WoW Gold Farmers Arrested

By noeyou
in PC Gaming

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Grand Master

Osiris

Posted
Posted
Except it's against the rules. That's like saying you applaud drug dealers, because they created a market, grow there own product, and distribute sell the product to fill a need.

I thought we were all intelligent enough to discern between a petty crime and a life destroying crime like drug dealing. I see once again the people of the internet have let me down.

Grand Master

the evn show

Posted
Posted (edited)

I don't suppose anybody bothered to read the report before jumping in to the "lol girfriends" nonsense. I found this part particularly interesting:

Police arrested the pair after Li reported Zhang for unfair revenue distribution. Going into business last August, the gold miners accumulated more than 20 employees with 20 computers to generate RMB 1.6 million in seven months of dealing.

So it looks like the arrest is based more on something like tax evasion or failure to comply with workplace standards.

The part I find interesting: RMB 1.6e7 is about a quarter million dollars. I wonder if I could reasonably set up a gold-farming operation outside of China.

Consider the costs to run an operation like this in America:

  • 20 Personal Computers: $10,000 ($499x20 from dell)
  • Minimum Wage shifts for 20 people 6 days/week for 7 months = $148,320
  • 4 residential ISP connections (1 account per 2 computers) = $19.95 * 4 * 7 months = $560
  • 60-day World of warcraft subscriptions: 20 x 3 x $29.99 = $1,799
  • World of Warcraft Game: $19.99 x 20 + Expansion:$29.99 * 20 = $2,598
  • 600 square feet of full-service office space (with typical office cubicles work space for each employee) $8400

The total costs are about $172,000. Add on standard insurance and operating costs of 10% ($17,200) and 6% corporate tax: you would be clearing about $70,000 every 7 months or about $120,000/year assuming that the 20 American workers are as productive as Chinese workers.

If you allow for Chinese employees to be 185% as productive as Americans (15 hour working days) you then you still stand to make as much as a typical college graduate living in America ($44,000/year). That's not a bad rate of pay for something you could manage as a side project. I am assuming that you'd be responsible for the farming of gold and that you sell that to larger distribution companies who take cash from players. There may be some efficiency to gain going directly from farmer -> game player but that comes with the cost of setting up a distribution network, advertising, etc.

Still, if it's at least financially viable in a typical western country without the need to crap on required business practices then - it'd be worth considering an operation in somewhere with drastically reduce costs. More than half of your expenses are employee expenditures - if you could half that by setting up shop in India or China then you'd be a lot more profitable.

I wonder what it takes to setup an operation like this in Bangalore?

Edited by the evn show
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