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Virtual Muggings in Lineage II
electro-donkey writes "A man has been arrested in Japan after on suspicion using a bot to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash, according to this report from NewScienist.com.
"I regularly say that every form of theft and fraud in the real world will eventually be duplicated in cyberspace," says Bruce Schneier."
This sounds more like an issue with game design. The whole fact you're able to mug someone in-game makes this a non-crime. If the developers are worried about mugging then they should take the "looting other Player Characters (PC)" out of the game. It seems to me the only thing "wrong" this guy did was use a Bot (making his PC unbeatable). Show me where in the manual is says, "If you use a Bot you will be arrested." If they (Lineage II) don't want Bots in-game, then track down the offenders, ban their accounts and give the loot back to the rightful owners.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
What about vice versa? Because I would love to see someone wall hacking irl
do.what.promptcmds
It's pretty clever.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
How is this illegal?
Certainly he broke the EULA by using a bot.
Certainly he broke the in-game rules by beating up and robbing people.
But.. it's a game. They didn't get mugged, their characters did. I can see how the company could, say, return the items to the original owners.. but charged?
twitter.com/gravitronic
..how is a bot (particularly in an RPG) unbeatable?
I gotta say, a virtual mugging is much better than a real one. Unlike sex, say...
is bruce schneider really the name of a japanese cop?
anyways i find it hilarious how much games mirror reality in japan. That's us in 10 years (hopefully). well maybe not
-bigboehmboy
If he was allowed to steal from the characters, as it was part of the game, and then other people gave a value to the item, doesn't that cloud the issue? The items have no intrinsic value, yes they represent hard work and dedication, but really they can just be created out of thin air by the game designers. The items are not supposed to have real world value, and that is why they can be stolen in the game. It's an interesting collision of worlds, and might eventually leave a precedent for the value of goods in an MMORPG. Law is coming to the New Wild West.
http://www.pterrys.com
I am more worried about being robbed by bots playing at online cardrooms. I really don't like playing texas hold'em using real money against virtual players who never chats in the table. How can I know I am playing a real person or are bot that has compromised the portals client?
Ah, I remember being invited to a group in EQ on Rallos Zek (PVP server). So, after arriving at the specified location, I was immediately jumped by my new-found friends. Of course, as a cleric, I just cast my spell of one-minute invulnerability while I bagged my things, but it was still humiliating.
Reminds me of an article posted about how MMORPG's will eventually take over the world. If the object has real world value and takes time and work to obtain, shouldn't it be a crime to steal it?
Didn't fall for the "PayPal" or "eBay" scams? Watch out for the "Lineage II" phish
"Please take a few moments out of your online gaming experience to buy the Sword of Invinciblity"
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
What exactly was the crime here? The article is slim on details. Was it the fact that he was using a bot? Is that against the TOS (would be my guess)? Surely, it can't be the fact that the bot "beat and robbed" a player character. If it's something you can do in the game, then how can you be arrested for that? Or was it the selling of the items online? Was that illegal? It just seems to me the article doesn't say much to perpetuate discussion.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
Just miniaturize http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c= 6657 that and you're set.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I don't know if this falls under civil or criminal code. On one hand, its just a game. On the other hand, so is blackjack, but its a crime to cheat someone out of money.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
"I regularly say that every form of theft and fraud in the real world will eventually be duplicated in cyberspace," says Bruce Schneier."
So, Mr. Schneier? Do you often get robbed by robots?
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
What's next? Will a man be sentenced to community service for turning over cards in Solitaire? Arrested for playing Minesweeper in an airport? Sued for using the "Undo" feature in Spider?
if some guys buys a Real Doll, and he's married, has he committed adultery?
I mean, c'mon -- everyman just wants a girl who will let him watch an entire season of Stargate in one uninterrupted sitting.
Did he get arrested because:
- he beat and rob characters in game ?
or
- he used a bot in the game?
or
- he sold the "stolen" virtual properties for real cash?
