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

"sweat"shops?

[yelohbird]

I really don't get how being paid to play MMORPGs constitutes as sweatshop labor. Here in the U.S., people pay money to online services to play MMORPGs. Besides sweating in an unairconditioned room, I don't see how such would violate any human rights laws. In fact, it creates more jobs in a new industry to aid third-world citizens who otherwise might be unemployed. There really is no case there.

I feel soooo sorry for them

[DigiShaman]

I mean, playing games all day is such tough labor. There has got to be laws against this! *Gasp*

Those poor guys in the sweatshops playing games all day... It must be very very hard blue-collar work. *sigh*