Slashdot Mirror
Virtual MMO Currency Trading Crippled By Fraud
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)."
I heard recently that the "virtual economy" created by the world of MMORPGs is larger than the Chinese stock market.
Quit messing around with Paypal, and call the District Attorney where the guy lives.
He has admitted he commited fraud, get him arrested and see him in court.
From the thread:
"So basically, we're out $3000, or about 70% of our profits since January. And to be completely honest, it hurts."
Sorry, you sir need to get into a new business. The one you are currently in sucks for you, sucks for the game, and sucks for the people playing the games. MMORPG's are NOT a job. People who are spending real money for in-game advantage through third parties should be shot in the street for being so stupid.
That said, you're an idiot for using PayPal. Blame yourself, not the person that caught you with your pants down.
schild
editor, f13.net
What you need to do is ship a cd to the buyer with the codes to access the virtual items/characters.
That is a physical delivery, and paypal WILL support you and help you solve your problem. Very sad that you had this problem, but you need to make sure to use any/all services you subscribe to your advantage and not blindly trust in your customers. There are a lot of people that will do you much worse than a couple thousand given the opportunity.
Who's going to start the first escrow service for gamers..
People who are spending real money for in-game advantage through third parties should be shot in the street for being so stupid.
Now, why is that exactly? Let's look at the situation.
Person A spends 20 hours a week playing MMOX to build up his level 245 Necromancer Dark Elf Paladin. He then enjoys playing the game as such.
Person B spends $200 on a level 245 Necromancer Dark Elf Paladin. He then enjoys playing the game as such.
Frankly, I don't see any objective difference between the two. Granted, the specific gaming experiences for players A and B are different, but externally they're the same. One spends his time, the other, his money. Both to play A GAME! IT'S A GAME! GAME!!! It's supposed to be FUN! FUN! GAME!
Games are NOT serious. Player B didn't enjoy working through a level grind to get the character he wanted, or maybe he makes enough per hour to justify the expense. Either way, it's all for the sake of fun. Just because he has fun with the result, while you have fun with the process, doesn't mean he's any different from you.
You see, these are GAMES. You play them to have FUN. Not everyone has fun in the same way.
So, my question is basically why does this suck for the game, and for the people playing games, if the purpose of a game is to have fun?
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Yep, if a theif is able to steal something, he should be entitled to keep it and go free. I'll try that line the next time I "teach Best Buy a lesson."
The best argument I've heard thus far FOR the practice of buying MMO items and money is that some people simply don't have the time to play as much as others. To some it's not a big deal to spend some cash to get themselves to the point where the powergamers already are at. I'm not saying I agree with the tactics of the fraudulent bunch out there, but I don't think executing people for legitimately spending their money as they see fit is a valid argument either.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
It sucks for the game because the person who bought the level 245 Necromancer Dark Elf Paladin is skipping the majority of the world that the developers put their blood, sweat and tears into.
It sucks for the players (not all of them) but the ones he might interact with because having skipped the majority of the game, in all likelihood, doesn't know shit about the game and will wreck nothing but newbie havok upon those stupid enough to group with him.
MMOGs are a game, yes. But it's also a type of business that relies on player retention. When someone skips from the beginning to the end the chance of retention is probably dropped about 90% because the only thing the player will take part in is the endgame.
The person who played 20 hours a week may very well have catassed his way up there. But I can guarantee you he'll generate more free PR through word of mouth than the guy who dropped his wad on a pre-leveled character.
Doesn't sound like you play MMOGs much.
schild
editor, f13.net
Not completely disagreeing with you. But MMORPGs go well beyond games for a lot of people. They are environments for social interaction with other humans. As such, the word "game" is almost derisive.
And I rarely heard my fellow EQ players 5 years ago call the level grind fun. City of Heroes might be a different story from what I've heard.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Now if a certain development house (NCSoft) would just kick Chinese IPs from their NA servers like they did to NA IPs on their Korean servers, I can start really playing, and I can safely ignore cries of RANG RANG and 999999 from ebay/etc. adena farmers.