There are three crime scenarios one could apply to this:
- theft
- mugging
- fraud
As far as I'm concerned, theft means to me taking someone's possesions without asking. Mugging is like theft, but instead of simply not asking you use or threathen to use violence against your victim or a objectafter all, there's fraud left. Fraud is to take advantage of somebody's missing or wrong information. After all- users of the game propably didn't expect someone to bot 'em up... but who's betraying who here? I think they could possibly blame the author of the game, for not telling them explicitely that they could get virtually stolen.
What doe sthis say about how advanced a country is when even their police departments understand cyber life well enough to grasp the thought of an MMPORG mugging . Can you imagine calling the Police in say Kansas City and explaining to them how Zoltare the Unmerciful is repeatedly muggin your character Meri the Fancy . I'm sure you get a few laughs or maybe just complete silence . Whats next ?
Guild Wars instances each area to each player (except towns and communities where you can't carry weapons anyway), making it impossible for cyber thugs to pull these ridiculous stunts.
What kind of a game is this where the creators/admins can't just take the things away from him and give them back? How hard could that possibly be rather than spending the money/manpower to arrest him?
A man with a gun is called a citizen. A man without a gun is called a subject.
I'm going to go out now and mug a few people and kill a few others since it's obvious it's "OK" to do it!
You consider the life of a virtual character equivalent to that of an actual person? How misguided.
In case we beat up New Scientist Web site.. http://www.newscientist.com.nyud.net:8090/article. ns?id=dn7865
Virtual Killings in Counter-Strike!
Story at 11.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Pretty soon we'll games where you gotta score some bot growth hormone or other anabolic steroid to get pumped up, bot tae-kwan-do classes. My bot is a black belt!
Actually.... that's a pretty good idea. A MMORPG where you play a thug, but firearms are outlawed or unavailable. Maybe post-apocolypse. You use your controller like a fighting game, and you pick up chains and bats and lead pipes, and maybe a bonus item from a quest is a chainsaw. Instead of the keystroke attack like all ORPG are now, you'd need a fighting game level of fidelity. You'd need really, really low latencies to make it work, it'd have to have the fighting fidelity of something like Tekken. And you could wrestle people to the ground and gang beat (or rape) them. Steroids and other juice made you stronger. Bennies to stay online for more than 20 hours, etc.
Hillary would hate it, you'd have to host it offshore. But I guarantee it would be a massive, massive hit.
LOSER... it's a GAME.
What is wrong with people in Asia ? they take this stuff way to seriously.
Case in point, I'm watching real police arresting real people who are protesting the real pullout of the Israelis from the Gaza Strip. Nowhere online will you find anyone so attached to items, parcels of land, or characters that they are willing to risk their real lives to protect them.
It is foolish to think that anything online is in any way reflective of real life. There is an offensive, yet quite insightful comic strip which shows a normal guy+anonymity+audience= a troll. Put someone in a video game where there is no real punishment for actions which would get them in trouble in real life, and you'll end up with a bunch of people willing to kill, rob, join gangs, and a host of other activities that are frowned on in real life. It doesn't help that the games themselves promote this sort of activity.
One of the obvious concepts that arises from that view is that online "crime" ought not be policed with real life authorities. This arrest is wrong, and sets a bad precedent. The game companies themselves ought to be up in arms against this action. It takes away their authority to enforce in-game rules, and gives excessive power to the police.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
So he was cheating... In a video game..... And got arrested??? I didn't realize the game was that serious...
Not only do you get beaten up by bullies in real life, but they follow into cyberspace and beat you up in the virtual realm too!
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
My dads bot can beat up your dads bot. Not to mention sell his virtual boxers on the internet in exchange for $$$$$$
How long will it be till we see virtual police NPC's walking the beat and investigating crimes? I could see a 911 chat channel where you could contact the local authorities. "Help, my character is being mugged!"
