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Labyrinthine 'EVE Online' Scam Recounted

Posted by simoniker on from the bad-news dept.

Thanks to Terra Nova for its post discussing "a lengthy, but intensely fascinating and well-written account of an EVE Online [PC MMO] player who brokered a large investment scam by creating a puppet corporation." Terra Nova mentions that the account's nefarious author "does an incredible job of explaining the complexity of MMORPG worlds, the emotional salience of interactions, and how play transforms into work", concluding: "It's a lot of reading, but it's well worth it."

51 comments

  1. Freecache link... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Right here in case of slashdotting.

    1. Re:Freecache link... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That only caches the first page.

      "Please note that you cannot submit a whole site to FreeCache as in http://freecache.org/http://www.rocklobsters.com/ This will not work as only index.html will be cached. You have to prefix every item that you want to have cached seperately."

    2. Re:Freecache link... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most... informative... post... ever. Not.

  2. The best part... by Sparr0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    As soon as a court precedent is set concerning virtual currency, and I dont think it will be much longer considering how bad the scamming is getting, all these people can sue the piss out of this guy. 480mil Isk today is worth about $500. Depending on how long ago this scam happened it could have been worth upwards of $5000 then.

    1. Re:The best part... by Osty · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As soon as a court precedent is set concerning virtual currency, and I dont think it will be much longer considering how bad the scamming is getting, all these people can sue the piss out of this guy. 480mil Isk today is worth about $500. Depending on how long ago this scam happened it could have been worth upwards of $5000 then.

      Laws do not apply ex post facto. You can't change a speed limit from 60mph to 30mph and then mail tickets to everybody who drove on the road while it was 60mph, and you can't prosecute this guy for virtual currency fraud when there was no law against it (and still isn't). The victims are welcome to sue in civil court, assuming they even know anything more about the guy than his online avatar name and a library phone number, but it'd be a rare judge that would take them seriously.


      What he did wasn't right, but at the time it also wasn't wrong (still isn't). Besides, this is fake money. Fake. As in, not real.

    2. Re:The best part... by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Sure it was real. Would it be ok for me to delete all the data on your hard drive? Of course not. The data has value. These game currencies have value too.

      I will admit you're right, both on the ex post facto part and the unlikeliness a judge would care.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    3. Re:The best part... by Sparr0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What money is "real" then? There are currency exchanges where you can convert one virtual currency for another, and sites where you can buy/sell virtual currency for "real" currency. Its as much a commodity as any other currency.

      As to the law applying, its a matter of PRECEDENT. I didnt say they would pass a new law. They dont have to. As soon as a judge rules that scamming virtual currency is against EXISTING fraud laws then what this guy did becomes illegal, in a somewhat retroactive fashion. Precedent doesnt have to pre-date the crime, it only has to pre-date the day its applied again in court. This is why you sometimes hear of a court postponing a decision until a [higher profile / more important] case in a [higher] court is decided which will affect the outcome.

    4. Re:The best part... by BinaryOpty · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The money isn't "real" because a company controls the world it's in. The company going under and/or cancelling the game would make the virtual money you've collected worth nothing: but if it's considered real money then you could theoretically sue the company for the real world equivalent of virtual money you had when the game stopped. Then also, you'd have to put virtual currency on your taxes and likewise the company running the game would have to send out a tax form (An MMOW-2?) to each and every player. PKing and stealing in games would be literally illegal and therefore to be safe companies would have to strip out any PvP or thieving-style content. And finally, since the company is quite literally creating money from nowhere, the economy could theoretically be ruined by MMOs money creation systems and so MMOs would be put under harsh scrutiny by the government to ensure they don't tilt the economic balance too far either way.

      Virtual money is not real money for those reasons. It's a virtual object--property--that you can sell for any price you can get for it. Heck, using your "converting from one to the other" theory for currency, someone could probably sell air to another person and argue that since it's worth money air's a form of currency. Don't argue that virtual money's a form of currency, argue that it's PROPERTY. Property can be created from scratch: currency cannot.

