When Is a Con Not a Con? 441
From the journals, here's some food for thought: Does a "crime" committed in an alternate world have any ramifications in the "real" world? Case in point is this article from the Gamers With Jobs site outlining the exploits of one Dentara Rask, a character in CCP's Eve Online massively multiplayer online world. According to the the article, Dentara Rask ran a
Ponzi scheme within the game, amassing a large amount of on-line wealth (700 billion ISK), and then bragging about it. The question is posed: since a Ponzi scheme in real life is a punishable criminal offense, what about when it happens in a MMORPG? Assuming there are no rules within the game environment to prevent this, how would you go about punishing someone in the real world for something they did in an artificial one? And can they be punished?
Cheating in video games (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:4, Informative)
Only Partly right. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:5, Insightful)
No. There is no actual scarcity and no central bank backing the currency, nor any financial controls. The same applies to any items and other 'valuables' in those games; any particular scarcity of any particular item is purely artificial and can be instantly changed at the whim of the company (or any less than honest admin or someone exploiting the game).
The lack of scarcity based value of course doesnt mean you cant pay to avoid actually playing the game (altho anyone actually paying to not play the game should seriously consider not playing the game for free and doing something else instead).
"So it could, arguably, be more like stealing the chips from a poker game."
Casinos back the chips. Most MMORPG's do not back their currencies.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't the same true for money, to a certain extent? For instance, while it's highly illegal, a banking establishment could simply add money to a computerized account balance. Less trivially but perfectly legally, the United States (or any other country
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:4, Insightful)
No. There are rules about this. Money in a bank is real money, usually backed by some government, and limited in supply. If the bank were to just add more money to your account, they would be taking it from someone else. Unless that person (or entity) agreed to them transferring funds from their account(s) to another, that would be larceny. A crime. The U.S. could print more money but usually doesn't as like any precious material, the more of it there is, the less it is worth. This would destabalize economies.
The point is, unless the crime can spill over into the real world, the so called 'crime' in the computer game is only in the computer game. The only way the crime could spill over into the real world is if the game money had a real world value in term of dollars and not just hurt feelings. Since the game company does not back the game currency in the real world, no harm was done and this wouldn't be a crime. That is how I understand it.
IANAL
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's not the same thing. When you go into a casino and purchase chips, you and the casino have an understanding that the chips are merely placeholders for real money, and are exchangeable as such within that casino only by the bearer. Thus, if you steal chips from the casino or from another player it's treated the same as if you took actual money, since there was that pre-agreed understanding that the casino will unconditionally buy the chips back at their face value regardless of who presents them. It's rather like stealing a bearer-only check - the check itself is not currency, but it is understood to represent it.
There is no such understanding regarding currencies in an online game, and the poster that compared it to stealing Monopoly money is exactly correct. The only difference is that there aren't many people willing to pay real money for Monopoly scrip, and thus it has a correspondingly low resale value in the real world. If someone is so wrapped up in some damn game that they're willing to spend real money just to increase their standing, that sounds to me like a problem for a psychiatrist, not the courts.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not too strange a concept to spend money on a game, since you have to pay for the game, your net connection etc, but it is really lame and pathetic. If you are substituting your life for the game though, why not spend your money on it? Note that I don't even play MMORPGs (though I did some MUDding for a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I can think of a few reasons.
Inflation comes to mind. This is a classic problem associated with bad game economies, and worsened considerably by gold farming (or equivalents). UO is a good example.
Fair play comes to mind as another example. The reason doping is against the
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You raise a good point. If someone falls for a dumb arse scam in the virtual world, does that make them likley to fall for one in the real world? - probably. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.... Probably unfair: The people that lost the money should really take responsibility for their stupidity - and not try to sue their way out of shame.. YOU FELL FOR A SCAM, GET OVER IT!!!
BTW
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:5, Insightful)
You've totally missed the boat. (Score:5, Insightful)
- No ISK was stolen from anyone. *ALL* of the ISK belongs to CCP, the company that runs the game. It is bits on their servers and part of the user agreement is all of the in-game objects belong to CCP, not the players, and this is something you therefore must agree to when you play.
- When you play the game, everyone agrees to play by the rules. One of the rules is that the vast majority of in-game schemes are LEGAL. Player A took a legal action, and as a result of legal action A, the game master (CCP) reallocated the in-game objects from other players to player A. If you were the other players, tough, you played the game, you 'lost'.
