Golden Butterfly from Venezuela: When the game becomes life

The yellow butterfly flaps its wings in one place, and a storm will arrive elsewhere. In recent years, as the world focuses on major geopolitical events, a strange social phenomenon has been unfolding in the online gaming world: Venezuelans are gradually abandoning the games that once saved them. It is not just about quitting games, but about the collapse of a way of life, a hope, and the beginning of a larger refugee crisis.

On January 26, 2026, the number of concurrent online RuneScape players exceeded 258,000 — a record in the 25-year history of the game. But instead of celebrating this success, the gaming community is witnessing an ever-widening gap: accounts that once thrived in classic farming spots are now silent. This yellow butterfly — Venezuelan players who once formed an important part of the game economy — has now flown away.

The Yellow Butterfly in the Virtual World: The Survival of Venezuelans

To understand why Venezuelans are so drawn to RuneScape, we must first look at the alarming changes in their country. Since 2013, Venezuela — once the wealthiest country in South America thanks to abundant oil resources — has begun experiencing an unprecedented economic collapse. From 2013 to 2021, the GDP shrank by 75-80%, a figure that far exceeds the Great Depression in the US or the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The currency crisis worsened dramatically. By August 2018, Venezuela’s annual inflation rate reached 48,000% — a number that rendered any fiat currency worthless. In just four months, the Bolivar-to-USD exchange rate plummeted from 1 million:1 to 7 million:1. Paper money no longer held value; it became worthless scraps of paper.

At this moment, Venezuelans discovered a strange escape route: Old School RuneScape (OSRS). This game — a recreated version of RuneScape from August 2007, with servers launched in 2013 — has a key feature: it does not require high-end hardware. It can run on Canaima computers distributed free by the government to students in the 2010s — machines with only 2GB of RAM.

More importantly, the exchange rate of OSRS gold to USD (about 1-1.25 million:1) is much more stable than the Bolivar. In a collapsing world, this game became a refuge with clear rules.

Starting from 2017, and possibly earlier, Venezuelans began large-scale gold farming in OSRS. The peak event was a famous Reddit post in September 2017, guiding other players on how to “hunt” Venezuelan farmers in the “East Dragons” area of the game. This nickname quickly became a meme culture element of OSRS.

The East Dragons area refers to a region in the Hunter’s Cemetery map, where the “Blue Dragon” monster appears. From 2017 to 2019, Venezuelans gathered here, continuously killing dragons to loot dragon bones and hides. These items were sold on the in-game market for gold, which was then converted into Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, and eventually into real money.

According to a user account “fisherman” on Steemit (August 2017), farming dragons for an hour earned 500,000 OSRS gold, about $0.5 USD. For more advanced players, hunting the giant snake boss “Zulrah” could bring in $2-3 per hour — higher than the wages of most college graduates in Venezuela.

This yellow butterfly — the game farmers from Venezuela — have successively become global helpers in the online gaming world. They perform repetitive, boring tasks: farming, leveling skills, crafting for other players. Unlike Filipino helpers in Hong Kong who can appear freely on the streets, Venezuelans must operate covertly — using multiple burner accounts to avoid account bans for violating Jagex’s terms.

In March 2019, Venezuela experienced a nationwide blackout. The most loyal dragon farmers disappeared overnight. The supply of dragon bones dropped sharply, and prices soared. This yellow butterfly was gradually hidden by the darkness of reality.

The Yellow Butterfly Flies Away from the Country: From RuneScape to the Journey of Refuge

Starting around 2023, a new butterfly began to flicker — bots that never sleep, never tire. They gradually replaced manual Venezuelan farmers. Gold production skyrocketed, prices fell. Currently, the OSRS gold-to-USD rate is only about 1 million:0.16-0.2 USD — a significant decline from the golden era.

For Venezuelan players, farming does not stop; it only shifts. They move to Tibia, Albion Online, World of Warcraft — places with better benefit/cost ratios. But there is a limit to this migration. The yellow butterfly cannot always fly through virtual worlds.

In 2023, some players asked a fundamental question: “Is this life right?” They decided to leave the gaming world — even leave their country in the real world.

The latest migration figures in early 2026 show about 7.9 million Venezuelans have left the country. This is one of the largest refugee crises in Latin American and global history. Images from border crossings, stories from refugee camps — all share a common detail: many of them once earned a living from OSRS.

José Ricardo, a game gold trader, once profited from…

But they cannot return. The yellow butterfly cannot fly back. Once it has flown away, it can only move forward into the uncertainty of the real world.

The story of Venezuela, RuneScape, and cryptocurrency is not just a game story. It is a story of survival, of yellow butterflies seeking light in darkness, and ultimately, of those butterflies flying away from the fields that once sustained them.