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
Time you started work on version 'c' I think.
This is cheating.
These hackers are causing more problems than they realize. They ruin the game for everyone else.
There should be new rules. #1, no selling of characters or items. That would take care of the cheaters who do it for money. These people are the same people who would make spam, just to make a few bucks off everyones misery. Rule #2 should be anyone who uses a bot would be fined a large sum of money, something like $1000.
On-line games should do what banks in the USA do. Before anyone can open a checking account in most USA banks, the bank will call the CHECKS system. This is a private organization that keeps a database of anyone who ever opened a checking account. If a person is listed as owing money to any bank, then no other bank will accept that persons buisness. The only way to clear the complaint is to contact the original bank that issued the complaint, and settle the problem with them.
It comes down to fair play. The only cheaters are the stupid people who could not do it on their own. They need a crutch.
Plus, how fun can a game be when there is no real accomplishment? The cheaters did not win, they did not accomplish anything.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I think Japan has just won the stupidest laws ever award.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
This should not be a matter for the law to get involved in, plain and simple. At worst, the guy is breaking the game's TOS (in which case it's an issue for the GMs).
Lineage II is a PVP game which lets you take items from characters you defeat. It seems to me that, aside from the botting aspect, there's nothing in this guy's behaviour that's wrong. The botting aspect, if a TOS violation, should probably be punished by the suspension of his account.
You shouldn't outlaw the theft of property, or even murder, in online *gaming* worlds. Some of these games, such as the Lineage series, EVE Online and World of Warcraft are designed specifically with PVP in mind. Some, such as Final Fantasy XI, aren't. If you don't want to take the chance of being robbed and murdered, don't play a PVP RPG. It's not as if any sane games designer is going to make a PVP MMORPG (or any MMORPG aimed at making a profit) permadeath anyway.
In real life, I am a good, law abiding little citizen. Hell, I don't even do software/music/video piracy, because I still believe in the ideal that if you justify spending money on something inessential, then you shouldn't have it. However, when I play games, which are ultimately a form of escapism and release, I sometimes want to be a bit nasty. I want to beat people up and loot their still-warm corpse. If you're going to bring the law into stuff like that, then you're taking the whole point away and soon virtual worlds will be as heavily constrained as the real world.
San Andreas police cracked down on a car theft gang. 62 memory cards for PS2 seized.
He was arrested for "hacking", not for mugging people in game.
Sound like someone was watching the videos of dot hack slash - or the manga - and realized that the downfall of the Cerulean Knights could be done in real life.
In the anime, a bunch of kids kill off other players for fun, but there is a band of knights that protect players from unscruplous players who do things like rob or jack other players.
sigh.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Virtual robbers, bullies, scammers . . . Net imitates life.
I've read my comment and came to the conclusion that there could be a crime. The selling of property, virtual or physically present, you have no right to possess could be judged as crime under certain circumstances - and judications. (I don't know how it is for example in the US or here in Germany)
So if there is a civil process in which it is decided that the botter actually took advantage of the lack of ability / knowledge to do something against his bot (however that trial could work), it'd be a case of fraud. mmh..
It's unethical anyways-
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Be fair. Don't bite the hand that does not feed you.
The problem is that there's a connection between in-game property and real property. Once someone is willing to buy something it has value - regardless of whether it's a virtual sword, a piece of music, or a car.
On the face of it, it seems as though stealing that piece of property is theft. However, it's a "part of the game". It seems to me that players are aware of the problem, accept the risk, and play anyway. It seems more like an NFL QB getting flattened during a blitz. Anywhere other than the football field that would be assault.
Furthermore, if you treat one character stealing a character's stuff as theft, wouldn't you have to treat the game destroying a character's stuff as destruction of property?
Rules of Conduct http://www.lineage2.com/legal/rules.html
Rule # 1. While playing Lineage II, you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the game. To this end, you may not defraud, harass, threaten, or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players.
