In the years when players like Corne as well as Mobley came back the game of RuneScape with the appetites and wallets of adulthood OSRS Gold, the black market in the game grew. Players still reported the existence of Chinese gold producers, but there were other players who profited from the revival in RuneScape's popularity: Venezuelans such as Marinez.

On March 12 of 2020, Marinez set out to enroll at a police academy in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, and work toward becoming a police officer. The following day it was announced that the Venezuelan government announced its initial two cases of COVID-19.

Then, all schools were shut and closed the borders between Venezuela and other countries and put six states and Caracas within quarantine. Marinez was stuck in transit and was confined to his uncle's house in a city more than 50 miles away from his capital.

After two months, Marinez came back to Maracaibo, "without any money in my pockets," he said. He tried to find work but couldn't find any in a job market demolished by the pandemic, and a long-running economic recession.

A decade earlier, Venezuela, a petrostate under the presidency of Hugo Chavez, witnessed a collapse in oil prices. 2017 was the year that cost of a barrel dropped to just $50 from a high of $100 while the U.S. instituted wide-ranging sanctions against the Venezuelan dictatorship.

"When oil prices started to fall, there was no more money to import products," said Alejandro Velasco Professor at New York University who specializes in Venezuelan political issues, in an interview via phone. "As as a result there was no money really for the country's economy."

Venezuela's bank accounts were empty after it spent its most recent oil earnings on social programs like subsidised health care buy osrs account cheap, food or literacy education programs. Chavez also culled perceived dissenters from the oil business following an attempted coup by the military, impacting production.