Bill Gates has made an interesting announcement today according to the CNN article found Here. He has pledged $306 million in grants "to develop farming in poor countries"! For those of you who don't already know, gold farming is the practice of hiring peasant workers in extremely poor countries to play MMORPGs in sweatshop like conditions. The in-game currency they "farm" is then sold via the internet to buyers in the worlds wealthiest nations such as the U.S.A.

The article states "The challenge here is to design a system including profit and recognition to do more for the poor," he said, calling for a new form of "creative capitalism."" and it certainly is a creative form of capitalism indeed. Recognition however is certainly not a problem. Any semi serious player can spot a gold farmer at a thousand paces. The green gear and broken english spam of "you buy" assaulting patrons of the game on a daily basis is actually considered a major problem by MMO operators such as Blizzard. A famous example of how seriously they take it is Blizzards 2007 lawsuit agains the gold farming company Peons4hire.

Will Bill Gates new stance cause strife between Activision Blizzard and Microsoft? I sure hope not, a conflict of that magnitude could destroy the entire global economy.