    5. Re:The best part... by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      the virtual money in the mmo's IS NOT BACKED BY ANYONE! therefore, it is 'fake' as in money(fake as in toy money). it just something that acts as if it had some value but it does not, like if you used some toy bills as 'money' in your schoolyard play to buy land from the moon or whatever.

      it could disappear overnight and you wouldn't get squat, if the publisher would decide so.

      I'm pretty sure the mmo's have clauses in the playing contracts that state that everything stays the property of the publishing company too(including your fake money).

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    6. Re:The best part... by fallingdown · · Score: 2, Insightful
      As soon as a court precedent is set concerning virtual currency, and I dont think it will be much longer considering how bad the scamming is getting, all these people can sue the piss out of this guy.


      If you've ever played Eve, you'll know (or you should know) that this is what the game is all about. It's about lying, cheating and stealing. All the other activities of the game are there only to give context to the end game - PvP. Every ship, missle, player corp - whatever - represents hours and hours of dull, repetitious effort and it's designed to do that to make PvP - in whatever form, combat or boardroom - that much more viseral.

      The guy didn't do anything outside the rules of the game. What he did is nothing different then winning a PvP combat fight. That's the way Eve was designed to be played. You can't sue a guy for beating you at a game.

    7. Re:The best part... by servognome · · Score: 1

      The only reason real currency has value is because we trust that the goverment maintains it as a limited resource. In MMOs we trust the developers have made the in game currency a limited resource so we attach value to it. The fact that in game currency can be exchanged for real currency which in turn can be exchanged for real products means there is value.
      The biggest difference is as you mentioned, for legal reasons, the publishing company owns all rights to the in game "property," therefore individual players can't sue about scams like this since "property" has never really changed owners (always owned by the game company)

      --
      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
    8. Re:The best part... by Ieshan · · Score: 1

      How does this compare to, say, a country, such as Germany post-WWI, where Inflation reached astronomical levels and currency was literally worth less than the paper on which it was printed?

      What's different about a country "folding", as opposed to a "company"?

    9. Re:The best part... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      What money is "real" then? There are currency exchanges where you can convert one virtual currency for another, and sites where you can buy/sell virtual currency for "real" currency. Its as much a commodity as any other currency.

      You are not selling the virtual currency, you are selling the action of transferring it. You can't sell something that doesn't belong to you, and aside from the question of whether you can buy something which is virtual (clearly you can, since you can order software and download it on the net) there is the issue that it's not really yours anyway.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re:The best part... by Sparr0 · · Score: 1

      Just like dollars arent really yours, the federal government is just letting you hold onto them.

    11. Re:The best part... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      More like your car isn't really yours, the government is just letting you hold onto it. In Scotts Valley, CA the police can actually come onto your property and ticket you for expired registration, and then come tow your car for tickets. True story.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:The best part... by mutewinter · · Score: 1

      So should EVE players be able to sue pirates who extort them out of money in order to pass unharmed?

    13. Re:The best part... by Sparr0 · · Score: 1

      only if someone passes a law making the "extortion" part illegal. nothing to prevent someone from lowering the value of someone elses posessions as long as they arent breaking a law doing it.

    14. Re:The best part... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The country is still there. That government isn't. They really are two separate things.

    15. Re:The best part... by Feanturi · · Score: 1

      Virtual money is not real money for those reasons.

      And more.. I don't know about EVE, since I can't seem to sign up right now (has their card auth server been slashdotted or something? Not many posts here), but in Star Wars Galaxies, even though you can find tons of SWG stuff on Ebay for real money, it's actually forbidden in the user agreement and grounds for account termination. I think that's a great thing really, and a good move on their part. Whether or not their policy is effective at preventing such trades is completely beside the point, for their stance on the validity of game items/money as real world currency is made quite clear to the user, effectively shutting down any scam-related lawsuits that might ensue if they didn't have such a policy. If a player gets scammed out of credits or isk or whatever by some nigerian kid, I hope they learned their lesson and consider themselves fortunate that it wasn't their real money. It was just a large amount of time that they *chose* to spend playing an escapist video game, that's all that such credits really are, so people that have been burned need to just get over it. In the real world we say that Time is Money. Well in virtual worlds Money is Time, for whatever 'money' has come one's way while choosing to spend (waste?) their time is merely a function of their time spent, that they would have spent anyway even if it was for fewer credits than they earned. It's a game fer chrissakes.

