In the MMO community, China has been synonymous with Gold Farming. We tend to imagine rooms filled with poorly paid Chinese workers huddled over computers, toiling in the virtual worlds (World of Warcraft, EVE, Rift, etc.) to make cash in the games only to sell it for real currency in the real world. It can be a very lucrative venture for the owners of such businesses. But part of good business is understanding your bottom line and cutting costs that are not necessary. One of the biggest expenses of a business are the employees themselves, namely pay and benefits. But sadly (and this is written with a sarcastic tone), employees are generally necessary to generate money. So ideally, you want workers that require as little compensation as possible. But where would you find such cheap labor?
Locked up in a local prison/labor camp is where. When you hear the term "chain gang", images of shackled prisoners in striped uniforms working on the side of the road or in a quarry may come to mind. Well, you need to get with the times because, with the Internet, the sky is the limit. And once again, China shows its prowess for using the Internet as a tool of oppression and monetary gain by introducing the "virtual chain gang". Engadget reported today that a former detainee of a Chinese labor camp has spilled the beans on some interesting labor practices going on behind locked bars and closed doors. Forgoing the traditional “re-education through labor” practices found in the Chinese penal system, some of the prisoners of this ex-detainees’ camp were parked in front of computers instead of outside at a labor site or in a factory. It is hard to be sure if this is practiced on a larger scale and if it is supported by the government considering changes made back in 2009. There is already a good deal of scrutiny over China’s “re-education through labor” system and information like this only adds to an already muddied issue. So, the next time you are out and about in Azeroth and someone swoops in and steals the node you were about to mine, remember that you may have just seen someone serving time for a crime. You never know.
