Chinese Prisoners Forced to Play World of Warcraft, Detainee Says

[dkf]

A former prisoner of a Chinese labor camp claims guards are forcing detainees to play online games as part of a huge money-making scam.

Liu Dali told The Guardian website that guards traded the credits inmates built up playing games such as World of Warcraft for money.

"The computers were never turned off."
"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor," he said.

"There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5000-6000rmb a day.

"We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."


http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/26/chinese-prisoners-forced-play-world-warcraft-detainee-says/

[Ohio Joe]

1. hmmm

I wonder if I could get my hernia fixed in a Chinese prison... On the other hand, they probably would not let me drink or smoke while playing... oh well.

[Dreamer Tatum]

2. Along with compulsory Cheetos and Mountain Dew breaks

while Battlestar Galactica played on a monitor in the background.

Once in a while the prison warden popped in to ask when any of them were thinking of looking for work.

[sufrommich]

5. lol. nt

[slackmaster]

3. Are they being fed exploding watermelons too?

:nuke:

[sufrommich]

4. Fox News getting it's headlines fron The Onion? nt

[Rebubula]

6. Amateurs

When my old roommate was playing EverQuest - he checked his login times after about 1 year.

He was bartending at the time and all the free time in the world.

Of that one year period - he was logged into EverQuest for 5 SOLID MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!!! Not 8 hour days - the equivalent of 24/7 for 5 fucking months. I would come home from work to him playing - leave for work the next day with him STILL playing.

The Chinese prisoners could learn alot from my friend.

[Lucky Luciano]

18. Is your friend one of osama's 72 virgins? nt

[Wait Wut]

31. !

:spray:

[Last_Stand]

7. Their biggest complaint was not the forced playing...

it was the class imbalances, the long queues, and those goddamned unstoppable frost mages in pvp.

/nerd off

[Wait Wut]

11. It's reality, dude.

Blizzard has a way of preparing you for real life in the most annoying ways. The fire mage once ruled and now sucks teh ass. Constant nerf/buff of classes/races is how life works as well as long queues.

My husband thinks it's hilarious that I have a "job" in a computer game. Yep. Blizzard's sick way of teaching us about life.

Good to know that the Chinese government is behind the gold farming, though. "Playing" WoW is not the same as "hacking". Must be a poor translation.

FTH!!! /dance

[Last_Stand]

22. It could be worse...

they could be forced to play Rift on an underpopulated server.

Their prison gangs are based on classes and you get kicked out if your DPS isn't high enough.

The #1 black market commodity: poopsock.

There's a whole cell block dedicated to updating add-ons on patch day.

Guild drama results in knife-fights in the showers.

They still don't make any gold from Inscription.

There's no room for casuals.

"You've been a great audience, thank you for coming out!" /drops microphone /trips

[Wait Wut]

30. AHHHHH!!!

You need to call Blizzard! Gotta be better than Starcraft!

:applause:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

23. It's all fun and games until your class gets nerfed.

They the complaining starts. :P

[Capitalocracy]

8. OK, let me explain to you guys what's going on

I know, I know, funny funny, oh, they're FORCING them to play video games, hahaha.

But here's the real story. This is manual labor. These guys don't play the game like you or I play a game. They have to complete repetitive tasks over and over again. This is part of a service that's been popularized by some flaws in the design of WoW where people have to go through and just kill a bunch of low-level creatures to earn gold and level up (or choose to exploit this ability if they have too much time on their hands and nothing to do). These services charge people for taking their characters and doing the gruntwork for them.

This is pretty much the same thing we do to prisoners in the U.S., forcing them to work as slaves, but just in a different industry. Call center work, like customer service, is becoming popular in U.S. prisons.

[Ian David]

10. I used to have to deal with these people in Star Wars Galaxies.

They would have two or three players in one spot, running macros, and just killing a bunch of low-level crap for hours on end.

And then they would mass-spam the entire servers to sell the credits they accumulate, as well as to sell leveling services.

