The appearance of the gamers made the lives of the residents of Venice more interesting. However, the livelihood of the Venice merchants was badly affected.
Why did the gamers become merchants? Most of them did it for money.
But the market was limited. When the gamers made money, the Venice merchants would lose money. It was manageable if there were only a few gamers, but the gamers came in large droves.
Though each gamer earned a little, the cumulative effect was considerable.
Initially, the Venice merchants scoffed at the gamers for not having factories and sources of goods. They even colluded against the gamers by not selling them anything.
Most of the Venice merchants were part of the Merchant Alliance, so it wasn't difficult to impose sanctions on them.
But they weren't aware that the gamers had the support of factories that were manned by hundreds of thousands of gamers.