[Big read] Why Chinese gamers pay African youths to play for them

(Edited and refined by Grace Chong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

On the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, more than a dozen young men and women sit in a game studio, each clutching a mobile phone. Their heads are bowed, eyes fixed on their screens as they immerse themselves in the popular Chinese game Delta Force.

Above them hangs a banner bearing the Chinese idiom tiandao chouqin (天道酬勤) — heaven rewards the diligent. None of the players can read the words overhead, but they understand the principle well enough. By fighting virtual battles for Chinese customers and earning in-game currency on their behalf, they take home about 500,000 ariary (roughly US$116) a month, with bonuses for finding rare items.

They are professional game boosters, engaged in what is commonly known as “gold farming”. Hired by Chinese players, they scour virtual battlefields for resources and accumulate the game’s currency, Havoc Coins, sparing customers the repetitive grind so they can unlock better equipment and enjoy a more rewarding gaming experience.

The studio belongs to Chen Xiaozhong, who once worked in China’s cryptocurrency mining industry. After Beijing’s crackdown on crypto mining, he left the business and moved to Madagascar in 2024 in search of a new opportunity. A year later, he opened a gaming studio in the capital, Antananarivo. Within a year, the business had expanded to employ more than 100 people.

“Why Madagascar?” Chen told Lianhe Zaobao. “Among countries that aren’t at war, you won’t find anywhere with lower labour costs. Africa has given me a different kind of opportunity. It’s like the clock has been turned back 30 years. As long as I don’t repeat the mistakes I made before, there are still plenty of opportunities here.”

Teaching gamers from scratch 

Over the past two years, gaming studios like Chen’s have sprung up across Madagascar. There are now nearly 20 of them, most operating from rented shopfronts lined with rows of tables, chairs, and dozens of mobile phones or computers, resembling modest internet cafes.

Chen estimates that Africa is now home to more than 100 similar studios, concentrated mainly in Rwanda, Zambia and Tanzania. Beyond Africa, sizeable game-boosting industries have also taken root in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Laos.

Game boosting is hardly new in China. For years, players have paid others to level up their accounts, farm equipment and accumulate in-game currency on their behalf. Over time, the practice has grown into a sizeable informal industry, and even spawned a grey market that also includes account theft and payment fraud.

According to Chinese technology outlet 36Kr, there are at least 800,000 to one million Chinese game boosters operating through studio-based businesses. Some boosting platforms, such as Dailiantong, handle between 100,000 and 300,000 orders a month on average.

As competition has intensified, a growing number of entrepreneurs have begun relocating overseas in recent years. Their competitive advantage lies not in superior gaming skills, but in lower labour costs.

Zhang Xunbin is a Chinese entrepreneur who runs a game-boosting studio in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. His employees earn between 1,000 and 1,200 RMB (US$148-177) a month. Aside from wages, the initial investment is modest: computers, internet access and other equipment cost only tens of thousands of RMB.

A salary of 1,000 RMB would attract few workers in China, but in Pakistan it is highly competitive. Zhang says it is roughly twice the local average wage.

“Every additional computer we install supports another family,” he said. “Parents take these jobs very seriously. They’ll even come and ask me to keep an eye on their children.”

As a result, there is no shortage of applicants. In just over two months after opening his studio, more than 100 people applied, but only a little over ten were hired.

The selection process is demanding.

“The first stage is mass screening,” Zhang explained. “What do we look at? We watch how applicants hold a mouse. If years of manual labour have left their hands stiff and their fingers lacking dexterity, they won’t be able to use a mouse and keyboard effectively.”

Those who pass the initial screening move on to the second stage, where they repeatedly practise the game’s controls. Then they begin producing results. Once they’ve become proficient, Zhang rewards them with performance bonuses tied to their daily output.

Since opening the studio, Zhang has found running the business deeply fulfilling.

“I think exporting China’s gaming industry is a good thing,” he said. “Back home, you might just be another gamer with little social standing. But when you open a studio overseas, you can at least support ten families. That’s creating real social value.”

