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18 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 419 (2015-2016)
Invisible Labor, Invisible Play: Online Gold Farming and the Boundary between Jobs and Games

handle is hein.journals/vanep18 and id is 433 raw text is: VANDERBILT JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT & TECHNOLOGY LAW VOLUME 18 SPRING 2016 NUMBER 3 Invisible Labor, Invisible Play: Online Gold Farming and the Boundary Between Jobs and Games Julian Dibbell ABSTRACT When does work become play and play become work? Courts have considered the question in a variety of economic contexts, from student athletes seeking recognition as employees to professional blackjack players seeking to be treated by casinos just like casual players. Here, this question is applied to a relatively novel context: that of online gold farming, a gray-market industry in which wage-earning workers, largely based in China, are paid to play fantasy massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) that reward them with virtual items that their employers sell for profit to the same games' casual players. Gold farming is clearly a job (and under the terms of service of most MMOs, clearly prohibited), yet as shown, US law itself provides no clear means of distinguishing the efforts of the gold farmer from those of the casual player. Viewed through the lens of US labor and employment law, the unpaid players of a typical MMO can arguably be classified as employees of the company that markets the game. Viewed through case law governing when the work of professional players does and does not constitute game play, gold farmers arguably are players in good standing. As a practical matter, these arguments suggest new ways of approaching the regulation of so-called virtual property and of Associate, Mayer Brown LLP. This Article is dedicated to the memory of Greg Lastowka. I am indebted to Greg for his comments, as I am to Laura Weinrib, Lior Strahilevitz, and Noah Zatz for theirs. Thanks also to participants in the Making Visible the Invisible panel of the Association of American Law Schools' Section on Labor Relations and Employment Law on January 3, 2014, and in the Digital Cash! conference held at the University of California, Los Angeles, on September 27 and 28, 2014, for their responses. 419

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