RMT and You

There’s kind of a renewed interest in studies on RMT and “gold farming”, in a large part due to Richard Heeks‘ academic paper on the subject (PDF), which was picked up by Salon a few days ago. Heeks does a good job dissecting the industry (in essence this is not the core of his paper, he uses this as a background to argue his case of RMT and gold-farming being a driver behind economic development), which sadly can not be said about some of the journalists calling or emailing me for comments and clarifications on the subject.

A common target for account thieves - a guilded player's guilds' bank

But this is besides the point. What isn’t, is that Heeks’ research, as well done and sound as it is, fails to mention that gold-farming is dead, at least for the “Big Three” of current gold buying ecosystems. That’s not to say, that gold selling is. mmobux (whom, themselves, aren’t entirely innocent when it comes to supporting gold sellers) published a quick overview over revenues by RMT holding companies and arrives at a startling $47.8M for the leader of the pack, THS International. IGE, brainchild of Brock Pierce, and its affiliates clock in at $20.9M, and that’s before adding revenues from “legit” sources such as Wowhead, Thottbot, and others which are owned by IGEs holding company.

So, yes, selling gold is a lucrative venture. Farming it, however, isn’t as easy as it once used to be. Things have changed tremendously since I wrote On Gold and Gollums, an overview into the Gold Farming and Selling Industry in 2006. In theory most of the structure still remains - gold is acquired by individuals who then, for pennies on the virtual dollar, sell these stashes to aggregator agents whom, in turn, deliver large chunks of currency to the actual gold sellers such as IGE or THS.

In most cases said gold never leaves the pockets of its initial farmer. What is sold to agents and on, are options at distribution. Farmer Joe announces he has 14,000 gold on a toon on the Daggerspine (US) server. The option is sold to IGE whom then exercise it, instructing Joe to hand all or part of it to Player Jane. Jane previously paid for this gold on a RMT site affiliated with THS, IGE, or one of the smaller outfits, Joe receives his cut after the transaction is made.

So far so good. Only Joe no longer exists. The previously mentioned “Big Three” have gone to great length to discourage the act of gold farming, that is killing monsters and looting chests to acquire the needed currencies. What worked well in, say, Blizzard’s pre-expansion Dire Maul instanced dungeon, no longer does. Most dungeons yield less per-hour “revenue” than non-instanced areas, in which the gold farmer has to compete with legitimate players for drops. Players who are, especially as close to the next Expansion as we are today, vastly exceeding any gold farmer’s character abilities.

Newer dungeons are designed to be unmanageable by single players and the formerly very easily farmed Dire Maul no longer yields any significant revenue - an average run nets farmers about as much currency as an average developed player can acquire in less than one tenth of the time needed to run Dire Maul.

The RMT industry’s response - don’t farm gold, take it from those who legitimately earned it. The approach - key-logging and “hacking” of World of Warcraft and other games’ accounts. At an average of 3000 gold per character in currency and items, as one RMT insider professed to me, a simple hack yields the average of three days’ work in less than an hour.

Account hacking adittionally poses a very low threat to the hacker itself. Obtained username/password combinations are kept unused until currency is needed on the server itself. The victim account remains untouched while orders are taken, then stripped of its possessions for gold. In case of investigations, characters are usually restored and buyers may be stripped off their gold, but since none of the sellers in this case acted on game accounts of their own, the MMO operator has little to no chances of catching and dealing with the perpetrators.

This system has proven to be so effective, it has long since pushed farmers off the income table for MMO RMT sellers. The new overlords of MMO gold aren’t Chinese or Thai anymore, they’re Americans and Europeans, purchasing username/password lists from Russian and Chinese operators of keylogging software. And even this last link into the developing world slowly dissipates as keyloggers are deployed more and more by domestic attackers.

Heeks’ paper still outlines many of the operations and functions of the RMT business, its core premise, the support of developing countries through RMT, however, may hold true less and less as time passes.

Tagged as: gold farming, mmo, rmt