Third-World Sweatshops Producing Virtual Goods

prostoalex writes "MSNBC points to the court cases spawned by virtual worlds. Recently, Tom Loftus notes, a virtual island in one of the MMORPGs sold for $30,000, enough to attract commercial attention. Apparently, some businesses create third-world sweatshops, where low-wage laborers are being paid to play and accumulate enough virtual merchandise, so that an eBay sale of it makes the operation profitable. 'One such business, Blacksnow Interactive, actually sued a virtual world's creator in 2002 for attempting to crack down on the practice. The first of its kind to center on virtual goods, the case was eventually dropped,' MSNBC says." Update: 02/06 18:59 GMT by Z : We ran a story about the sale of the virtual island, and Terra Nova has a lot of commentary on the sale of virtual goods. For comparison, the economic impact of this phenomenon is roughly equal to that of Namibia or Macedonia.

Comments

Sweatshop?

[bigtallmofo]

Considering relatively affluent people in the US pay money to play these games for hours on end, I don't think you could describe paying third-world citizens money to play the games as a "sweatshop" work environment.

Where's the signup sheet for this "sweatshop"? I'm sure there's plenty of Slashdot readers that would gleefully sign up.

Re:Sweatshop?

[Photon Ghoul]

Yeah so all the comments here are "oh wow being paid to play games is considered bad"?

Slashdot or the submitter shouldn't have used the word "sweatshop" because it focuses attention on the working conditions away from the fact that there are companies who really game the system in MMO's for profit. It gets to the point that their actions ruin the in-game economy and playability.

Consider Everquest2. There supposedly exists a group of people who work for one "Boss" (that's actually his in-game name). These people run teams of bot-driven characters who farm items, drive up prices, intrude in other's playing space etc. Supposedly a lot of their items end up being sold on online auctions.

Re:Sweatshop?

[hanssprudel]

However, if they can't leave it IS slavery.

Of course they can leave, but the "fair trade" people always conveniently forget that in their quest to justify protectionism. The fact is that the people who work in these "sweatshops" (whether they are making sneakers or RPG characters) are there by choice because they decided the alternatives they had were worse. And if the "sweatshop" was to dissapear, what would happen? They would be left with exactly those alternatives.

Of course it sucks that their are people in world who are so poor that working under awful conditions is a step up for them. But denying them this step up does not help their poverty - instead it locks out their societies from the prospect of economic development.

You can point this out to the left as many times as you want, though, and they won't listen. The reason is that their motives for wanting protectionism have nothing to do with concern for foreign workers. Like all other protectionism, it has to with protecting ourselves from the possibility that others are able to do our jobs better and cheaper.

Virtual Goods?

[ceeam]

Let's think about it. What makes these goods more "virtual" (ie not-real) than MP3 music or videos? No, really?

Doctorow wrote about this

[Dark Paladin]

Here's a link (think there might be a commercial to go through, but there it is:)

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/15/andas _game/index.html

A story about what MMRPG's might be like in the future, and the repercussions of that in our lives, including the "sweat shop" idea. The first half made me go "Eh, another story about MMRPG's and the evils of playing all the time", but then when the meat of the story came in it had me thinking.

Seems the future is now.

Re:meanwhile... - prophetic SciFi

[aacool]

Cory Doctorow wrote a short story, Anda's Game about this not too long ago - this is quite interesting.

Since Salon is quite restrictive in access, I put a DRM-free txt/html version on my blog along with a review.

The story itself is here(txt) and here(html).

A review of the story is also on my blog

As is par for Cory's work, the topics are cutting edge - dealing with ebay-driven in-game economics, dietary restrictions on kids,anti-globalization criticism, puns on the Bradbury/Moore controversy and female rights a la SuicideGirls(?). In another time, a little girl might play with a golliwog, a Barbie or a teaset. In this post-modern age, she is a skilled character in a game that borrows from Everquest, Ray Bradbury, Quake and Tolkien - more a killer than a wayfarer. Her participation in, and then disavowal of, an in-game conspiracy to terminate characters who produce in-game gold to be sold for real money on ebay, is bracketed with the onset of youthful diabetes, induced perhaps by the sweetshops just outside the 500 m sugar-free zone at her school.

Ok I've Bought virtual goods

[Grimster]

I like to play games, I have a group of friends I've played online games with since the infancy of online MMORPGS (DarkSun Online nearly 10 years ago now) and unlike the olden days, I can no longer play as many hours as I used to. I have a kid, wife, a company to run, etc, so my play time isn't that "much".

So I'm left with staying a "newbie" forever, for example in WoW it takes "roughly" 300+ hours of real play time to get a character "maxxed" out, playing 3 maybe 4 hours a day, I'm looking at 3-4 months to get maxxed out so I can join in the "high level" fun stuff. By then most of my friends will be on their 3rd or 4th maxxed char and hell by then most of them will be quitting for the next game and I'm sitting there going "damnit".

So what do I do? $300 for a maxxed char off Ebay, $300 for enough gold from one of those gold selling services that I can afford to buy enough "good stuff" to be able to join in those high level shenanigans, and I'm set. Obviously if I were working for $8 an hour this would be stupid, but $600 is maybe 2 days income for me, call it 15 hours of work to make that cash, 15 hours of "real world labor" to save myslef 300+ hours of "game time grinding"? I'll pay it. Now I'm able to join in all the reindeer games.

As for the "sweatshops" are these people supposedly being forced to work for these companies? What is these peoples' alternatives? Where would they be working if they weren't doing this? As I understand it there isn't just a glut of "good jobs" in many of these locales so is playing an online game all day for a boss 'that' bad of a job or is it a pretty decent setup for these folks? I think fast food restaurants are HORRIBLE sweat shops and any time I see some teenager being browbeaten by a 20 something manager I just thank the gods I no longer work in fast food (I did during high school and some of my college times).