IEEE Spectrum December, 2007 - 24

GAMEBOTS: When Thurman went into automated gold farming, he purchased
stacks of computer gear [bottom] and set up a bank of computers [top] to play
Ultima Online for virtual currency, which he later exchanged for real money.

already wreaking havoc in the virtual worlds. In one episode a
few years ago, cheaters unleashed fake currency into the world
of EverQuest, one of the most popular online games, inflating
its economy by 20 percent.
Gamers and game makers are feeling swindled. "It's criminal,
in the context of a virtual world," says Scott Hartsman, senior
producer and creative director of EverQuest II at Sony Computer
Entertainment America, in Foster City, Calif. "The entire reason
societies have laws and mores is to protect people from getting
hurt. By definition, people are getting hurt."
There are odd and controversial real-world repercussions to
the cheating. News accounts during the past year have described
the rise of sweatshops in Asia, especially China, where low-paid
workers play online games for 12 hours a day to amass virtual
goods to be sold on the black market.
"This is evidence that there really isn't anything special about
virtual worlds," Castronova says. "We've been reading about
globalization of labor markets, about software engineers in India
taking jobs, and this is just another example of that phenomenon.
Americans will spend money for online goods; wage rates are
lower in Shanghai. The Internet allows [these transactions] to
happen. It's the globalization of the labor market."
Isn't this unauthorized activity illegal? Aside from possible
violation of local labor laws, the answer is no. No real-world
laws cover online gaming, so the players and makers instead
rely on their own terms of agreement, which users accept when
they install games on their home computers. The agreements
basically state that everyone will play by the rules-and allow
the delicate balances of make-believe worlds to survive. But none
of it is legally binding anywhere in the world.

world value, thanks to sites specializing in what are called realmoney transactions (RMTs). People covet the jewel-encrusted
super-sword in a game but can't spare the time to log the kind
of hours they'd need to actually earn the virtual gold to buy it.
So they obtain it the newfangled way: with their credit cards. In
other words, they pay real money to buy virtual things.
Edward Castronova, an associate professor of telecommunications at Indiana University, in Bloomington, and author
of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
(University of Chicago Press, 2005), puts the annual total market
value for virtual assets between US $200 million and $1 billion.
Although that may sound like small potatoes-the cellphone
ringtone market is roughly $5 billion per year-the cheating is

34 IEEE Spectrum | December 2007 | NA

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rICHArD tHurmAN (2)

hurman was one of the first geeks to take breaking the
rules of virtual worlds to a new level by engineering
the automation of gold farming. Many others followed
his lead. Although no one knows for sure how many
gold farmers there are, Thurman guesses as many as a
million worldwide. Their shadowy world has become big enough
to have its own published manifesto: Gary McGraw and Greg
Hoglund's Exploiting Online Games (Addison-Wesley, 2007).
Thurman has been part of it from the start. You might even
say he helped establish it. A software specialist with a bachelor's
degree in business information systems and a master's in computer science, both from the University of Phoenix, he spent
three years applying himself to milking Ultima Online, then one
of the most popular multiplayer games, for all he could. At his
peak, he had a fleet of 30 computers automatically raking in
game gold, earning him more than $25 000 per month.
Subverting video games isn't new. Geeks have been figuring
out how to exploit game technology to their advantage for decades,
giving themselves extra "lives" in Pac-Man or switching into invincible "God mode" in Doom. When massively multiplayer games
such as Ultima Online, from Electronic Arts of Redwood City, Calif.,
and EverQuest came onto the scene during the last decade, the
emergence of virtual economies raised the stakes. You weren't just
competing for ego anymore; you were gaming for dollars.
Other factors helped attract hackers. For example, economies of scale. Online games are not just for nerds. The action
is mainstream. Hordes of engineers, accountants, lawyers, and

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum December, 2007