A recent study by Manchester University has found that gold farming – the act of spending money to have a third party play your character – could be a $500 Million industry.

Speaking with the BBC, Manchester University’s Richard Heeks explained how online gold farming is nearly the same in size as the Indian Outsourcing industry:

The Indian software employment figure probably crossed the 400,000 mark in 2004 and is now closer to 900,000… Nonetheless, the two are still comparable in employment size, yet not at all in terms of profile.

The full study, titled “Current Analysis and Future Research Agenda on ‘Gold Farming’: Real-World Production in Developing Countries for the Virtual Economics of Online Games” (sexy title), goes into detail on this growing industry. Unfortunately, because it’s illegal to gold farm, exact numbers aren’t available.

via Gamasutra

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