The game can be a bit tedious. To increase a character's agility from 1 to 99, the highest level, it would take more than one week of continuous play, according to a comprehensive guide published by the developer. Since they now had  more than their typical allowances for teenagers, players like Mobley, who works at the data center, decided to get rid of the grind of getting their characters leveled, the cost of rare items, and the often monotonous early stages to the game.

Others like Corne an 21-year old programmers located in Arnhem, Netherlands, who did not want to reveal his name, but put bets on gold and by an extension, the real currency, in duel with other players. "I have a love for money. It doesn't matter if it's real or in RuneScape that is, money is great to have" the player said during a call.

Horn buys a large portion of his gold from middlemen, who purchase gold in bulk from gold producers and then sell it to websites like El Dorado or Sythe. Horn says he's used between the 4,000-5,000 euro mark, which fuels what he believes at one moment was an addiction to gambling.

As players like Corne and Mobley were able to come back into RuneScape with the appetites and purses of adulthood the game's black market was booming. Players still reported the existence of Chinese gold farmers, but there were also other people who were making money off the popularity of the game: Venezuelans as well as Marinez.

On the 12th of March in 2020, Marinez determined to enroll at a police academy in Caracas the capital of Venezuela and pursue an employment in law enforcement. The following day following, the Venezuelan government announced the first two cases of COVID-19.

It also shut down all schools, closed the borders between Venezuela as well as neighboring countries and put six states and Caracas as quarantine. Marinez was left stranded on the road and holed up at his uncle's home in a city fifty miles of the capital.

Two months later, Marinez came back to Maracaibo, "without any money in my pockets," he said. He tried to find work but found nothing in the market for jobs destroyed due to the pandemic. It also led to a prolonged economic downturn.

Ten years prior, Venezuela, a petrostate under the leadership of Hugo Chavez, witnessed a slump in the price of oil. 2017 was the year that cost of a barrel dropped up to nearly $50, from a peak of more than $100 while it was the year that U.S. instituted wide-ranging sanctions against the authoritarian Venezuelan government.

"When the prices of oil began to drop then  there was no money to import products," said Alejandro Velasco who is a professor of New York University who specializes in Venezuelan politics, during an interview on the phone. "As as a result there was no funds to support the economy."

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