Gamer Slain Over Virtual Property Dispute
cibe writes "A Shanghai online game player has stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword. Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his "dragon sabre", used in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3, the newspaper said a Shanghai court was told yesterday. Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it for 7,200 yuan ($A1,129)." Update: 03/30 21:15 GMT by Z : More commentary available on Game Girl Advance.
They also have an article about this over at Yahoo. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=58 3&e=5&u=/nm/20050330/od_nm/life_china_sabre_dc
The article states that the police refused to do anything for the theft victim because the item wasn't real. Why don't we consider these things real? You can be assured that of a hacker deletes/steals files from a corporation or government entity the police would consider this a real crime. Where do you draw the line?