I’m not sure whether to think that this is funny, or very torturing. Apparently, a 54-year-old prisoner in China called Liu Dali (not his real name) would be breaking rocks and digging trenches in the coalmines of north-east China by day, and by night, build up credits in online games that prison guards would then use to trade for real money. And he’s not alone.

According to Guardian, there are more than 300 prisoners being forced to earn virtual gold for the guards. Sounds like a good business to run a prison.

“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor,” he told the Guardian newspaper. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [between $616 and $924] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”

Gold farming, the practice of mining massive amounts of gold and then selling it on for hard cash, is an increasingly big problem in China and the country essentially banned it two years ago by making the practice of selling virtual goods for real money illegal. In 2009, WoW Insider reported that the gold farming industry was generating about $1 billion worldwide and as much of 85 percent of gold farmers were residing in China.

SOURCE via Guardian