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Virtual MMO Currency Trading Crippled By Fraud

Posted by simoniker on from the taking-advantage dept.

Thanks to Terra Nova for pointing to the Gaming Open Market website, home of "the next generation of [MMO] game commodity trading", where there's an announcement that: "Until further notice, Gaming Open Market will be closing its doors to all game currency trading except Second Life." There's more information in a post at the official Second Life forums, where Jamie Hale explains: "Yesterday, I had a user breeze through spending over $3000 USD on [EVE Online] and [Star Wars Galaxies]. Immediately after taking delivery of the ISK and credits, he reversed all the payments, claiming he never received the goods. This is a well-known loophole in PayPal's seller protection policy. Basically, I have no recourse at all. PayPal accepts no form of proof of delivery except physical waybills (UPS, FedEx, etc)."

6 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Stunning facts about this... by timlee · · Score: 1, Informative

    Care to cite your sources? I read that the per capita income of each character inside EverQuest is about $2,266 USD annually. That is greater than the GDP of contries like India, Bulgaria, and China. However that has nothing to do with the stock market.

  2. Re:Awwww, poor baby can't run his crappy gaming si by eggstasy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Second Life is not a game. The developers ENCOURAGE online money trading.
    SL is more like massively multiplayer productivity software with a social aspect. In it, you can create just about anything you can imagine, you can build 3D objects, script them, you can customize your avatars to the hilt and make custom animations for them in poser. It is a dream for machinima.
    After setting up a shop and making a few cool items, you can make money without spending a single minute in world. Since 99% of the content in SL is provided by the players, the developers offer the players monetary rewards in US dollars every month for the most popular content, and encourage anyone who is left out of the "rewarded few" to sell their game money on GOM and IGE, so that they are still rewarded for their content development effort.
    The amounts of money involved are nowhere near trivial. I have made the equivalent of $800 USD, and my lifetime membership only cost me $160.

  3. Re:Irony of Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Except breaking the EULA is the same as copyright infringment, and is against the law.

    You don't have the right to use a copyrighted material in anyway unless the creator grants that right. In the case of these games, the EULA describes how the creator is granting those rights. Abuse of the EULA is copyright vilation.

    Is it right or wrong? Different debate.

  4. Re:The thief e-mailed and confessed? by whoda · · Score: 4, Informative

    In about the 4th sentence of the article.

    "The thief emailed us and explained that the goods he stole will be kept as "payment" for the lesson he taught us."

    see it now? ;)

  5. More updates by whoda · · Score: 3, Informative

    "This incident has been reported to the FBI Internet Fraud Department, and tomorrow to the RCMP. We have compiled as much information as possible on this person, including his name, address, phone number, email addresses and the IPs used to log into our site. All of this information will be turned over to the authorities."

    And that should just about make sure the guy is found. Paypal does do some 'decent' checks to verify your identity when setting up accounts.

  6. Re:Sounds like a personal problem... by jamiehale · · Score: 2, Informative

    I would *love* to create a working relationship with the game companies. Sadly, despite all the effort I have put into turning the existing out-of-game trading into a safe and efficient marketplace, I have received nothing but dead-air from most of them. Linden Lab has been very supportive. There Inc. has been supportive - just not publicly so. Mindark (Project Entropia) has given an unofficial nod with some fine print. Sony, Artifact Entertainment, CCP, etc. have said nothing. Their legal departments probably screened it and decided it wasn't worth the hassle. :) Now many (many many) people have suggested shipping something just to get around PayPal's policy. I have no doubt it would work just fine except for the added expense of a FedEx shipment on each purchase. Yes I'm sure it could be aggregated, but at present we only see 3 cents on the dollar. We would have to increase our fees substantially to cover those additional costs, and that would without a doubt drive our clients to our competition. We're looking at - or rather continuing to look at - all sorts of alternatives. Hopefully we'll be back to full strength shortly.