Asian News International
BEIJING — A former Chinese prisoner has revealed that scores of prisoners in the country are forced into ‘gold farming’ — the practice of building up credits and online value through the monotonous repetition of basic tasks in online games.
Liu Dali, who was a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, said that they were forced to play online games to build up credits that corrections officers would then trade for real money.
The 54-year-old reckons that the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners are forced to do.
“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu told the Guardian.
“There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off,” he added. He further said that if he did not complete his work quota, the officers would punish him physically.
“They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things,” Liu said.
Millions of gamers around the world are prepared to pay real money for such online credits, which they can use to progress in the online games.
Copyright 2011 Asian News International (ANI).
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