For many MMO players, gold farmers are nothing more than a nuisance, spamming public chat and mass PMing potential customers.  However, gold buyers can easily throw off a game's entire economy, thus becoming more than an annoyance for other players who do their own farming.

Business is booming for gold farmers, and according to new research conducted by Professor Richard Heeks of Manchester University, up to 400,000 people in various developing nations earn a living through this illegal trade of online currency (and goods).  About 80 percent of the gold farming industry is based in China, where farmers earn an average of $142 per month.  Exact numbers are hard to come by due to the nature of the business, but Professor Heeks estimates the total global market worth at around $500 million, though it could easily "be twice as big."

"I initially became aware of gold farming through my own games-playing but assumed it was just a cottage industry. In a way that is still true. It's just that instead of a few dozen cottages, there turn out to be tens of thousands... I was drawn to write about gold farming due to my perception that it's a significant phenomenon that academics and development organisations are unaware of...

It is also a glimpse into the digital underworld. Or at least the edges of a digital underworld populated by scammers and hackers and pornographers and which has spread to the 'Third World' far more than we typically realise."

Steven Davis, chief of game security firm Secure Play, believes the gold farming industry follows the success of MMOs, expanding as the latter grows increasingly popular.  Despite efforts made to wipe out gold farming and other shortcuts in online gaming, both are integral to the each other.  "When you get people with more money than time and time than money the two will find a way to meet," he said.

The buyers aren't limited to Western countries either.  The whole industry functions on its own heirarchy, Davis explains, ranked by "where wages are lowest."  While Chinese gold farmers may cater to players in North America, Vietnamese farmers offer their services to the gamers in China.

"You could get rid of it," he admits, "but you would get rid of one of the most fundamental parts of player-to-player interaction."