- It is just plain logically silly to accept that players can blow up each other's ships and not accept that players can convince other players to hand over their in-game money. What's the difference? I'm flying around and somebody blows me up, you wouldn't suggest I call up the cops and file a vandalism report would you? So if someone convinces me to give them in-game money, and then doesn't pay me back, that's suddenly a crime?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It all comes back to this... It is simply a game, where this type of activity is encouraged.
in another game where this is against the rules, you could atleast make the claim about ownership and giving up rights, but not here
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing that works that way in SL is the charges for uploads and ratings, and those are tiny. The actual payments for resource usage such as tier must be paid in USD. If you earn L$ and sell it, Linden Labs will then hold some of that converted cash for you so that you can transfer to paypal or use it to pay your tier, but that can't be done directly in L$.
L$ is used mainly between residents to trade goods. What the company charges is almost entirely in USD excepting ve
Not quite... (Score:2, Insightful)
HOWEVER, these items in online games have MASSIVE intrinisic value based on labor. If there's only one of
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but that's 400 hours that you chose to spend on playing a game to obtain an item with no physical reality. It's rarity is irrelevant. You didn't have to spend that time obtaining said item, and the time you spent is - by definition - leisure time.
Which is why I doubt that any real-world court is going to offer much sympathy, unless the in-game object can be shown to have direct real-world value (as someone else pointed out, Second Life has an official means of converting in-game money to US Dollars). It's hard to argue that an unofficial black market for virtual items gives them any real-world value in a legal sense if that sort of trading is explicitly banned by the game developers.
Those 400 hours of my life have massive value, both to me, and in the real world, where it could easily translate to $5000 or more dollars.
If by that you mean that you could have earned $5000 in those 400 hours that you chose to spend playing a game, I suspect a defense lawyer's response might be "so why didn't you?".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why should the physical reality of a thing be even remotely relevant here? Lots of things that have no physical reality beyond being a magnetic charge on a HDD platter somewhere are considered EXTREMELY valuable. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the world's money does not physically exist.
Let's instead look at how value is created: People agree a thing has value. If lots an
Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the fact that, you know.... it's not a "super-rare item". It's not an item at all. It's this tiny little bit of data that could be replicated a million times much more easily than the monopoly money could be replicated-- it's only the game developers who are artificially setting the rarity of that data.
And there's nothing inherently valuable about that data either. You can't justify its worth by labor alone, since it's entirely possible to spend 400 hours on an endeavor that has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Spending 400 hours picking your nose wouldn't make your boogers valuable.
Real money is bits of data these days (Score:3, Insightful)
There is NO SUCH THING AS INTRINSIC VALUE. There is only supply and demand, this applies to "real" money just as much as it applies to monopoly money and "super rare items".
Re: (Score:2)
Otherwise, next time pick a game world that protects your 400 hrs worth of hard questing. Can't find one - too bad no one
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, but you can [ebay.com]...
Wow, you really don't have a clue do you? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I refill the hole, and dig it again, putting in twice as much labor, is the hole now worth twice as much?
Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Just something to think about.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Law enforcement and the IRS would be uninterested in me stealing $500 worth of Monopoly money because there is no exchange for Monopoly money to US Dollars or any other legal tender. This issue could be different.
Re: (Score:2)
It's surely called something else (I'm not sure exactly where it would fall within the legal system) when the exchange of that ISK for cash is forbidden by contract (the game's EULA).
I am sure CCP is watching Dentara Rast closely. For now, they are allowing the theft to go forward, as it does not violate the rules of the game.
If Dentara wishes to, he can buy a lifetime's worth of game time card
Re: (Score:2)
1. http://www.gamepal.com/buycurrency.php?gameid=15&g ame=eve&serverid=79&x=28 [gamepal.com]
Sigh, Devil's Advocate again... (Score:2)
When you bought your Monopoly game, it came in a box. The game probably takes only a couple hours to play, max. The real paper money has little or no value. When someone steals a quarter, do you call the cops? $1? $5? Probably not.
However, money in an MMO often takes effort to earn. So does Monopoly money, but that's easy come, easy go -- gone at the end of the game, in fact. MMO money can involve a huge amount of investment of real time, and it's persistant and digital.
In oth
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When is a news article not a news article... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Or are you saying pillow fights are also attempted murder?
Anyway, it's irrelevant -- we can agree that in-game murder
Give me a break (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now... where did that succubus go... Definitely worth trying to shag another experience level out of it before killing it.