      Loved that story btw... I wanna be a pirate!!

    16. Re:The best part... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your analogy fails. Data was not deleted. No computers were hacked. The game played itself out, albeit the sportsmanship could be considered poor.

      It's stupid to allow such important in-game items to be affected out of the game. Trading in-game currency, weapons, ships, etc. on eBay? Let the buyer beware. I also dislike the idea of setting up alliances and corporations out-of-game with characters/users who otherwise would operate in completely different realms in-game.

      If the makers of the game really want you doing this type of stuff outside the game, wouldn't they create a forum, eBay-like thing, and or trading ,mechanisms?

      This seems as ridiculous as suing McDonald's over too-hot coffee.

  3. For full effect... by Incoherent07 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When Nightfreeze originally posted this in SomethingAwful about a month ago, he posted it in about 18 hour intervals, infuriating all of his readers, but adding a great deal to the suspense.

    As for the story itself... it's another tale of people pushing the rules as far as they'll go to get ahead. There's a natural tendency to want to take any advantage, whether it be by exploiting others, exploiting loopholes, exploiting lax enforcement of the rules, or just grinding incessantly. And since the worst that can happen to you online is that you get IP banned or key banned (which only diminishes your standing in that virtual world), it opens up all sorts of doors for people to fulfill whatever escapist criminal fantasies they have. Is that good or bad? Well... that's almost the same debate as "games cause violence".

    The really interesting part is the epilogue: after scamming what would amount to a sizeable amount of cash on EBay, he doesn't buy anything with it or flaunt it, he just gives it away. Guess there's really nothing to do once you're the richest player on the server.

    --
    This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
    1. Re:For full effect... by Osty · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As for the story itself... it's another tale of people pushing the rules as far as they'll go to get ahead.

      It was more than that. From his story, Nightfreeze was doing a brisk, legal trade business, with a bit of pirate hunting vengeance on the side, until the developers caved into pirate requests to nerf the one real defense a trader had -- the MWD (micro warp drive). In doing so, it made the game nearly impossible for traders, so Nightfreeze decided that if the developers were going to screw around, why shouldn't he? In the end, he realized that he screwed himself in the process, getting all of that money but losing the time invested in his scamming character, so that his new character wouldn't be able to utilize that bankroll for months.


      Disclaimer: I've never played EVE Online, and I'm only going by what was available in the story. It was a good story, though.

    2. Re:For full effect... by nadadogg · · Score: 1

      I was one of many waiting for each installment. It was good stuff.

      --
      i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
    3. Re:For full effect... by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

      I've been playing the game almost since release, and this kind of stuff, while somewhat evil, definitely keeps things interesting. I was honestly expecting this to be about Morbor's investment scheme. That guy fooled a good chunk of the game population with his scam that ran for weeks.

      As for the trader losing his only defense to pirates... (The MWD) Well, the whining about who has the unfair advantage never stops on either side. Keep in mind that the story here took place early after release, and the writer is a bit overdramatic about things. What was true then is far from true now.

      Regardless, it's still a good read.

  4. that was intense. by JVert · · Score: 2, Interesting
    When I first started reading I was soo excited to hear how the game worked. I loved tradewars and never found anything that could replace it. But this was definatly it. His background of becomming a successfull trader using in game skills and social skills for quick advancement; very inspiring. When he loses his family of ships you really feel the pain he is going through. So bitter to go down in a ball of flames taking out your arch enemy but losing everything you had as well, a fitting end to a story, I would have stopped playing right then, but he wasn't done yet. Even when he decides to become truely evil the emotional trauma isn't aparent untill he recounts a fantasy of how his victims will attempt revenge.

