Runescape players, meanwhile, continually report seeing dozens of gold farmers crowding up locations like the Blast Mine and East Dragons. Earlier this year, a local newspaper published an article on the process.

More and more Venezuelans are growing wise to the benefits of gold farming. “I have friends who play daily and if they do not play, they do not eat that day.” “The truth is, there are people who, if they did not play, they could not eat and would die of hunger,” a former Runescape farmer who wished to remain anonymous told me on Facebook. This adds up to “double, sometimes triple” the average monthly salary in Venezuela, he said, even factoring in the occasional week that he takes off to keep a “low profile” and avoid getting caught.įor Fhynal, it’s just enough to help make ends meet for himself and his mother, as long as inflation doesn’t hurl food prices into the stratosphere. If you want to go out, you have to use a bus, propensity to be robbed.”įhynal said he earns around 200,000-250,000 Venezuelan Bolivares, or approximately $US15-$US20 ($19-$26), per week. That may sound strange, but we live with a lot of crime.

“I gold farm mostly for the raw benefits of it,” a player who goes by the handle Fhynal told me via DMs. While it’s prohibited by Runescape‘s rules, it’s also a relatively safe and comfortable job in a place where one’s safety is by no means guaranteed. Gold farming, generally speaking, is the practice of grinding in a game specifically for the purpose of generating in-game currency or other content to be exchanged for real-world money. If you even remember Runescape, a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game published by Jagex, it’s likely as “that crummy-looking game you played for a few months 10 years ago.” But it runs just fine on hardware that hasn’t been called state-of-the-art in more than a decade, meaning that it’s accessible to many in Venezuela who are strapped for cash, and its gold still fetches a pretty real-world penny. This story originally appeared in October 2017.

To put dinner on the table, many are turning to unconventional jobs. What was once the wealthiest major economy in Latin America is now suffering from shortages of essential goods like food and electricity, as well as spikes in crime and unemployment. Venezuela is in the midst of an economic collapse.

People who sell runescape gold