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Chinese Prisoners Forced into MMO Gold Farming

It’s been revealed that many Chinese prisoners are being forced into online “hard labor” in titles such as World of Warcraft, because it’s more profitable than manual labor.

A report in UK newspaper The Guardian tells the story of Liu Dali (not his real name) — a 54-year old former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for “illegally petitioning” the central government about local corruption. Liu discovered during his time behind bars at the Jixi re-education-through-labor camp in Heilongjiang province that prisoners were not only being forced to do manual labor by day, but were also made to play online games and farm gold in MMOs such as World of Warcraft by night.