Initially, trades in real time took place informally. "You may buy gold from a fellow student at the school." Jacob Reed, a popular creator of YouTube videos about OSRS gold RuneScape who goes by Crumb in an email to me. In the following years, demand for gold outpaced supply and some players were full-time gold farmers, or those who generate in-game currency to sell for real-world cash.
Internet-age miners always played the massively multiplayer internet games, or MMOs like Ultima Online as well as World of Warcraft. They also worked in several text-based virtual realms, stated Julian Dibbell, now a technology transactions lawyer who once wrote about virtual economies in his journalistic work.
In the past, a lot of these gold farmers were mostly placed in China. Many of them hid in small factories where they slayed virtual ogres and pillaged their corpses during 12-hour shifts. There were stories of Chinese government employing prisoners to create gold farms.
In RuneScape, the black-market economy of gold farmers was relatively modest until the year 2013. Players had been dissatisfied with how much the computer game has evolved since it first released in 2001. They contacted Jagex to bring back an earlier version. Jagex released a new version from its archive, and users were eager to play what would come to be known as Old School RuneScape.
A lot of them were just like Mobley. They played RuneScape as teens and loved the angular graphics and kitschy soundtrack. Although these 20- and 30-year-olds could spare a few hours when they were younger however, they were now juggling responsibilities that went beyond schoolwork.
"People are working they have families to consider," said Stefan Kempe, another popular YouTuber of RuneScape who has close to 200,000 followers and goes by the SoupRS. SoupRS, when he was interviewed. "It's an impediment to how much they can play all day long."
The game isn't easy. To increase the player's agility from one to 99, the most advanced level, it will take more than one weeks of constant play in accordance with a detailed manual published by the developer. With more than their typical allowances at the age of 18, players like Mobley who works in a data center, opted to avoid the grind of trying to level up their characters as well as the price of the rare objects, and the often tedious early parts on the first game.
Others like Corne 21, a 21-year-old software developer from Arnhem, Netherlands, who did not want to reveal his name, but placed bets on gold, and by extension real-world currency, on battles with other players. "I like money. It doesn't matter if it's real or in RuneScape that is, money is great to have" the player said during an interview.
Horn purchases a lot of his gold from middlemen who purchase gold in bulk from farmers of gold who then sell it via websites such as El Dorado or Sythe. Horn believes he's spent anywhere between the 4,000-5,000 euro mark, which fuels what he believes at some point was a gambling addiction.
As players like Corne or Mobley returned to RuneScape with the appetites and pockets of adulthood, the game's black market expanded. Players reported that there was a presence of Chinese gold farmers, but there were others who profited from the popularity of the game: Venezuelans like Marinez.
On March 12, 2020, Marinez decided to enroll at a police academy in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and work toward an occupation in law enforcement. On buy OSRS GP the same day, the Venezuelan government released its first two cases of COVID-19.