Society & Politics

Making millions playing a game: the illegal world of selling video game items for cash and what it shows me about life

007kingifrit

So it doesn't matter if you play this game or not I think its just a fascinating analysis of human behavior, to watch how a simple game can become something so profitable and cutthroat. It has more betrayal, twists and turns, and alliance juggling than game of thrones....and its more fun to watch also.

Runescape is the most popular game in the world. With over 300 million people who have ever tried it it is in the Guiness book of world records as the most popular online game ever. It is a game of extreme amounts of work for progress and you lose your stuff if you die with it. This makes the stuff really valuable and creates an environment where you are incentivized to get other people killed for there stuff.

Since the items are so valuable they sell for large amounts of money on ebay and other places and as people group together to sell items it can make a really fascinating dynamic (of jerks)

there are 3 interesting groups of people in this scenario:

1. people just trying to play the game. they pay money for protection so they don't get killed while they do the game content

2. people making money providing protection and fighting other groups of people trying to do the same

3. Venezeulans playing the game to make money to survive because they have no other way to make money.

Other times people just steal the accounts themselves. one guy made 150 thousand dollars from stealing a single account and selling its contents

so what does this tell me about people?

  • humans naturally form hierarchies and classes even in environments where they all start out EXACTLY equal. everyone in this game walks naked into the game with no money. all equal....do some end up exploiting others and being rich anyways? yes. you can't make people equal
  • legalizing drugs doesn't work: a decade ago this game tried to fix selling items for real money by selling the items themselves. They traded gold for cash directly as a company just the same way you would legalize drugs.....but the illegally acquired stuff is always cheaper and unregulated and thus always more competitive in price.
  • socialism is so bad it actually drove venezuelans to play a video game to make money because there are so few opportunities in real life... lol

as for me i never played the game for profit. I picked it up in 2004 when everything was super cheap. got some rare things and now almost 20 years later individual things i have sold for 8 to 10 thousand each. I never got into any of the racketeering.

Making millions playing a game: the illegal world of selling video game items for cash and what it shows me about life
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