Finally, one less site selling in-game stuff for money. Almost every MMO has a policy against this, but they do it anyway. It has to stop. It is cheating. I don't care about any arguments about the time it takes to do X in the game. Why not just create an idspispopd equivalent? That's what developers are doing if they don't at least fight this.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
Mail them a piece of paper that has the codes on it. They have to sign for the letter, they are liable.
My user number is prime. Is yours?
No. Defrauding someone like the guy in this article did is illegal. Show me a court case or law proving that selling virtual goods is illegal. Simply put, it isn't. There is a difference between being against the EULA (which selling money and items in MMOs usually is) and being against the law.
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.
No offense, but $800 dollars in a MMORPG game is not that much money.
Castles and rares in UO sold for THOUSANDS at a time, I was too young to know what the hell was happening or how much money was actually changing hands. However, there were cases of people in Asheron's Call made upwards of 50k a year selling (duped) items and pyreals, and one character in September 2000 sold for $5000. I never played Everquest, so I don't know the numbers on that game, but even in the "non-major" games there has been lots of money floating around.
And although it may seem like a lot of money to a college student, $800 is nothing to someone that has been around the scene for a while.
It sucks for the game because the person who bought the level 245 Necromancer Dark Elf Paladin is skipping the majority of the world that the developers put their blood, sweat and tears into.
So what? If he paid for the game like everyone else, then the devs got their money for their blood sweat and tears.
It sucks for the players (not all of them) but the ones he might interact with because having skipped the majority of the game, in all likelihood, doesn't know shit about the game and will wreck nothing but newbie havok upon those stupid enough to group with him.
And that's different from about 90% of the rest of the idiot players how exactly?
MMOGs are a game, yes. But it's also a type of business that relies on player retention. When someone skips from the beginning to the end the chance of retention is probably dropped about 90% because the only thing the player will take part in is the endgame.
How is this the player's problem? If the devs made the game more interesting in the beginning instead of just a leveling treadmill, then maybe people would be more inclined to play all the way through.
The person who played 20 hours a week may very well have catassed his way up there. But I can guarantee you he'll generate more free PR through word of mouth than the guy who dropped his wad on a pre-leveled character.
Again, that's someone else's problem, not the player's.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"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.
Definitely more artists and creative types. There had a "waiting list" for approval by the developers, to make sure you didn't say anything offensive. in SL, pretty much anything goes. The creative output of the playerbase is nothing short of amazing.
hookers and grits.
On the surface SL looks a lot like There and Active Worlds, but the difference is that SL is more geared to giving everyone tools and letting them create the content instead of feeding you with content created by the company itself.
There are a lot of amateur and professional coders and 3d modelers in SL. I know of at least a few people who have admitted to me that they currently work with big 3d game companies and have shown me their real-life professional portfolio.
The tools are actually surprisingly good too for such an environment. Most technically-minded people seem to be impressed by what they've created.
- Building and linking models using 3d primitives
- Scripting objects to interact, move, or exhibit certian behaviors. The syntax is much like event-modeled C and the API has over 200 function calls.
- Custom texturing where you upload arbitrary TGA/JPG textures which you can place on any object or wear as clothing
- Custom sounds where you upload arbitrary WAV files and can script them to play however you want
- You can now also upload custom "poser" animations you can script or apply directly to your avatar
Of course with a lot of amateurs there will be varying degrees of quality for different builds. Some people are content with sticking with the default "plywood" texture that comes when you build, and others seem to remind me of the days of the netscape (blink) tag as they like to try to use every feature in the toolbox on their builds. But for the most part it's a trip to explore the world and quite easy to make things.
Admittedly the name of the world is quite cheesy, but the technical achievement is fairly impressive and worth taking a look at.
My sig contains a referral, but if that offends you, click here instead to go directly to the website.