The work, however, is far from straightforward.

Many applicants are illiterate and have never used a computer, let alone a mouse. To bridge that gap, Zhang developed a training programme designed for complete beginners.

“You have to spend several days just letting them get used to moving forwards, backwards, left and right, how to rotate the mouse, and even learn the difference between the left and right mouse buttons.”

He communicates with employees largely in simple English.

Even so, Zhang is not prepared to place too much of a bet on the business. Also involved in human resources and business support services, he said, “I don’t see this as something that will make me wealthy or last forever. I treat it as a small but specialised business and focus on building a solid foundation.”

China’s time-poor gamers fuel demand 

To Chen, the rise of Chinese-run game-boosting studios in developing countries mirrors an earlier chapter in China’s own gaming industry.

In the 2000s, Chinese “gold farmers” made a living in World of Warcraft, earning virtual currency that they sold to players in Europe and America.

“Now that China is wealthier and living standards have risen, the industry has shifted to countries in Africa, as well as Bangladesh and Pakistan,” Chen said.

He believes China’s gaming market is still on the up. “Delta Force has 40 million daily active users. That’s astonishing,” he said. “And how many young people are there in China? Our busiest hours are between two and three in the morning, China time. These young people just don’t sleep.”

Released by Tencent in 2024, Delta Force has become a blockbuster shooter. Its popular “search, fight and extract” gameplay has fuelled booming demand for professional game boosters.

To Chen, the game’s popularity also says something about the pressures facing many young Chinese.

“I think it’s connected, to some extent, with the ‘lying flat’ mentality,” he said, referring to the tangping phenomenon. “People play games to escape reality and detach from the pressures of the real world. If they can’t solve a problem in real life, they simply put it aside.”

The industry’s growth also reflects the realities of China’s work culture.

Zoe Zhao, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies China’s gaming industry, says game boosting enjoys greater acceptance in China — and across much of Asia — due to the region’s notoriously long working hours.

“There’s an enormous gaming population,” Zhao said. “People simply don’t have enough time to play.”

Yet, Zhao noted that profit-driven game developers deliberately design games to be highly grindy — requiring players to invest a huge amount of time. Coupled with the pressure of keeping up with others, many are more willing to pay for game-boosting services.

Delta Force offers a clear example.

Chinese players can hire boosters through social media or e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Xianyu. Ten million Havoc Coins typically sell for several dozen RMB.

Qiang (pseudonym), the owner of a game-boosting studio in Nepal, said some large orders involve hundreds of millions of Havoc Coins.

In Zhao’s view, the latest wave of Chinese game-boosting businesses expanding overseas has been built on the back of China’s existing infrastructure investments across the Global South.

After all, even online gaming depends on basic infrastructure such as digital payment systems, electricity and internet connectivity.

“The overseas expansion of game boosting has followed the broader wave of Chinese businesses going global,” she said.

Mark Graham, a professor of internet geography at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Internet Institute, believes the trend also reflects China’s distinctive position within the global digital labour system.

Graham, whose research focuses on digital labour, said in an interview that for many years China was seen primarily as a centre for manufacturing and assembling digital products. Today, however, Chinese companies are not only building digital infrastructure and developing platforms and software, but are also beginning to coordinate global digital labour.

“That doesn’t mean China has stopped being a manufacturing powerhouse,” he said. “But it does suggest a more complex role in the digital economy. The phenomenon also highlights that economic relationships between China and the Global South are becoming much more diverse.”

Jobs bring opportunity — and resentment 

During this year’s Lunar New Year, Chen ran into an unexpected problem: a strike.

One morning, more than 40 employees surrounded him at the studio and demanded a 20% pay rise. They argued that the surge in orders during the Spring Festival holiday had dramatically increased their workload.

Chen refused. He tried to persuade them by listing the benefits the studio already provided, including meals. Finally, he drew a line. “If you want to stay, sit down and get back to work,” he told them. “If you want to leave, you can leave now.”

In the end, about half walked out, while the rest returned to their desks.

