Friday, May 27, 2011

World of Prison-Craft

I fucking love it when the first news story I see in the morning gives me that evil anticipatory smile that makes my fingers itch for blogging. After all these long weeks, I'm actually starting to really enjoy this shit now.

But check out this article from the Telegraph, talking about Chinese Prisoners being forced to play World of Warcraft in labor camps.

God Bless the Chinese. Now, according to this article a prisoner is claiming that the guards at his facility would force inmates to play upwards of 12-hours a day at World of Warcraft, generating online currency which the guards would then trade on a black market platform for real cash. Now, despite Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, making it illegal to exchange game-based currency for real-world currency, this certainly isn't the first instance of a group forcing laborers to log an insane number of hours at a terminal in order to generate these revenues. As the prisoner interviewed in the article mentions, it is actually more lucrative to use the prisoners as a cash-cow in these MMORPG platforms than it is to use them for actual physical labor.

Now, the head of the prison has denied all allegations that prisoners are being used in this fashion, citing that it would violate regulations that all prisoners be denied access with the outside world. Gotta admit though, it's pretty funny to think that the next time your 13 year old nephew logs into his Orc and starts masquerading across the great plains of Azeroth, he'll be chatting it up with a 50-something inmate who is being forced to play literally until his eyes bleed. As the old song says, one man gathers what another man spills.

And on that cheery note, enjoy your long weekend everyone. Memorial Day. Get some.


"Yeah, its bullcrap! I bet half of these people are Koreans!"

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