In the Eclipse Phase TTRPG there was a disaster about a decade back. Lots of people only survived by uploading their minds. You see, a space ship might only be able to fit a few dozen living people, but if you shoved it full of high-density storage containing people's minds you could save millions. Well, after the dust settled and the fires went out there weren't millions of bodies to download people back in to. For many of this class of "infugees", the idea of a body is far out of reach and the most they can hope for is that someone will boot them up and hire them to do some kind of job that only requires their digital presence, and one of these is operating NPCs in virtual games for paying customers. Doesn't pay much, but at least you're awake.

"Don't build the Torment Nexus".