Later, the studio’s interpreter told Chen that those who stayed did so because they felt he had generally treated them fairly.

The strike, along with other experiences, made Chen realise that many locals have a love-hate relationship with gaming studios. They appreciate the jobs the businesses create, but often resent the work itself.

The “love” comes from the tangible economic benefits. Benjamin Garweg, a game booster in Nairobi, said he had loved gaming since childhood. “It has always been my dream to turn my hobby into my job. When I heard that you can actually be paid to play a game, I thought, ‘What?’ Okay, I’m down for it.” he said.

The 20-year-old university student works part-time after classes and earns about 40,000 shillings (around US$309) a month. “That’s actually a lot of money for students,” he said.

The “hate”, meanwhile, stems from wariness towards Chinese people. Chen admitted that many people in Madagascar still view the Chinese as exploiters who have come to take away local resources.

Low barriers, limited futures 

Studio owners interviewed acknowledged that local perceptions of Chinese people tend to be negative. One reason is the prevalence of telecom fraud operations involving Chinese criminal groups in the region. From the outside, a room full of people simultaneously operating multiple mobile phones can easily be mistaken for a scam operation.

Garweg said his own parents struggled to believe that his job was legitimate and was worried that he had fallen into a scam operation. It was only after he brought home his first pay cheque that they finally believed he could genuinely earn money by playing games.

Graham of the Oxford Internet Institute believes that Chinese-run gaming studios have created opportunities for workers, but the industry's limitations must also be recognised. He cautioned that many forms of digital labour are highly routinised and easily replaceable. Workers often have limited bargaining power, little employment protection and few opportunities for advancement.

From a broader economic perspective, he noted that such industries are unlikely to generate broader spillovers, such as management capabilities, technical expertise, or entrepreneurial ecosystems.

In the long run, there is also uncertainty over how long these game studios can survive. University of California, Santa Cruz’s Zhao pointed out that even with access to cheap labour, game studios may not necessarily enjoy a cost advantage.

She explained that companies not only consider labour costs but also face challenges involving employee management, language barriers and cultural differences. Some factories that relocated from China to Southeast Asia could also move back due to new difficulties. 

“Labour and capital are constantly negotiating with each other,” Zhao said. “It’s a highly dynamic process.”

Demanding and dehumanising work?

“People used to joke about the low costs of ‘knife-running black slaves’. Now they’ve found real black slaves,” one Chinese social media user wrote, describing the phenomenon of Africans working as game boosters.

“Knife-running” refers to a gaming strategy in which players enter battlefields with low-cost equipment to search for resources. The phrase “black slaves” has long been a self-mocking term used by Chinese game boosters to describe poorly paid, repetitive work. As studios have expanded overseas, however, many online users have begun referring to African boosters collectively as “cyber black slaves”.

Chen acknowledges that the work is indeed demanding and, at times, dehumanising.

The process of knife-running requires players to hide and avoid confrontation, meaning they do not get to enjoy the best parts of the game. However, he insists that the term “cyber black slaves” is inappropriate.

He explained that the term carries clear racial connotations and does not accurately reflect the nature of the work. “A slave has no freedom… But my employees and I simply have an employer-employee relationship. I provide them with job opportunities, and they create value for me. That is a positive outcome for everyone,” he said.

For Chen and other studio owners, rejecting the term is also about building a workplace founded on mutual respect. That means understanding and adapting to local cultures, while doing their best to gel with employees.

Zhang, who operates a game studio in Pakistan, said he only realised after arriving in the country that Pakistanis prioritise family and faith, followed by work. Nepal-based operator Qiang said locals have a much less intense desire for money than Chinese people do. 

These cultural differences have prompted Chinese owners to continually learn and reflect on local employees’ work routines, and adapt their management practices accordingly.

Asked whether he had found the secret to managing more than 100 local employees, Chen said, “Don’t look down on people. Don’t treat them as inferior. Treating them well in everyday life is also a form of exchange. At times when it really matters, you will receive something in return.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “游戏需求催生跨国代练产业 全球南方青年替中国玩家搬砖”.

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