[DainBramaged]

9. The game gold and items they earned was being sold on-line and even EBay

Same as ever damn on line game. Scammers selling gold for stupid amounts of money, and everyone sells at the same price.

[Systematic Chaos]

12. They aren't "playing" World of Warcraft.

They're slaving away at earning in-game currency which is used to buy items in the game like fast horses or flying mounts to move around quicker on. Or armor and weapon upgrades. Or whatever.

They run around, mindlessly killing the same baddies over and over again. These baddies tend to drop items from the trivial to the rather useful which can then be sold to one of the shops in the game for gold. They harvest all the crafting materials like ore rocks and plants to make into potions, then turn around and sell them on the game's auction house for still more gold.

And worst of all, they stand in high traffic areas and spam idiotic messages about their websites (almost always with keyloggers and other malware included!), trying to get people to buy this currency they generate.

They don't group with normal players, they don't socialize. They just drive the legitimate players fucking crazy and take all sorts of verbal abuse in both English and Chinese -- there are websites out there telling you what to type in to say "fuck your mom" or "fuck 18 generations of your ancestors!" or "you have a face like a rotten c***" -- until their eyes bleed.

It's just horrible that someone would be subjected to that sort of forced tedium like that, so that 12-year-olds with Entitlement Syndrome and ADHD with access to daddy's credit card can buy the most wicked cool flying griffon in a damn game, while likely getting at the very least their game account compromised in the process.

Hell, if they were tied down and told to play "for fun" for 12 hours at a time, it would still suck after a while but at least there'd be some actual fun involved part of the time.

[Dreamer Tatum]

16. Still better than "plowing" fields, I'd guess. nt

[Johonny]

33. I can't tell what you described from "playing" world of warcraft

once you stop playing the game do you realize what crap it was.

[Systematic Chaos]

34. What are your hobbies? I bet at least one or two of them are total crap to me.

:shrug:

[jmowreader]

13. Yeah, I can see this...

http://www.hotcataclysm.com/gold.php?gameId=2 is one place you can go to buy WoW gold. They'll also level-up your character for you.

As to the Chinese-prisoner problem...you will probably also find that the really good players have their sentences extended for "misconduct" (even though it's kinda hard to behave badly when you're strapped to a computer half the day playing WoW) and if they ever get released from prison they're rearrested for being the Chinese equivalent of a counterrevolutionary Kulak.

[JonLP24]

14. How awful

No joke, I'm serious.

(However with Fox News I'm not sure to believe this story though it is believable, it's just that it is Fox News)

[sarcasmo]

15. Coming to an American for profit prison near you.

[Capitalocracy]

21. Maybe not.

They might not see it as profitable enough.

[damntexdem]

17. Consider the source before assuming that the report is true.

[madrchsod]

19. this isn`t the first report of china doing this....

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. Source is The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

[brewens]

20. Locked up in some Chinese couples basement. n/t

[Fla_Democrat]

24. Greetings!

{W From} {Blizzsurvey} Greetings! Blizzard system scan to your account a violation of the game's virtual currency trading. Please visit our website {us.hackers.keylogger.net}* review your account information of we will suspend your account. Blizzard Entertainment.



*Not the real site he whispered me, but may as well have been.



You would think that working 12 hour shifts... they would have characters higher than level 1 warriors in Goldshire. :evilgrin:








:smoke:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

29. Heh, I've gotten emails that say almost the same thing.

I still have no idea how they got my email addy and a toon's name I use only for auctions. :shrug:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

25. This isn't competitive play. This is just gold farming over and over again

I'm sure it gets boring as all hell. Not to mention your eyes must feel like their going to fall out. :(

[Posteritatis]

26. To say nothing of probably getting beaten for failure to make quota or the like. (nt)

[Lone_Star_Dem]

32. Yeah, actually they said that in the article

Which I admit I didn't read before posting. :blush:


<snip>
"If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things," he said.
</snip>

I wonder if there's some way Blizzard could block the servers they use?

[davidpdx]

27. The stuff going on in China doesn't surprise me a bit

There are issues with hacking and spamming in China and human rights violations in both China and North Korea.