"Over time my salary became less 4 [a month] and that I just couldn't do anything with it, so I decided to try out a match my neighbor was telling me to play for money," he writes to Polygon around Discord. RuneScape gold was a lifeline for his whole family and Martinez. He informs Polygon he made $450 in RuneScape, and used that money 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 era," Martinez writes. "Depending on the 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 aim of amassing huge amounts of in-game money (in this instance, RuneScape gold) to sell for profit out RuneScape. It's nothing new, but it has become more conspicuous as Venezuela's infrastructure has been unable to operate in the past couple of decades. Every Venezuelan RuneScape participant we talked to for this narrative told us they sell their gold for either U.S. bucks or cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which means that their hard work is not compromised by the hyperinflation of the own currency, the Venezuelan bolivar.

They do not struggle to locate places to spend the money they earn, either -- a recent study estimated that 54 percent of transactions in Venezuela last October were completed in U.S. dollars. "I can not talk for my pals, but for me without OSRS, my family would have starved," Martinez explains. "I personally know a lot of people that left the nation thanks to OSRS and still know people hoping to do it," he continues. "I'd say that almost all of the youth that have had the chance to depart the country have now done so -- likely either through OSRS or alternative means.

"Things are becoming steadily worse over time. I have my sister and nephews over there -- you can't have a regular job; a huge number of households live off the money their expats send them" There's an abundance of online sites which focus on the purchasing and selling of buy 2107 runescape gold merchandise. It's a competitive market, with sites taking out Google Ads to look on top of search listings. At the time of writing, 1 million RuneScape gold sells for 63 cents.

No gold farming method is the same