A former prisoner of a Chinese labour camp , Lui Dali has claimed today that ruthless prison guards are now forcing prisoners to play massive multiplayer game World Of Warcraft as part of a huge and rather clever money making scheme.
WoW has always been known as game where online currency actually has a real monetary value in the real world. Players around the world are running several characters at the same time earning credits within the game to then sell on, in the real world, for as much as £500 a day.
But this is the first time we’ve heard of it happening in prisons – Lui Dali told the Guardian that guards are trading prisoners’ credits for as much as £500 a day – with the prisoners getting none of it.
“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor,” he 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 5000-6000rmb [£470-570] a day.
“We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.” he claimed.
Dali – who is using assumed name – is aged 54 and was sent to Jixi re-education camp in Heilongjiang province in northeast China, in 2004.
The former prisoner said he would spend his days doing manual labour. But then in his nights he was made to play computer games for another 12 hours.
The ruthless prison guards even set the prisoners credit quotas and would physically punish him or any other prisoner that didn’t reach their set quota.
“They would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things.”
The building up and trading of game credits is known as gold farming. Millions of gamers around the world pay real money for the credits in order to save hours of playing time.
Gold farming is rampant in China and other developing nations. Quoting figures from the China Internet Center, the paper says almost £1.2 billion ($1.65 billion) worth of virtual currencies was traded in China in 2008.