When is hitting people legal? (Score:2)
When it's part of the game. If I body-slammed someone on the street, I'd be heading to jail. If I do it on a football field, it's good play.
Re: (Score:2)
In no MMO I've ever played was it OK to exploit game mechanics, or even misinform people to get a better deal.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I believe that in EVE Online, it's perfectly fine to con people in this manner. It's not okay to exploit game mechanics to do so, but convincing them that their money really belongs with you is within the rules of the game.
Re: (Score:2)
In most games, however, this isn't standard practice, and with EVE it's a moot point, because you know what's allowed in the game by the time you have enough resources to make them worthwhile.
Alternate reality defines the game (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
someone is missing the point of games (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, the appropriate punishment for virtual fraud is to demand virtual restitution from the virtual character and put the virtual character into virtual prison. That is, unless the virtual world is supposed to be lawless or anarchic, in which case he did exactly what he was supposed to.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:someone is missing the point of games (Score:5, Informative)
No, he didn't. As others also pointed out, there is nothing in the Eve Online EULA or in the game mechanics that forbids what this guy has done. There is no "exploiting" of bugs or broken game mechanics going on here. "Exploiting" of stupid people, sure, but that's a different matter.
What *is* explicitly forbidden by the EULA however, is converting in-game money to real money. That is a bannable offense.
wtf? (Score:5, Informative)
mm (Score:2)
It's all in the game (Score:5, Insightful)
Or in-game death by angry mob or assassin.
You hit the nail right on the head: (Score:2)
This falls within the realm of a wholly contained artificial environment. It is up to the owners (or creators, or maintainers, or what have you) of that environment to set up "legal" codes to deal with situations like this. It has happened in Everquest, it has happened in World of Warcraft, and I'm sure that given enough abuse, it will happen in the EVE universe as well.
For the record, there used to be a vast number of "casino" sca
In game crimes call for in game punishments (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What are the rules of the game? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it violate the rules of the game? After all, no one gets upset about the mass murder and genocide that occurs routinely on PvP servers in WoW. It's part of the game.
There's a difference, though. There are rules in the real world saying that something is illegal. There are no rules about it in the game world. Piracy is illegal in the real world. (I'm talking about the "arr matey!" kind, not the "RIAA" kind.) But it's permitted in the game world of EVE. Should the pirates be brought to criminal court of piracy in the spaces of EVE?
This story is just ridiculously stupid. It's a game. Only the game's rules apply. Whatever the rules set out by those who run the game are the only rules that matter.
Get conned while playing a game? Learn from it and just be glad it wasn't real.
There's no rules? (Score:2)
Tangibility (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When is a Con not a Con? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a kind of success (Score:2, Interesting)
Duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Playing for hundreds of hours doing the grind is only one path to success, it is perfectly fair to play smarter, instead of harder. To realize that the in game obstacles might be hard but the stupidity of players is a constant and can be exploited a lot easier. And some people like the interraction with real people more than the challenges placed by the designers.
Running a Ponzi scheme depends on a steady supply of idiots, something no rule in a game is likely to dry up the supply of. Face it, they should be legal in the REAL world so long as the financials are fully disclosed. It is the fraud (like the US Social Security system) that makes any real world Ponzi scheme immoral. Run it out in the open and any person with a few brain cells still functioning would instantly see it for the scam it is and as for the others... it is immoral to let a sucker keep his money after all.
No Punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
What ever happened to "buyer beware" (Score:4, Insightful)
A video game bank not run by any central authority doesn't have that power. So suppose they did try to make a legit business out of lending others money. How could they collect? I guess they could take some equipment as 'collateral" but if a player is taking the loan out to buy better equipment what is to prevent that player from reneging on the debts? He no longer needs that old equipment. And there certainly aren't repo men in the game who can take back the property for you(I guess you could destroy it, but you don't gain much). I suppose they could resort to mob style "break your thumbs" type tactics, but they would have to be a powerful player or a player with lots of allies to even do that. Plus, I don't exactly trust "Mob Savings and Loan".
So what on earth did the players who gave this person money think he was going to do with it? 10% no risk returns don 't exist in the real world(well, aside from hyperinflationary periods at any rate), so it should have been pretty obvious to anyone with half a clue what this guy was up to. Another greedy rube got fleeced(virtually at any rate). Boohoo
What was the real-world value of the theft? (Score:2, Informative)
If the law says you can only prosecute or sue if the fraud is > $50, and the gold he obtained by fraud sells on eBay for $49 or less, or has no market value, he's off the hook.
