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Gold farms? This is a thing?



From a recent essay by Isaac Knowles, Edward Castronova, and Travis Ross,

"Secondary markets can be further split into two types -- sanctioned and unsanctioned -- as determined by the game developer. Third parties in this case are firms that buy assets from players and so-called 'gold farms' and then sell the assets to other players. Gold farms are firms that employ people to spend several hours a day inside of a virtual world gathering currency and items, or developing avatars on a particular game account, for the specific purpose of selling the assets or the accounts to players or retailers."

I had no idea there existed firms that employ people to spend their time inside virtual worlds in this way. What a business model!

At any rate, once I knew I entered "gold farms" into Google Images and got the image above, of the workplace of some of these farmers.
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  1. BloggerFebruary 26, 2017 at 3:00 PM

    ROBLOX is empowered by a growing community of over 300,000 creator players who produce an infinite variety of highly immersive experiences.

    These experiences range from 3D games and competitions, to interactive adventures where players can take on new avatars to discover what it's like to be a dinosaur, a miner working a mine or an astronaut on a space exploration.

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