After a long day of hard labour, scores of Chinese prisoners are now being forced to spend their nights playing online games in order to win credit for their guards, a former inmate has claimed.
World of Warcraft: Chinese labour camp prisoners forced to play online games
The inmates were forced to play games such as World of Warcraft
A 54-year-old prisoner at the Jixi labour camp in the northern province of Heilongjiang said he was forced to play games on the internet in order to build up credit that was traded by his guards for real money, a practice known as “gold-farming”.
In many online games, such as the enormously popular World of Warcraft, players who spend hours accumulating gold inside the game then sell their achievements to other players who do not have the time or patience to earn their own online currency.
Although the practice is technically illegal, it is widespread. Typically, players in developing countries sell their gold to players in the United States or Europe.
In an interview with the Guardian, the prisoner said online gaming was a far more lucrative activity for the managers of the labour camp than the physical labour the inmates were forced to do.
"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," 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 5,000-6,000rmb (£470-570) a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."
He added: "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.”
However, an official at the central office for labour camps in Heilongjiang denied that inmates were forced to play games online. “I have never heard of this. If you want to see for yourself, come to one of our labour camps,” he said.
The official, who declined to give his name, said: “We do not allow our inmates to do high-risk occupations, such as coal-mining. We do not have large numbers of computers. And we do not allow our prisoners to have any contact with the outside world. If they were playing these online games they could easily communicate with other people. We would never allow that.”
According to figures from the China Internet Centre, nearly £1.2bn of make- believe currencies were traded in China in 2008 and the number of gamers who play to earn and trade credits are on the rise.
It is estimated that 80 per cent of all gold farmers are in China and with the largest internet population in the world there are thought to be 100,000 full-time gold farmers in the country.
这个到是让人眼前一亮呢，虽然不合规矩，但确实是近来听过的最河蟹的事了
