industry is so fragmented and located in distant cultures like China.Money makers
Gold sellers, or real money traders (RMT), make their cash in three main ways:
One: selling in-game currency. This is similar to buying foreign currency in the "real world". You buy via a gold seller'...