    "He would then start to pull something out of his pocket, and the entire LAPD SWAT team would open fire on him. The 9 millimeter hollow-point bullets would penetrate his soft flesh and expand, creating large breaches in each of his vital organs. They would continue to shoot through his body and exit out his back, leaving a gaping hole that would spurt out blood and various torn off chunks of cartilage. They would keep pumping round after round into his fallen, disfigured mass, making sure that he was good and dead. And when they finally got around to investigating the body, they would find out that he was reaching for a pumped super soaker pistol filled with laundry detergent."

    After that disturbing recount you realize he is crazy enough to go through with it. The drama is intense as he earns his victims trust. You feel guilty for suspicous ones who require alot of coaxing, you smile and nod at the one jerk, the guy who has it comming to him.

    When its all done I couln't belive it, I could never have done what he did. I wont sleep tonight thinking about poor HardHead. He lost his money but breaking his trust was the worst of all. Think about it, if Trazir gave him his money back, or gave him the full profits, Hardhead will still never be the same. Yes that irk was indeed cursed.
    1. Re:that was intense. by garibald · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I actually beta-tested for Eve Online for about a week or so, hoping as you did that it would be a suitable successor to TradeWars... but, at least when I played it, it fell extremely short... there were a large number of items to trade and such, and a fair number of ships... however the trading was entirely based off of your character's skills... also, the differential between two ports was miniscule... most items having exactly the same price in every single port for an entire constellation of stars

      My point being is that it fell short of being anything near TradeWars in terms of gameplay and balance and such...

      I promptly quit after about a week, when I realized that you had to mine for several weeks to get enough money to do really basic trading... it just didn't seem fun to me... the majority of the game was navigating between two jumpgates and avoiding PKing bastards.

      Having thought about this quite a bit... I've come to the conclusion that there's probably not going to be a MMO that even approaches TW because the basis of the game was it's episodic consistency... you kept wanting to play because everyone gets wiped out and you'll have a reasonable chance to outwit and outplay them this next time... there's just not going to be a massive game that a) limits how much you do every day and b) wipes everyone's accounts in a non-beta situation

      at least not one that a huge amount of people would play on

    2. Re:that was intense. by david.given · · Score: 2, Interesting
      When its all done I couln't belive it, I could never have done what he did. I wont sleep tonight thinking about poor HardHead. He lost his money but breaking his trust was the worst of all. Think about it, if Trazir gave him his money back, or gave him the full profits, Hardhead will still never be the same. Yes that irk was indeed cursed.

      Yeah, I felt sorry for Hardhead. Defrauding Thoggins I could feel good about, but Hardhead seemed to be a nice guy.

      But the one I really want to know about is Frosttt. Some newbie, flying around, and this guy hands him 300M isk --- what's he going to do with it? I'd love to see what happened to that money...

    3. Re:that was intense. by RobK · · Score: 1

      ... I'm sure he won't be able to write like Nightfreeze ...

      I could just feel the thrill. The original presentation 18 hours apart would have been stellar to read.

    4. Re:that was intense. by servognome · · Score: 2, Informative

      Probably had to change his name, since now everybody knows he's the one with all the ill-gotten money.
      Poor guy, happy as heck noob with 300M, suddenly getting death threats and confused as hell why

      --
      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
  5. Hmm by thekitch · · Score: 1

    Now only if Doom III had this kind of immersion.

  6. It's a RolePlaying Game by samael · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If a character in-game can't lie to another character-game, what's the point?

    Shooting one another is fine, but lying isn't?

    --
    My Journal
    1. Re:It's a RolePlaying Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a bit different. Most of the lying took place outside the game, where he had people place trust in his real-world persona. That's a very messed up thing to do to people.

      If you can consider it okay to post in forums under aliases and talk to people over the phone with the purpose of misleading them, then would you consider it acceptable role playing if I were to call up security at a large building and make a bomb threat? Or phone someones parents acting like the police and cause them to think their child suffered some horrible accident and died?

    2. Re:It's a RolePlaying Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your analogy is way off. His lying in no way affected the "real world". To that extent, taking the game into the "real world" is really a nutty thing to do anyway. I mean, he would have avoided the whole phone thing if Lispy didn't insist.

      If you ask me who's the crazy one it's Throggins, for actually threatening Nightfreeze like that.