Rule # 10. You may not advertise the intent to or commit the act of buying, selling, trading, sharing, or transferring access to any Lineage II account.
Rule # 11 You may not advertise the intent to or commit the act of buying or selling items for cash or trading items from one server to another.
My Favorite, Rule #18 You will not exploit any bug in Lineage II and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Lineage II. Bugs should be promptly reported via 'Ask A Question' at http://support.lineage2.com/.
Yank his account but, I don't see any LAWS broken, but then again IANAJL.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Just because it happened on-line does not lessen the crime. There are victims.
If some real person spent 20 hours working to get an item from a quest, and then someone used a BOT to steal that item, that is theft. The first person is out the 20 hours of work it took.
It is the same as if I work 20 hours at a store to save up enough to buy a watch, and someone steals the watch.
The RIAA taught us that theft is not just physically stealing something like a chair. Theft can be stealing a right to something.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Technically, in real life, people don't get mugged by robots.
Yet... >:]
Unbeatable? Those Lineage bots must be a lot better than the ones on FFXI. Those goofs can usually be outpulled/outskilled by a mental defective.
VOTE!
Now, where's my wallet?
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
Only if you use one that works.
Just wait until someone kills his/herself in protest of something in a game. We're not far from that. I think that'll settle your argument nicely.
A virtual bot stole virtual stuff from a virtual Avatar...
:P
He should have called the virtual (in-game) police to make sure they catch the virtual thief and make i'm do virtual "hours of comunity service".
(You may not use this account until you helped people for X hours [by being a low level/privilege gm])
I'm sure the owner of the bot would be pissed if he had to do "virtual comunity service"
Is there a virtual police in Lineage ][ ?
No? Then it's a FEATURE!
-------------
To confirm you're not a script, please type the word in this image: defeated
Lol
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2004-03- 19
Thank god they dont know I play UT.
Do you even realize the number of murders I've made in the last hour?
I saw this article earlier on digg, so I did some fact checking.
The original article was reported in the Mainichi Daily.
I couldn't find any reference to an such arrest at http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/.
The police were able to return the "stolen" "items" by changing a few bits in the database.
(I made this up; the bits are actually still missing and considered unrecoverable)
Good game design for a MMORPG should emphasize role-playing and make the game impossible to play without sticking to the role; bots just shouldn't work without horribly complex AI.
Imaging a MMOG whose designers have thoroughly thought this through and implemented a good system that relies upon role-playing: when players can out-perform bots, there is no longer any incentive to script them.
In such a world, bots could be "cool," embodying helpful and fun personas, just like AIM bots written for beneficial purposes (and in the worst case, bots can be only as distruptive as a prepubescent user). Scripts would do things like give your speech an accent, or help you always speak in rhyme.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Now this is a flawed statement. You have to define wether the crime is real, or simulated. If it's a real crime (I.E. Credit Card harvesting, hacking into private servers, DDOS attacks, and other general naughty thing that cause monetary damage)then it should be delt with as such in our current legal system. However, simulated crimes (I.E. stealing or murder committed within the confines of a virtual game) aren't real, don't have any lasting effect on the world around us, and as such cant possibly be treated in the same method as a real crime. If someone does something that is against the rules of an online game he should be punished online with a variable level of severity that maxes out with total account restriction.
Perhaps the online game vendors can create an virtual legal system to deal with these. Complete with a virtual cour summons, virtual lawyers, and a virtual jury and judge. This virtual legal system can determing the virtual sentance that the crime committer deserves.
Take off every sig!
"Prosperous player town"
http://www.thenoobcomic.com/daily/strip064.html
"and you'll end up with a bunch of people willing to kill, rob, join gangs, and a host of other activities that are frowned on in real life" Exactly! That is what games are for, an escape from reality accompanied with a suspension of disbelief. I play GTA, and guess what? I rob cars! I mug people! I play Katamari Damacy, and I roll over helpless sticks of bubble gum and trees and cars. The great thing about videogames is there aren't real-world consequences for your virtual actions. However, in this case, this linked his virtual actions to the real world when he sold the goods for money. That is what the problem is, not the fact that in Lineage II it promotes PvP, swordfighting, and other actions that are "frowned on in real life."
