Gold Farming is Not Only Cheating but it Hurts the Game as Well

Gold farming is a term in Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) for the act of acquiring items of value within a game by exploiting repetitive elements of the game's mechanics and then usually selling these virtual items for real money. For example, waiting in the area that a monster who carries a certain item or amount of gold reappears within a known time cycle after it has been “killed” in game to repeatedly kill it in order to harvest the desired item. Some gold farmers use programs to do this for them

According to a New York Times article, there are over 100 thousand people in China who are employed as gold farmers. Many games activity work to rid themselves of gold farmers. Blizzard, the company that owns and operates World or Warcraft, settled a lawsuit on February 8, 2008 virtually banning one of the larger gold farming companies from its game and websites.

But the issues are deeper than just the ethics of cheating and being an in game nuisance. It also cost the game companies money through credit card fraud and chargebacks. According to an interview with John Smedley, CEO of Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), by Michael Zenke at Massively.com, these gold farmers use stolen credit cards or cal the credit card companies to charge back the account at the end of a month.

In the interview Mr. Smedley stated, “A lot of these farmers are essentially stealing from us. What they do is they charge us back all the time. They use a credit card –sometimes stolen, sometimes not – to buy an account key. They use the account for a month, and then they call the credit card company and charge it back. We have suffered nearly a million dollars just in fines over the past six months; it's getting extremely expensive for us. What's happening is that when they do this all the time, the credit card companies come back to us and say "You have a higher than normal chargeback rate, therefore we'll charge you fines on top of that."

When Smedley was asked about fighting the chargebacks, he answered that they really can not fight the credit card company. He continued, “Visa and MasterCard have these rules about chargebacks, and I personally think they're antiqued. Digital delivery isn't covered by their rules very well. So if you order something from Amazon and pay thirty bucks for a book, if it doesn't show up at your house you can fight it because you can say "I never received that thing." They do not cover that with digital delivery. In my opinion the world has changed a lot and I think that needs to be addressed.” It is estimated that Blizzard has had to pay over half a million dollars in fines to do having a high rate of chargebacks.

You also have to watch out when you buy items from these gold farms. Many of them use stolen credit cards, obtained by unsuspecting users who give them credit card numbers to make their purchases. Your credit card is absolutely not safe in their hands.

What this boils down to is the fact that there is no way for a digital company, such as an online game or content provider, to prove to the credit card companies satisfaction that the provider did deliver the paid for produce. Apparently the consumer’s word is honored above that of a company.

Information about Blizzard’s lawsuit banning a group of gold farmers can be found at http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/02/01/peons4hire-blizzard-injunction/

The Quoted article from the New York Times can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html?ex=1291784400&en=a723d0f8592dff2e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The full interview with John Smedley, CEO of Sony Online Entertainment is in two parts on massively.com . Here is the link to the first part.
http://www.massively.com/2008/01/14/a-ces-interview-with-soe-ceo-john-smedley-pt-1/