This story originally appeared in October 2017.
Should you even remember Runescape, a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game published by Jagex, RuneScape gold is probably as"that crummy-looking match you played for a few months 10 years back." Nonetheless, it runs just fine on hardware that has not been known as state-of-the-art in more than a decade, meaning it's accessible to many in Venezuela that are strapped for cash, and its gold still fetches a pretty real estate penny.
Gold farming, generally speaking, is the custom of grinding in a game specifically for the purpose of producing in-game currency or other content to be traded for real world money. As soon as it's illegal by Runescape's rules, it's also a comparatively secure and comfortable job at a location where one's safety is by no means guaranteed.
"I gold plantation mostly for the raw advantages of it," a player who goes by the handle Fhynal explained via DMs. "I don't have to venture out. That may sound strange, but we live with a great deal of crime. If you want to go out, you need to use a bus, [which increases your] propensity to be robbed."
For Fhynal, it is just enough to make ends meet for himself and his mother, as long as inflation doesn't hurl food costs to the stratosphere.
"In fact, there are those who, when they didn't play cheap RS gold, they weren't able to eat and would die of hunger," a former Runescape farmer who wanted to remain anonymous told me on Facebook. "I have friends who play every day and if they do not play, they don't eat daily."