Here's an idea:
Get a few hundred gamers out there to declare a vendetta on
do game cause crime? (Score:2)
Games are a useful way for us to simulate life. For the young it teaches rules and basic social skills. For the teen it can be a good way to learn advance socialization. And for the older people, the working gamer for instance, it can teach that greed can lead to ones downfall, and nothing
Counterfeit Monopoly Money? (Score:2)
This is the most idiotic thing I've heard about in a long time.
Boba style (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dentara put a 1 billion ISK bounty on himself, bought a top-end ship with top-end gear (another 500mill to 1bill), and started PvPing with it, AND told everyone he was doing so (although not where).
Note that Dentara is not necessarily that good at PvP - I've heard he's gone boom quite a bit already. That money is already being distributed to those who kill him and those who sell high end gear on the market.
Re: (Score:2)
The best way to deal with something like this is to pretend that it is real (in game of course) and deal with it the way that the game world would. How about bounty hunting? How about military/mafia recruiting players to hunt him down? Keep it a game. If people fall for a scam in a game, get back at him in the game. Don't suspend his account. That's just lame. I'm sure that not many people would continue to risk their characters' well being and those that do have it coming.
Agreed. Here's an account of a
Private justice (Score:2)
Stop calling it "real world" versus "non real" (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking whether game crime should be punishable in real world is like asking whether crime comitted in Belgium should be punished in Australia.
The game developers have ultimate power over their world. If they want to confiscate those 700mln ISK (whatever the hell ISK is) they can do it with a mouse click, a lot easier than in "real world".
If game developers want to cooperate with police for creating "interworld" laws that apply in there and give a specialized institution the jurisdiction to enforce those in a game then ok.
It's not up to the government or whoever to mess into the games' internal affairs however. It's not a lot better than invading an actual country.
Yes you can convert virtual assets to real, but I can convert dollars to euros as well, this doesn't mean that US should mess into EU's business.
I don't really understand the question (Score:2)
And, in a game, "normal" rules don't apply. Neither the "Law of Gravity", or "Thou shalt not Kill".
Take Grand Theft Auto.
Anyway, in this game, a Ponzi scheme was possible. And that was exploited. In chess, "en passant capture" can be exploited -- even though some players are not aware of its existence.
If some players feel "cheated", don't play. This will apply pressure to have the rules modified. As to "real world consequence"? Exactly HOW "politically correct" are you? Are you going to regulate
So.. (Score:2)
Of Civil Court, Losses and Gains (Score:2)
Of course, if you can argue that losses in the game have a real-world monetary counterpart, then any gains in that world would seem to have a real world monetary counterpart. That gets the IRS involved with issues of income tax on gains in the game.
If game gains are taxable, then perhaps they can get the Ponzi scheme operator on tax evasion -- it worked wit
Let's answer this right now (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe.
Case in point is this article from the Gamers With Jobs site outlining the exploits of one Dentara Rask, a character in CCP's Eve Online massively multiplayer online world. According to the the article, Dentara Rask ran a Ponzi scheme within the game, amassing a large amount of on-line wealth (700 billion ISK), and then bragging about it. The question is posed: since a Ponzi scheme in real life is a punishable criminal offense, what about when it happens in a MMORPG?
Um... nothing? Murder is a punishable criminal offense in real life, but we don't dream of prosecuting people for doing it in a game.
Assuming there are no rules within the game environment to prevent this, how would you go about punishing someone in the real world for something they did in an artificial one?
You wouldn't. It's stupid to try and hold someone responsible for what they did in a video game. Again, how many of us would be in jail right now for all the people we've killed in video games?
And can they be punished?
Well, legally we can't. But there are people in Guantanamo Bay with less proof of having committed a crime.
Game-Life consequences. (Score:3, Interesting)
For example most players won't deal with people under a certain number of skill points as the points are created over time (not gametime). This means players with lots of money generally have to have the skills to show they are a legtimate character and not someones ALT.
It is possible to create an ALT by just buying a second account but it costs money. You also tend to leave a trail unless you have been planning this for sometime.
This is the third biggest Scam I have seen (I'll let someone supply the links).
Search for "A Great Scam by Nightfreeze"
1. Scammed loads of money out of people by pretending to buy a blueprint. The overall scam itself was brilliantly done and the guys where asses for doing it but at the end his friend got greedy and the leader of the scam deleted his character (after giving the cash to some newbie).
http://www.mmodig.com/?p=155 [mmodig.com]
2. I don't know what caused this to happen but it was a paid hit. The person was killed, and thier corporation looted on a scale not seen since Enron.
