Reply #15: China is the primary location of such businesses, yes.

[Akoto]

They're not the only country, but it's estimated that around 100,000 Chinese participate in the business. The "virtual economy" is so huge that it even outranks the economies of many real world nations!

Often, these workers are placed in deplorable conditions (hours, location, or both) and get maybe $100-$250 a month for what they do. It's work that anyone can learn, though, so it's very popular among college students looking for some extra cash.

The workers are paid low wages. Their bosses then sell that currency to brokers at marked up prices. The brokers sell that currency to players in turn, marking it up even further.

Gold farming is detrimental to the health of the games themselves, too. They flood the virtual environments with excess currency, which devalues it. Often, the farmers also engineer the worth of properties within the game, driving up prices. Ironically, this means that people will have to buy large sums of money to purchase expensive in-game items, which are sold for those high prices by (you guessed it) the gold farmers. So, they get real cash for the game currency sale, and then they recover their in-game cash through the marked up items.

China has had a few cases of neglect and even death linked to online games, which is why the limitation policy was created.