    3. Re:It's a RolePlaying Game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The other guy seems like he had his own problems. Obviously he's a bit paranoid and has been screwed over before.

      But because one person is an asshole, that makes it okay to be one yourself?

  7. Role-playing a crook by bitusmeus · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Nightfreeze wasn't the first one to pull off something like this. Back in the early days post-beta, there was a guy (something like Morbo) who was promising 100% returns on investments after two weeks.

    He first got people to make little "pilot" investments of 1 million isk, and paid them back on time. Meanwhile he was collecting new investments.

    Doesn't take long to see where this is going, does it? But for some reason, skeptics were in the minority. Despite warnings of a Ponzi scheme, more than half the people in my corporation started giving this guy money, to a total of about 1/2 billion isk. They never got a dime.

    I wouldn't be suprised to find that all those who did get paid were shills. The guy kept posting apologies and excuses on the various player forums, and managed to keep convincing people to give him money, and keep his original investors believing they would get paid.

    I guess people thought that because it was a game, that no one would rip them off. But think about it, it's a game designed with PIRACY as one of the coolest ways to make money.

    But people didn't or couldn't see that the whole entire operation took place completely within the game mechanics and environment. No cheats or exploits were used. If anything "illegal" happened, then it's only within the game world, which is designed to encourage "illegal" behavior anyway.

    I'm sure Morbo had a great time. I imagined someone doing this in preparation for a term paper on Charles Ponzi or the gullibility of the average investor, etc. My hat's off to him, wherever he is.

  8. Can't seem to login... gRRR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *grins* Eve is so great :)

    In semi-related news, I did this for my summer job. Eve, I mean. :)

    And, it's not too late to support my tuition! Check out my Eve-Online store at Ebay :P

    http://stores.ebay.ca/Ungodly-Sales-for-Eve-Online _W0QQsspagenameZl2QQtZkm/

    I'm trying to shut-down for the fall, and have quite a bit of excess cash/items and characters unlisted. So if anyone wants to haggle with me feel free :)

  9. (OT) EVE Online sounds awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I gave up on MMOGs a while ago, but I always thought that an "Elite" or "TW2002" type game would be great as an MMO. Are there any other games of this sort out there?

    1. Re:(OT) EVE Online sounds awesome! by WarlockD · · Score: 1

      I played it in the beta and outside for a good few weeks. When playing in the beta I got hold of a great corporation and it was fun! Mining, taking out NPCS. Since we completely Onzed a 0.0 area, and there was only one way in, we were safe from piracy. Plus there weren't many players on.

      I mainly quit because after the beta wipe, the org dissolved as most of the people just left. I might get back into it, but the secret is to find an org that is friendly and helpful.

  10. He's lucky he didn't get caught by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Virtual property can and often does have value. I'm sure there are auction sites detailing what the exchange rate of this virtual currency to real $US is.
    Once he took the deal making off the game, by negotiating on the telephone it became wire fraud. If his victims were from a different state them him, it becomes a federal crime. Theft by deception, wire fraud.

    1. Re:He's lucky he didn't get caught by JVert · · Score: 1

      I dont think value of virtual property will hold up. You can use it if you are frauded in a transaction regarding real money and virtual property but there was no exchange of legitimate goods.

      The telephone fraud part is interesting though. But because its not legitimate goods it sounds equivilent to telling you girlfriend your not cheating on her. Or even more accurate say that you are a skinny hunk to lure someone out on a date with you when you are really a fat slob.

    2. Re:He's lucky he didn't get caught by topynate · · Score: 1

      I agree, the telephone part is interesting, but so is the AIM and IRC part. If the game character enters into an agreement with another game character to do an in-game transaction, that falls under role-playing, which is what lots of games are about. If the man behind the game character (the one with the putative daughter and wife) enters into an agreement with other real telephone owning people, that's different - it's a contract, providing that the goods to be exchanged have value.

