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)
When is a news article not a news article... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:4, Insightful)
Alternate reality defines the game (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
It's all in the game (Score:5, Insightful)
Or in-game death by angry mob or assassin.
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.
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite... (Score:2, Insightful)
HOWEVER, these items in online games have MASSIVE intrinisic value based on labor. If there's only one of such item known in existence, and I've put 400 hours into obtaining said item, I can't simply go and pick up another one at the dollar store. There is no equivalent conversion in the real world, and if someone steals the item, they're essentially stealing 400 hours from my life. 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.
Saying that monopoly money is analogous to a super-rare item in one of these games isn't really true.
Re:someone is missing the point of games (Score:2, Insightful)
When is a Con not a Con? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Cheating in video games (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real money (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheating in video games (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. Consider someone who exchanges US dollars for casino chips to play poker, wins a bunch more chips, and then exchanges their casino chips for US dollars. According to the IRS, they owe taxes on their winnings/earnings. I think Dentara Rask's take in the game could be classified like gambling winnings.
Boba style (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not quite... (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
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: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: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.
Re:Not quite... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, but you can [ebay.com]...
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?
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:2, Insightful)
>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.
Exactly the same argument can be used with real-world money like the US$ or any other modern currency. It's rarity is only decided by the amount the national treasury / government decides it can allow itself to print. In the old days the amount of money used to be linked to the amount of gold the nation owned so that the rarity was physical and very *real*. But now its entirely artifical. Perhaps some nations still use a gold based currency but I dont think any of the major ones does.
Most money today are even not physical objects anymore but just bits and bytes in bank computers that can be replicated very easily.
>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
This I agree with completely, and I think you hit the nail quite well regarding the "worth" of game items/money.
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.
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:Alternate reality defines the game (Score:2, Insightful)
Allowing events within a game to have RL consequences means by definition it no longer is a game.
If you need stronger deterrents against certain in game behaviour, then they should be enforced in game.
This is largely why most MMO's ban the RL sale of currency and items - it adds a coupling from the game out into RL. This destroys the game aspect as much as a link in the other direction - it is now work. As some have already pointed out, if someone steals my money I earned through work, then yes, it is a crime. In an MMO's case, however, if they explicityly restrict such linking between game and RL, then any link a player adds becomes they responsibility of that player, and them alone. If one of the players affected by that scam was trying to amass in-game currency for later sale, well, that's what happens when you disobey the rules.
Remember kids, real-life and games don't mix!
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:Neither is cocaine (Score:1, Insightful)
The item in question belongs to CCP Games who still possess it. How is that theft?
Re:You've totally missed the boat. (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:Cheating in video games (Score:3, Insightful)
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 rules is because it destroys the (admittedly unrealistic) notion that sports are supposed to be fair - that winning or losing are a measure of skill and dedication, not a measure of how many steroids you've shot up. By that same logic, game devlopers make powerleveling and goldfarming services against the rules (in the form of the EULA or TOS) based on the notion that the success in the game should be free from outside influences.
So the rules say that in game currency cannot be exchanged for RL currency, for the reasons above. That means that legally, it's very hard to hold the thief in TFA responsible in a court of law. Any halfwit lawyer would point out that what the player did was wholly within the confines of the game, and that only through "black market" services could the in game money be considered real money. Since that market isn't recognized by the game's admins, and participating will get you banned in a hurry for cheating, there is no way to legitimately translate game currency into RL currency.
This should be a problem for the admins to deal with. Unfortunately for the people who lost money, they seem to have adopted a "buyer beware" policy, which makes it unlikely the perp will be punished. However unfair that may be, the problem ultimately isn't a matter for the courts.
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.