The virtual goods economy of massively multiplayer online games is likely to be thriving, but it also includes stimulating an undesirable side-effect: exploitation. A former detainee at a jail in Heilongjiang province, China, has told the Guardian about how he was habitually forced into playing MMOs like World of Warcraft for the gathering of loot, which the prison guards would then resell online for up to ¥6,000 ($924) per day. Such totals could be the made of as much as 300 inmates working 12-hour daily shifts, though predictably they saw not one of the profits themselves. The unnamed source was at a “re-education through labor” camp where the standard toil would involve actual, instead of virtual, mining. The profitability of the web market has seemingly inspired prison bosses to maneuver with the days, however, with business being so brisk that the computers “were never turned off.” A Chinese government edict from 2009 is meant to have introduced a demand that online currencies only be traded by licensed entities, but it’s believed that the practice of using prisoners during this fashion continues unabated.
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