    3. Re:He's lucky he didn't get caught by servognome · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sec. 1343. - Fraud by wire, radio, or television Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both
      Since the entire deal was in virutal currency (owned by eve online) it is governed by their EULA (see relavent portion below). No property or money was defrauded since ownership remained entirely in control of the software maker.
      B. Rights to Certain Content
      You have no interest in the value of your time spent playing the Game, for example, by the building up of the experience level of your character and the items your character accumulates during your time playing the Game. Your Account, and all attributes of your Account, including all corporations, actions, groups, titles and characters, and all objects, currency and items acquired, developed or delivered by or to characters as a result of play through your Accounts, are the sole and exclusive property of CCP, including any and all copyrights and intellectual property rights in or to any and all of the same, all of which are hereby expressly reserved.

      --
      D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
  11. Nope by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your license agreement begs to differ. I don't remember who pointed this out to me, but companies running MMORPGs go out of their way to keep in game objects from having legally recognized value. The reason being is if the objects have value according to law, then the companies become liable for the investments people make in the items. For example, If I bought 100 of those Micro Warp Drives to sell or use to earn money to sell, then when the game devs changed the balance on them rendering them useless, I could quite literally sue them for reducing the value of 'My Property'. Or worse, if the publisher wants to cancel the game, suddenly they've got to pay out losses to all those ebayers. This is why the publishers themselves aren't selling items. It has nothing to do with trying to keep the game balanced. It's all about liablity

    If you stop to think, it has to be this way. Otherwise the devs would be buried under an avalanche of lawsuits.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  12. Not worth it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    What really gets me is the fact this guy wasted so much time and effort on the scam in the first place. Jesus, get a life.

  13. 2. ??? by hunterx11 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Looks like somebody figured out what Step 2 is.

    --
    English is easier said than done.
  14. Very well writen by node159 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wow, very well writen, this beats the scrips of all the movies released this year hands down :).

    I feel sorry for HardHead, if I had been Nightfreeze I would have given him all the isk's rather than give them to any old n00b, but then again I probably could not have gone through with it either.

    Ultimatly Nightfreeze encountered the biggest problem with RPG's, once you beat the system there is nothing left for you. You feel like a hollow shell, don't want to play it any more cause its pointless, you beat it but you have nothing else. It's a very deep low after the high of just having 0wned the system.

    --
    GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
  15. Why do people have a problem with this? by Corngood · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You can be a Pirate in this game, but you can't be a white-collar criminal?

  16. Childish by Peter+Cooper · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought this might be worth reading until I got to this:

    [..] there lies a poorly designed game which rewards the greedy and violent, and punishes the hardworking and honest; and if you think about it, that's a good representation of capitalism.

    Yeah, because it sucks so much to live as a hardworking and honest person in the US, UK, or Japan, compared to how amazing it is in China or was in Soviet Russia.

    1. Re:Childish by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmm I am not sure that is a particularly valid point tbh. This guy makes a valid point that Capitalism by it's very nature encourages fucking over thy neighbour to make a quick buck thyself. We see it all the time - I don't know what the statistic is exactly but it is something like 90% of the wealth is owned by 1% of the population - I think this was for the UK.

      Regardless of other political ideologies, this point is a perfectly good one to make - Chine/Russia's current/past ideologies are of no relevance to the point he makes.

  17. That's for a court to decide, not you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    EULAs don't govern jack shit, either way. They're a combination of Platonic fantasy and holistic ass-covering on the part of idealistic game lawyers, pubs and devs. Partly, they're a guideline for players to know what will get on lawyers/pubs/devs' nerves. They certainly aren't binding contracts.

    The scammer could conceivably be brought to justice according to the law. EULAs aren't the law.

    1. Re:That's for a court to decide, not you by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 1

      AC says:
      The scammer could conceivably be brought to justice according to the law. EULAs aren't the law.

      A clickthrough or shrinkwrap EULA for software is legally very weak, and can probably be defeated in court by the right high-priced lawyer. But the EULA for an online service is very different. If you have an ongoing monthly payment, then the license is far stronger.

      But in this case, it doesn't matter. No real property was ever exchanged... not just because the EULA said it's not real, but because it's simply not real. If there was no EULA, there'd still be no case.