U.S. teen faces life in prison for the brutal murder of 5 Counter Terrorists in Counter-Strike.
why not just use virtual law makers, virtual law enforcers, virtual prisons, ...
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
...the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
If not, He will bitch-slap you with His Noodly Appendage.
would be to put the man's "Bot" character in a virtual prison, wouldn't it?
Time is comparison of movement to other movement.
Japan's got some crazy laws if they have a law stating "it is illegal to kill virtual characters even though that feature is built-in the game"
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Bush should push for congress to create a new branch of government that builds virtual police that must be included in all games. I think this guys character should get the death penalty. Maybe old school style... "off with his head". Id watch that on a webcast! They could do it over and over again in a different way to please everyone.
I can't wait for Japanese police to find out that people are regularly murdering each other in these games. How will they react when they learn of all the plots to kill the Emperor? When the US Congress finally figures out that "GTA" means "Grand Theft Auto", they'll be sure to incarcerate our underground nation of virtual carjackers.
--
make install -not war
You don't kill yourself because of something that happened in a game. You kill yourself because you've got huge psychological problems to begin with and computer games have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Gimme all your mod points NOW! errrr..
Quick question: How would you enforce this?
Characters:
Identify the character with the IP? Not good.
Identify the character with something on the player's computer? What if the player has to reformat? How does he get his character back in the same shape he was in before he had to reformat, or what if he gets a new PC and therefore is no longer identified with the character associated with his old PC. Both not good.
Tie it to the CD Key? CD-Keys are given away with characters most of the time (at least the way I understand it).
Items:
Granted I only played one MMORPG (SWG for the first 18 months), but the in-game economy relied upon trading and selling of items. Half of the game was geared towards crafters who could make the items that the other half would use daily. How do you differentiate between in-game sales and out of game sales?
So how would in-game economies exists if items were not allowed to change hands?
These were issues that have been discussed for many years, and I still have not seen an answer that would be most beneficial. Outside of finding the accounts that were posted on Ebay and deleting the character, which was a rumor regarding the Jedi accounts early on in SWG.
Look, we are now in a society where our virtual "possessions" can garner real-world cash. If I own something in a virtual world, and someone offers me $500 in real-world cash to "sell" it to him virtually, does that now make the transaction a virtual one or a legal one? I believe that it now makes it legal because actual money was involved.
Let say that a +2 jewelled sword of ogre beheading in the virtual world goes for $500 on eBay. The agreement is that after the payment takes place, your virtual buyer meet up in the virtual world and you give your virtual sword to the virtual buyer and virtually part ways. But you still have real-world $500 in your bank or PayPal account.
Someone else sees that transaction on eBay and decides to sell his +4 jewelled sword of ogre beheading. But before he can do that, some asshole comes in and steals that sword virtually. If in the real world that sword could have fetched $750, then stealing that sword virtually might be accountable as theft in the real-world because there is now a real-world precedence (of at least $500) that virtual items cost real money.
When someone steals something in real life, a crime has been committed and insurance will pay for it based on its market value. If that virtual item has real-world, market value, is it still strictly a virtual value because there was no physical, tangible item? The theft of those items could have cost their "owners" real-world cash if they decided to sell.
That's really what the Japanese court needs to decide. The thief did sell for real-world money, after all, so the whole theft is the theft truly virtual? I would say that once it was sold for cold, hard cash, it lost its "virtual" status and was then subject to applicable laws - in this case Japanese laws and possibly the laws of the country where the victim resides.
Just my two cents. Convert that into your currency as necessary.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I wonder if the cops will be allowed to yell, "PWONED! You suxxor, noob!", as they arrest people from now on.
