Game sweatshop

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A game sweatshop is a business concerned with making and selling accounts and in-game currency on MMORPGs. It is also illegal. The term can also refer to a building containing computers installed with MMORPGs (e.g. World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc), which generate money for the business. Laborers work on the computers to either collect in-game currency or to generate high-level characters. Organizations run like this are referred to as sweatshops since the workers usually make very little money. Game sweatshops make their business selling the gold or characters online through auction sites such as eBay. This is often referred to as gold farming, where the character is not "playing the game" in its usual definition, but is "playing" the game in an attempt to either create a better character, either for that player, or to generate virtual value to exchange for other things, virtual or otherwise.

While the MMORPG community is growing rapidly, another sector of the gaming industry is the online game merchandise industry. The practice of paying real money for accounts or money in-game is largely discouraged by games such as RuneScape. This is because of two main reasons. One reason is that buying accounts/money is against the spirit of the game; many people work for hundreds of hours to achieve high levels and obtain gold. Another reason is because of the risk. When a person buys in-game currency online, there is no guarantee that they will receive their purchase; unlike in real life, online games have no way of making somebody come through with their trade.