RuneScape gold has been a lifeline for both Martinez and his family. He tells Polygon he earned $450 by gold farming in RuneScape, and used that cash to flee Venezuela and move to Peru. He continued to play with RuneScape and saved an extra $1,000, which he used to get his mother and girlfriend. "RuneScape is a super mainstream way to make money in this day and age," Martinez writes. "Depending on the state in Venezuela you're from, pretty much everyone knows about RuneScape."

It is nothing new, however, it's become more pronounced as Venezuela's infrastructure has been unable to operate in the past couple of decades. Every Venezuelan RuneScape player we talked to for this narrative told us they sell their gold for either U.S. dollars or cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which means that their hard work is not jeopardized by the hyperinflation of their own currency, the Venezuelan bolivar.

They don't fight to find places to invest the money that they earn, possibly -- a recent study estimated that 54 percent of transactions in Venezuela last October were completed in U.S. bucks. "I personally know a good deal of people who left the nation thanks to OSRS and still know people hoping to do it," he continues. "I would say that almost all the youth who've had the chance to depart the country have done so -- likely either through OSRS or alternative ways.

I still have my sister and nephews over there -- you can't have a normal job; a large number of households live off the cash their expats send them" There's plenty of online websites that focus on selling and the purchasing of RuneScape merchandise. It is a marketplace, with sites taking out Google Ads to look at the top of search listings. In the time of writing, 1 million RuneScape gold sells for 63 cents.

No farming strategy is the same

Christian Alejandro is a college student studying geological engineering, but he spends his spare time around school responsibilities, generally 10 hours a day, leveling up cheap RS gold accounts in the Nightmare Zone, a combat-based minigame. This enables one to quickly level up battle skills for the account he is playing, which, once large enough, are then sold for U.S. dollars to other RuneScape players. He's paid an hourly rate to do so, and earns $100-150 monthly. By posting a Reddit thread requesting work, alejandro got the gig.