Against this cataclysmic economic and societal backdrop, huge numbers of people have fled the country in search of better lives, together with a lot more urgently attempting to find their own way of escape. In November 2019, the amount of migrants and refugees reached 3 million. Those who stay in the country have been forced to find methods to survive. While some craft bags out of worthless bolivars -- Venezuelan money -- to sell at markets, the others look to a virtual land of opportunity, spending hours in front of computer screens and mobile phones searching green dragons in the internet RuneScape participant role-playing game RuneScape.

OSRS is the more popular variant, which is favored by Venezuelan RuneScape players as it's simpler to run and doesn't use much data. For the rest of this narrative, once we refer to RuneScape, we are referring to OSRS.] RuneScape was published in 2001 by developer Jagex, but it is just in the last four years a growing number of Veneuzelans have begun depending RuneScape because their main source of revenue. 1 RuneScape player is ex-accountant Martinez, who asked that his name not be published to protect his RuneScape account. Martinez stopped his job following the inflation rate of the bolivar supposed he could no more survive.

RuneScape was a lifeline for both his entire family and Martinez. He tells Polygon he made $450 by gold farming in RuneScape, and used that money to flee Venezuela and move to Peru. He continued to play RuneScape and saved an extra $1,000, which he used to receive his mother and girlfriend out of the nation. "RuneScape is a super mainstream approach to earn money in this day and age," Martinez writes. "Depending on which state in Venezuela you are out of, pretty much everybody knows about RuneScape."

Farming, or"gold farming," as it's more commonly known, involves playing a video game together with the specific goal of accumulating vast amounts of in-game currency (in this instance, RuneScape gold) to sell for profit out of RuneScape. It is nothing new, as Venezuela's infrastructure has been not able to function in the past couple of years, but it's become more conspicuous. Every Venezuelan RuneScape participant we talked to for this narrative told us they sell their gold for either U.S. dollars or cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, meaning that their hard work isn't compromised by the hyperinflation of the own currency, the Venezuelan bolivar.

More RuneScape gold information on https://www.winrsgold.com/