When players like Corne or Mobley came back for RuneScape with the money and appetites of adulthood The game's black market increased. It was reported by players that there were a lot of Chinese gold farmers OSRS Gold, but there were also other people who were making money off RuneScape's revival: Venezuelans like Marinez.
On March 12, 2020, Marinez determined to enroll into a police academy Caracas the capital of Venezuela and begin to work towards an employment in law enforcement. The next day following, the Venezuelan government released its first two COVID-19 cases.
Then, all schools were shut as well as shut down the borders between Venezuela as well as neighboring countries and placed six states and Caracas on quarantine. Marinez was forced to travel on his own and holed up at his uncle's house in a town that is 50 miles from his capital.
In the space of two weeks, Marinez came back to Maracaibo, "without any money in my pockets," he said. He tried to find work but could not find the market for jobs destroyed by the pandemic--and a yearslong economic crisis.
Ten years earlier, Venezuela, a petrostate under the administration of Hugo Chavez, witnessed a slump in the price of oil. In 2017, the cost of a barrel dropped up to nearly $50 from a peak of more than $100 while in the same year, the U.S. instituted wide-ranging sanctions against Venezuela's dictatorial government.
"When oil prices began to drop in the early 2000s, there was not enough funds to import goods," said Alejandro Velasco, a professor of New York University who specializes in Venezuelan politics, in an interview via phone. "As a result it was impossible to find money to sustain the economy."
Venezuela's coffers were empty after it spent its largest recent oil cashflow for social programs such as subsidised food osrs skiller accounts for sale, medical treatment, in addition to literacy initiatives. Chavez has also expelled perceived dissenters from the oil industry following an attempted coup by the military, impacting production.