On a story like this, you have to reference the quintessential MMORPG PK mugging/loot event:
You Stole My Cloudsong
Not safe for work unless you have headphones. You can hear the tears in his hoarse voice. God thats awesome.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
This is a GAME. The Internet is an online world, and if you commit crimes in this online world, you are punished (or should be, ie: Spamming, Phising, etc.) ....
But MMORPG are GAMES in the online world, not the actual online world, So, it's a private game, the company behind it can just ban the players if they want to, but getting arrested is just plain wrong. The game allows the player to trade items and to kill another player to get their items. Many people later sells those items, so, what is wrong about this?, if he had used tons of boxes to create multiple instances of the game, ok, that would be a kind of DOS, but this is just part of the game. If someone doesn't like what he's doing, ban him, but being arrested is stupid. This guy has definetely got a case against the people that got him arrested for just playing, they are going way down
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I can't imagine the arrest being due to just this online "offense." It must have been part of the story but something else was the actual cause. Or has the world drifted so far from reality? This is not the world I grew up in so long ago... and clearly not the world I expected.
-gam
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."
if they are stupid enough to pay for their virtual items back. This is just too pathetic. Only on slashdot.
When I was young little 8-bit gamer, all the computer magazines were ever about was POKEs for unlimited lives and so on. This cheat-friendly attitude stayed the same right up till online gaming. Suddenly "cheat" was a dirty word again, and I'm only talking about PS2 gaming where the only things at stake are reputations. This is about the freedom to swing your fists being restricted by the noses of other people innit?
I think that is a terrific idea. Can you imagine if griefers/cheaters/exploiters found themselves unable to play online games - PC, PS2, whatever.
Of course, a lot of logisitcs involved (like identity), and of course some rules to make sure that people on the list really belong, and that there is an appeals process, but...
Then we have an online version of the old saying: "Your rights end and the next Player Character's Virtual nose"
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
I used to staff on a MUD back in college. It was impossible to directly fight another PC (unless both had volunteered to participate in PVP) or mug them (unless you killed them first - see above). The tricky part was the Doctors profession (guild), who could turn invisible, but couldn't fight or pick things up at the same time - (presumably inspired by the Red Cross). One guy at my school came up with this bright idea:
Of course, he had not volunteered for PVP, so everyone was pissed off that they couldn't go exact revenge in the obvious fashion.
I ended up tweaking the code so that looting someone else's corpse (defined as "they died less than X seconds ago and you didn't strike the killing blow") gave you a strike, and a certain number of strikes would automatically volunteer you for PVP whether you liked it or not. This let the players have fun trashing the guy, but also registered a lot of false positives from well-meaning teammates.
Many years later, I realized that from a purely technical standpoint, it would've been much easier to either make looting someone else's corpse (by the same definition as above) impossible, or convince the staffer who created the Doctors to take away invisibility. Not sure whether the players would've enjoyed those solutions more or less, overall.
Guns. I need lots of guns.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Maybe that feature should even be built-in already? duh!
This is completely false. This is not a sig.
This is an Offical responce, that any Lineage II player knows this Article is exaggerating
"This article is vastly misleading - the player arrested was, as near as we can tell, just using a bot program and PKing, then selling the drops on ebay. There is no "hack" involved other than the usual bot program - it's a mistranslation.
SargeNC"
but for the fact that everyone involved is a loser. Unplug yourself and go outside once in a while. A little bit of sunlight is good for your physical and mental well-being. What's next? Is some smelly geek in South Korea going to get fired for gaming too much, then game for 50 hours straight without breaks for food, sleep, or bathing, until he finally drops dead? Oh, wait...
So if there is a security flaw in some firewall that allows you break in. So you are not legally liable for any damage you would cause if you hacked they system because it is the programmers fault for acedently putting holes in the program.
But if the hacker makes a program such as a root kit, or a port scanner. They are not responcible for there code because it is a tool and some one abused it.