Ignore the crappy screenshots and BS marketing crap on their website, it doesn't represent the in-world well, and you'll find it's a lot more impressive once you log in than the website will lead you to believe. =)
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
That's a pretty unnecessary statement. I'd venture to say he's played them enough to know full well what the phrase "level grind" means. Well enough to understand why some people will spend real world money on preleveled characters to skip the whole process.
Personally, I play several MMOs, and I'm the type who levels his character through the conventional means, grinding away. Because for ME, it's about experiencing the game the developers created -- that's FUN to me. But for some, it's not. *shrug*
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
PayPal seems to try and market itself as the new way to pay for things online. However it is completely incompatible with any sort of online only system.
I work for a small software company, $20 buys you the current version of our software, and all future versions for free. You pay via paypal, use the software for a while, then force a refund since (as has already been mentioned) there is absolutely no way for us to contest it. The PayPal resposne boxes just don't work allow for anything other than a tracking number. You get the refund, and we get squat.
This is only moderatly bad for us, I can delete the account, so there is no real loss (apart from my time). But take a company like www.TransmissionFilms.com, if they took PayPal and random client B watched a movie, then reversed payment, they have no recourse. And worse than that, they might be contractually obligated to pay the creator of the film $X since the film was watched.
I think that PayPal needs to step up and embrace the technology that allows it to thrive. Allow merchants to specify exactly what will be provided during registration (ie username, password, account name, etc), and possibly some third party way of validating that data. The customer would be presented with information on exactly what PayPal thinks they should be receiving, at time of purchase. The fraud department would also need to be staffed with people, not drones, to deal with issues that arised thereafter.
paul reinheimer
Let me see if I understand this correctly. On the board (link in the article) Jamie Hale admitted that he knows why Paypal won't do anything about this. Namely because there was no physical shipment. Well, why don't they throw that step in? Ship out something the user has to recieve as verification, and talk to paypal to verify that it would count as "goods recieved".
Or how about actually creating a working relationship with the company that produced/developed the game? Then he could have re-couped all his loss, but because he didn't workt hat step out, he's out of the profit.
It all sounds like personal problems to me...
No, it's not cheating, it's market forces at work. As much as you'd like you MMORG to be seperate from RL, it's not. The very foundations of commercial MMORGs are based on the market. That's why you're paying a subscription fee, that's why the developers get paid, etc., etc.
"Time is money" is a cliche of capitalism, but it's still true. Right now, I have some guys doing yardwork for $8/hour, because my time is more valuable than $8/hour. Sure, I could do the work myself; it's probably great for character building and would give me a real sense of accomplishment.
I think part of your problem is that you've fallen for the fantasy that these virtual worlds are somehow egalitarian, that everyone starts out on a level playing field. Sadly, it's not so. Obviously, those that join the game early, and play steadily will be more powerful and wealthy than someone joining much later. And what are these powerful characters to do with their surplus goods? Trade or barter or give them away. (Even those that give them away might in effect be bartering for allies, no? Or even creating good will? Remember, good will has a cash value in the real world.)
The external market for virtual property is a natural extension of the capitalist underpinings of the commercial game. Capitalism and competition aren't infecting the game, they are the basis of the game, the reason why a company chose this means of creating wealth to begin with.
That's just the way it is. If you don't like it, I'd suggest finding a noncommercial game to play or creating your own. However, since we all live under capitalism one way or another, and time still equals money, I doubt a noncommercial game can stay "pure" forever.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
There is no difference between a player who cheats at poker and one who buys his way into a specific position in an MMORPG.
There is a world of difference. Poker is a zero-sum game. In order for me to succeed, you must lose. Any MMORPGs I've played do not have that property -- in general, everyone can go along being happy, killing things that get in their way, finding treasure, making bandages, whatever.
You might not want to hang out with with a level 75 Monk n00b, but you may also not want to hang with a jerk who's worked his way up to level 75 who's going to killsteal and make a pain of himself. One can be just as damaging as the other.
The solution? Don't hang out in-world with people you don't like. Whether they've catassed their way up, or bought an ubercharacter shouldn't make a difference. Live and let live.