Money markets

As games rack up more and more players the numbers turning to the money sellers and those who only play to amass, or farm, gold that they can then sell have rocketed.

There are many websites that offer to sell players in-game gold for any and every online title.

For games such as Runescape which have millions of players the numbers involved are staggering.

Geoff Iddison, chief executive of Runescape maker Jagex, said that during 2007 the company took more than 525 billion farmed gold pieces out of its game world. In real money that virtual gold is worth more than £1.3m ($2.6m).

"A lot of this is coming from China," he said. "We had tens of thousands of accounts in China that were just bots working the game to make gold and then sell it."