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.

Comments

Crazy

[I_Love_Pocky!]

I bet he didn't use his dragon sabre to do the stabbing.

however

[Joe the Lesser]

The body was easy to find, as the title 'Zhu Caoyuan's Corpse' mysteriously floated over the dumpster he had been dumped in.

FYI

[McKinney83]

Just fyi 7200 Yuan = $869.76 USD

Yahoo news link to story

[mkop]

here is a link to a story with no registration http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/200503 30/od_uk_nm/oukoe_life_china_sabre

Whole slew of legal issues.

[dubiousx99]

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?

Re:Whole slew of legal issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember all those people bitching about people selling items online? Remember how the companies that make the game explicitly say they aren't real?

That's why they aren't real. Because the game companies don't want to be liable if they accidently delete your character. Or if they ban a player for no reason. Or if a player gets hacked and has virtual property destroyed.

So... they aren't considered real, and it's not considered a real crime. Even by the companies themselves. If you lose something in game, the game company won't do anything, and so the police can't really do anything, either.

Wow

[SunFan]

"Qiu Chengwei, 41..."

Stop. There's the problem right there.

If I'm ever this worked up about a video game at 41, then please just put me into an institution somewhere.

Re:Before we all claim he's nuts...

[Ayaress]

Like I posted above, in this case, the guy may not even have equated the vitual property with real property. He lent somebody else the sword, who then sold it for a large sum of money. $800 is a lot of money, and people have been killed over smaller sums. It'd be nice to know how this would have played out, say, if the sword was lost or looted rather than sold. In that case, the sword is lost, but that's it. The killer may have been angry or annoyed, but I doubt he would have killed for it. But selling it, there's more at stake than just a digital sword. There's been a violation of trust, you lent somebody something and they betrayed you, and there's also now around $800 USD in the mix.

Finally....

[Rolan]

A case where a video game actually had something to do with a murder...

Re:Before we all claim he's nuts...

[UWC]

I could say the same of modern currency. The limits on supply are artificial, dependent only on willingness to produce, not ability. And with so many transactions being electronic these days, the difference between "real" and "perceived" value breaks down further. Regardless of the game designer's capabilities, they chose to make the item "rare," which thus increased its perceived value at the moment.

$869.76... and hours and hours and hours

[JavaRob]

...and people who are totally innocent of any kind of theft (virtual or otherwise) are killed over *much* less money, every day. For example (quick google...), $15.

Yes, it's stupid to kill someone over a virtual sword... just like it's stupid to kill someone over practically anything. But it's *very* easy to understand why the guy might have been furious enough to do something stupid. He was stabbing someone who intentionally ripped him off, and made a lot of money out of it. It's pretty easy to understand why he was mad -- it's not a real sword, but that sure is real money, real entertainment value, and probably a huge time investment getting the sword in the first place that were lost in an instant.

Virtual worlds are not my cup of tea... but I can imagine the feeling of not having any backups of my hobby programming work for 3 months, foolishly lending my computer to a friend for a day... and finding that he'd sold it. I'm not saying I'd start stabbing... but it wouldn't be the computer value I'd care about. Are you going to tell me all that work is only "virtual" property, and I shouldn't worry about it?

Re:Legend of Mir 3?

[sgant]

Ok, having checked out Legend of Mir via Google, I came across the official site that has of course a "screenshot" section. I randomly click on this one and notice that in the chat window people are complaining about LAG and other shots of people calling others NOOB. Now, this is in the screenshots area of the official site, that's suppose to make the game shine and look attractive.

Looks like a winner...