Q&A/Essay: ‘Smith Sam’ Talks Gold Farming, Power Leveling

Over at Gamasutra a couple of weeks back, we got an interesting article submission from a Chinese-headquartered gold-selling and power leveling company, USFine.com. Though its use of English was a little iffy, the piece was notable because it tried to present a history of the ever-controversial (and likely EULA-busting) third-party item-trading business, which has thrived through use of cheap labor in emerging markets.
So I followed up with the writer, the Chinese-based ‘Smith Sam’, who appears to be one of the owners of USFine, and got a little background on the company he helps run. According to Sam, there are forty employees at the company, which offers power-leveling (having a third party level up your MMO character for you) and in-game gold in a pretty comprehensive set of games.
His company’s Top 5 most popular games in terms of demand right now are World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI ,Runescape, […]

Original post by editors@gamesetwatch.com (Simon Carless) and software by Elliott Back