One of the strangest aspects of the rise of Donald Trump and the Alt-Right is the cross-section between supporters of the 'movement' and hardcore players.
It's been speculated that the long-running Gamergate fiasco was a breeding ground for the Alt-Right, and that Trump's online base is made up of these types. In any case, it's not all that surprising that Trump's chief henchman Steve Bannon was involved in the world of online gaming at one point.
According to a report by Wired from 2016, Bannon - who is now a permanent member of the US National Security Council - was the CEO of a company that was involved in farming in-game currency on World Of Warcraft servers and then selling it back to players. The process is known as gold-farming and it resulted in a number of lawsuits against the company with which Bannon was involved by players and is generally frowned upon by WoW players. It wasn't just World of Warcraft that Bannon's company did this schtick, either.
The company - then known as IGE, or Internet Gaming Entertainment - was running similar operations on Everquest II, Final Fantasy IX and a number of other MMORPG PC games.
Bannon managed to convince his buddies at Goldman Sachs to dump $60 million into the company, which was founded by former child actor Brock Pierce. Bannon eventually became CEO of the company and moved the business out of selling imaginary and into managing community sites for online games.
He then left the company in 2012 to become executive chair of white nationalist / Alt Right website Breitbart.com and the rest, as they say, is history.
Just think, one of the chief advisers to the President of the United States made his money off of trading in fake money. Truly, we are living in the darkest timeline.
Via Wired
