June 6th, 2011
Galley Friend. M.C. sends along the story of the week:
Prisoners at a labor camp in northeast China were forced to slay dragons and battle wizards in online games to earn virtual gold that prison guards then sold for real currency, the Guardian newspaper reports.
About 300 prisoners at the Jixi labor camp, located about 18 miles from neighboring Russia, were required to play games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest to earn credits that could be later hawked online to other gamers for cash, former prisoner Liu Dali told the Guardian.
SkinsFanPG June 6, 2011 at 2:39 pm
I know it sounds terrible, but in the grand scheme of things, it ain’t so bad. Compared with Stalin’s gulags, and it’s basically like a vacation for teenagers. Seriously, there are probably kids all over the world who would volunteer for this kind of work.