Whether you can trust this story or not. China &Gold Far

[Noodlestein]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam?mobile-redirect=false


I'm not familiar with many UK sites (Got this fromTotal Biscuit/Halibut) but I wouldn't be surprised if this was true.

[Millya]

Yeah, I saw that article too, pretty awful. =/

[Noodlestein]

I was first a little surprised, but then I thought "Well it is china.".

After seeing the things I've seen from China this wouldn't surprise me (bridge made from garbage for example)

Meh, I didn't read the whole article yet but from the start I get the jist that instead of being outside working on whatever it is, busting rocks etc they're inside sitting at a computer playing games.
Then again I couldn't imagine playing WoW day in day out.

[Millya]

Actually, it was worse than that - they were outside busting rocks/manual labour etc. and then they made them play games most of the night afterwards. If they didn't meet their farming 'quota' then they'd beat them. I wish it wasn't true, but like you said it's not difficult to imagine.

[Noodlestein]

That kind of reminds me of a friend and his wife who took a trip to china and ran into a thief on a train who did get caught...
They never wanted to go back.

[Meraxiss]

Kind of a follow up article on joystick
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/06/03/the-lawbringer-china-forced-labor-and-why-we-must-stop-buying/#continued

TL;DR

Gold buying is bad for the community and the game

[Shaen]

Everyone knows that, but it's not going to stop so long as there are people who view their time as being more valuable than their money to a degree that buying gold makes sense. Gold sellers aren't successful because they advertise a lot and are super business-savvy. It's because there are tons of people wanting to buy gold from them. It sucks that a lot of them are willing to go to such lengths to make money, but I can't say I'm really all that surprised. It's unfortunate.