So in the end you should be dealt with in game. I have seen other players steal from corps only to have thier clones turned into corpses scattered through the system to the point they have to quit the game.
If anything this is really a learning experience for players. Would you prefer to be scammed out of virtual cash or real cash? Remember that next time you need the wallet inspectors in game.
when it's a chille-con-carne? (Score:2)
Then it's yummy. What article?
PvP == Murder (Score:2)
Ponzi Schemes are Illegal? (Score:2)
Anyway, if our government can't be fiscally responsible (or even fiscally ethical) in its programs, how can it expect to have moral authority over real life financial scams, much less ones in video games?
This is the whole point of EVE (Score:5, Informative)
CCP made a lot of efforts to setup complex and realistics economics in their game for the sole purpose of making all kind of swindling possible.
People ripping each others of money, corporate politics, corporate spying, economic war, thief, and of course murder are possible and encouraged in EVE. The whole game is built to enable these things to occur, and it's what people playing that game seek.
So why on earth should it be punished? You can't complain about getting conned in EVE anymore that you can complain about getting slaughtered in UT2004, because it's the reason why you play the game in the first place.
yes, people can be "punished" (Score:2)
1) Someone mentioned that stealing monopoly money is not a crime. Yes, it is. It is theft. Yes, the outcome in a court case would be tiny for that theft.
2) someone mentioned that taking a puzzle after it was assembled would not be a crime. Yes, it woul
Kill them all! (Score:4, Funny)
In related news, a druid violated the law of conservation of mass by morphing into a 300lb bear and gryphon rider violated the laws of gravity by actually making some big fat retarded looking rat with no hair fly. These two individuals remain at large, and should be regarded as dangerous. If you see them please call the "I'm an idiot for applying the rules of reality to necessarily fictional games" hotline.
Down with in-game violators of the law!
It's a game, ferchrissakes... (Score:2)
That's absurd.
Game crimes require game punishments...But, a ponzi scheme, don't these people watch "real world" news once in a while?
Online Crime must be stopped! (Score:4, Insightful)
From what little I know, this type of activity seems par for the course in Eve online. I remember reading about an event that occured last year [blogcritics.org] where a group infiltrated another group [klaki.net] and basically acted as undercover agents. They got into the highest ranks of the group then killed the CEO, destroyed ships and took over some assets.
Call me crazy, but that sounded pretty cool to me. It sounded much cooler than any scripted or planned event I've heard about in any other online game. So does this latest event. If you have created a game where the players can create such interesting events rather than have to artificially create them, it sounds like you've done something right.
Do you think virtual income should be taxed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck, this is supposed to be one of the draws of EVE! It's a game where the devs don't hold your hand and baby you! Anything can happen.
Ridiculous! (Score:4, Insightful)
You feel cheated? Did the guy use some kind of software to take illegal advantage in-game? Did he use exploits in the game? Did he do anything except play by the rules of the game? If he didn't, guess what?, he didn't cheat. He deceived all of you fair and square. Furthermore, I bet there were plenty people advising against putting your money there because there was no guarantees.
Next, whiny boys will start complaining to the FBI that they were killed on Counter Strike. Multiple times. With head shots.
Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
To whoever posited this, please, step away from the keyboard and try to get hold of a life. A real one.
Re:Property & the internet (Score:2)
How is this substantially different to salaried labour?
Re:Property & the internet (Score:2)
Re:Property & the internet (Score:3, Informative)
And then the boy suddenly realized that playing a game is NOT labor, that pretending to do something tangible was NOT itself doing something tangible, and that he was NOT being paid by the game company in gold coins to kill ogres -- but rather that it was al
Re:Property & the internet (Score:2)
It's not your anything, except maybe a representation of someone's in-game hard work.
Re:Property & the internet (Score:2)
Waitaminit. You're telling me the Internet's been around for hundreds, nay, thousands of years?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, there is [ebay.com]. ATM the bid on 1 billion ISK ~100$, so 700 billion ISK is about 70000$!
What was the name of that MMORPG that would let you move game currency into the real world and vice-versa?
Second life.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
This is one of the most insightful comments in this story. Not because murder is a real issue in MMOs, but because the government will really have to answer these questions at some point. You disagree with me and think that MMOGs are not worth the time right now, an
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)