Ill tend to agree with the second argument because any program of some sort of power could be used for evil as well as good. But for the first one it is the fault of the hacker that broke into the system.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have been playing San Andreas...nuff said, In future I will be posting from the inside.
This should not be a matter for the law to get involved in, plain and simple. At worst, the guy is breaking the game's TOS (in which case it's an issue for the GMs).
The guy sold the virtual stolen items for real-world money. That makes the whole thing no longer purely virtual as it had real-world ramifications. That means that the real-world cash was earned by taking something without authorization from someone else, virtual or not.
If he simply took the item and left it with his character, I would agree with you 100%. However, he did not do that. He brought his virtual theft into the real world by getting real money. I don't see how real laws are not applicable in some way. It's now up to the Japanese court system to determine how/if real world laws can be applied.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I played Lineage 2 for a while, and in some ways, I still miss it. There are several things that are "possible" but against the rules. For one, you can't take advantage of certain locations where you have the abilty to deal damage to mobs, but they cannot get at you. These exist in the game because of minor design flaws, but it doesn't mean anyone INTENDED for this to happen.
The farming/bot problem has been ongoing, and I think many players have the feeling that NCSoft just sort of turned a blind eye to it (the accounts used for this purpose do generate revenue, after all). It's not that the developers intended this, it's that there are people who will take advantage of ANYTHING from which they can derive benefit. Make no mistake about it, though- farmers and bots can make an otherwise interesting game SUCK.
As for rules and enforcement, to suggest that being a virtual fantasy game precludes some reasonable rules and their enforcement is to ignore the fact that games like Lineage2 require a VERY, VERY real investment of time (or money, if you're a cheater), on the part of those who play it. This suggestion carries with it the notion that no-one's time, effort, and in-game accomplishments matter. If that's the case, then why even play it?
It's a sickening feeling to know that you spent the better part of your free time the last few weeks collecting enough raw materials, or saving enough gold to buy your next bow, only to have it scammed by some moron who can't bring themselves to play fairly. NCSoft will argue that scamming is part of the game. Maybe, but they can't have it both ways - they can't have a game that requires an UNGODLY commitment, AND situations where someone can easily lose what they've worked so hard to accomplish. It's possible, but in theory, it just doens't work out very well. People WILL garner resentment when this happens, and I don't blame them. Time is a limited resource.
The entire point of doing this is to ruin everyone else's fun.
That IS the fun.
This just shows you how dangerous anonymous gaming is. How was the bot owner supposed to know Ulong the Unmerciful was a cop playing a computer game at work?
That is how a bot will beat out the regular player. Asheron's Call is the prime example. The game is rife with bots because the game's designer and owner, Turbine, condones them. They gave permission to use combat bots IN WRITING on a public forum.
This has caused a wholesale change in the balance of the game. Players have been known to run multiple accounts of bots all producing characters with capabilities beyond those of normal players. Worse through the use of third party tools they know when an +Admin is around and therefor are alerted for whatever test the +Admin deems.
Turbine sold their integrity the day they publically stated they would allow combat macros. As such the power level of a certain group of players went beyond what could be coded for. To make matters worse they created an expansion that practically caters to bots. This includes showing off the characters true level. The worst was providing in game rewards for experience points, points that the bots generate without the need of players. Those abilities can be used to the advantage of the bot owner when they then decide to actually participate in the game.
Bots are lame and anyone caught using them should be banned from the games they are in. I would go as far as banning all accounts on the same CC as well as mailing address. The last because it really brings home the fact that cheating is not tolerated. Any company that willingly allows bots should be ashamed and run out of the industry.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"...a bunch of savages in this town..." Dante
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
This is the one I'm waiting for.. some dude's wife catching him playing GTA w/the nudity mod getting it on in the back seat of a stolen ambulance and divorcing him for it IRL! What a world, what a world... maybe she should have been givin it up!
