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Labyrinthine 'EVE Online' Scam Recounted
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."
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.
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.
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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
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?
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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.
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.
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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.
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