When players such as Corne as well as Mobley return in RuneScape with the appetites and pockets of RuneScape Gold adulthood The game's black market increased. Players still reported the existence of Chinese gold-miners, but there were other people making money from RuneScape's revival: Venezuelans such as Marinez.

On March 12, 2020, Marinez decided to enroll in a police academy located in Caracas the capital of Venezuela and to pursue the career of a law enforcement officer. The following day, the Venezuelan government announced the first two cases of COVID-19.

It then shut down all schools, shut down the borders between Venezuela and neighboring countries, and put six states and Caracas within quarantine. Marinez was stranded in transit and was confined to his uncle's house in a city a little over 50 miles to the 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 an economy devastated by the pandemic--and a yearslong economic crisis.

Ten years earlier, Venezuela, a petrostate under the leadership of Hugo Chavez, witnessed a collapse in oil prices. The cost for a barrel plunged to close to $50 from a high of more than $100, along with the U.S. instituted wide-ranging sanctions against the country's authoritarian regime.

"When the prices of oil began to decline and the country was left with no money to buy imported goods," said Alejandro Velasco Professor at New York University who specializes in Venezuelan politics, in an interview by phone. "As as a result the country was left with no money really to keep the economy going."

Venezuela's bank accounts were empty after the country spent its largest recent oil earnings on social services , including subsidized health care, food as well as literacy programmes. Chavez also exiled perceived dissenters from the oil industry following an attempted military coup, that affected production.

The widespread corruption within the government has also hurt the economy, according to Paul Angelo, a fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations who specialises on RS3 Items Latin American politics.