14 DAY TRIAL // A new report coming from the InfoDev division of The World Bank Group estimates that so called “gold farmers” that operate mainly out of Asia and extract in-game currency in the most popular MMOs in order to sell to mainstream players, make up no less than 85 percent of the third party gaming services market, which is evaluated at 3 billion dollars for 2009.
It seems that the rest of the 3 billion are created via power leveling services, which allow gamers who lack the time or the skills to hand over their low level characters to a group of players and then get them back at much higher levels.
Because the report on third-party gaming services comes from The World Bank Group, which is interested in aiding smaller economies to develop as quickly as possible, it recommends that gold farmers expand their activities, in order to help fast development in their own nations.
The report says that a very complex business model has been created around the gold farmers and that at all levels the activity is becoming more efficient even as the companies that run important MMOs like World of Warcraft crack down on the gold farming practice.
The World Bank estimates that there are a number of virtual item and gold seller in China that managed to make more than 1 million dollars in one year from their activity.
There are no clear numbers, but estimates are saying that more than a quarter of all Western MMO players use real world money in subscription based games in order to get better items or to level up faster.
MMO developers have talked about putting gold farmers out of business by opening up their own item stores and services that allow real world money to be turned into in game gold, but so far those plans have not become reality.