I think it is time to create a nudist colony MMORPG.. anyone got some time on their hands?
Whoever wins a game of Go kills the other player. :)
I quit!
"They set us up the bot!"
#1, no selling of characters or items.
The only way to accomplish this is to:
-Not allow any trading of items between characters
-Not allow characters to drop items or pick up items dropped by other characters
-Not allow characters to sell items to shops and have those items then be buyable by other characters...
Essentially, if there's any way for me to take, say, a Sword of Justice, and have us perform some sequence of events that causes you to have the Sword of Justice and me not to have it, then I can sell the thing to you.
Whole organizations sprung up around trading of virtual items when that wasn't originally part of the game. As long as I can give something to you, then we can work out payment and other stuff like that offline.
As for selling of characters, there is NO way to prevent this, as I can simply sell you my account name and password and such.
Rule #2 should be anyone who uses a bot would be fined a large sum of money, something like $1000.
Good luck collecting that. Private entities cannot "fine" people and expect it to be enforced on anything other than a voluntary basis.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's hard to believe that any police agency in the world would arrest someone for violating the rules of conduct in an online game. I did a search on the website of a Japanese newspaper where the story is supposed to have originated, coming up no results. So take this article with a grain of salt until we get a reputable source.
I went to a lecture given by one of the top guys of CCP, an Icelandic company that developed the MMORPG Eve-Online. For those who have no idea, Eve basically creates an alternate persona for its players. You can choose a profession (everything from a miner to a pirate) and you basically earn your living inside the game. Well, that's what they thought to begin with at least... until they heard of a man in Eastern Europe who got up at 9 a.m. to play Eve. He stopped playing at 6 p.m. after a whole day of mining minerals from astroid belts (or something). Then he went to ebay and sold his "space bucks" (or whatever the currency in Eve is) for real money, went out and bought his family some food!
In a very interesting lecture he also told us about how the economy in Eve-Online is being researched by economists to monitor the "birth" of an economy.
So I guess the virtual world is closing in on us.
You don't think enough... therefore you better not be!
If it can happen in real life, it *WILL* happen on the holodeck.
Define actual.
Try telling your wife/girlfriend/other that the young ladies with whom you're playing those online video games are virtual. That loud slapping sound, followed by the sharp pain in your face, is actual.
Sure it is cheating. Of course break one rule, why stop there? If your already willing to use a bot, might as well make some money off of it, both in and out of the game. The idea of a cheating fee sounds like, but I would think anytime a game tried to charge a card the person would just call thier bank and tell them to stop payment. If they are even using thier own credit card. The companies would have to stop selling the pre-paid game cards to really track someone any further than what store they got the card from. Of course if an ISP gave half a rats ass about what happens in a game they 'could' send the account and just have a gamer blacklist of accounts who have been caught cheating. I would suppose it would sill let the person log in, create a character for a while. Then if the is on the list, then the GM's would get a notice. Then I'm sure at this point the system breaks down becase filling out the report to the Blacklist just becomes paperwork for the GM's of a game. Then after playing a game for maybe a few weeks and the shiny newness wears off. The idea of seeing your character instantly become something like a bat wielding PCP,meth fiend can be quite amusing, espcially if your the only one or at least one of the very few.
He raped my digital character and impregnated her!
B00bULicious is now a pregnant 9th level Ogre Priestess! She's been kicked out of the Priestess guild and can't find a job! I want emotional damages and child support! With no job she has to beg on the street for money!
This arrest is wrong, and sets a bad precedent. The game companies themselves ought to be up in arms against this action. It takes away their authority to enforce in-game rules,
Me thinks you've never played Lineage 2 or had to deal with NCSoft.
One thing you're overlooking is the fact that something was taken from other players in-game, and converted into very real cash. Tell me that's not theft. As soon as it enters the physical world, it is governed under the jurisdiction of the physical world- i.e., the police.
The laywer of the accused has issued this statement from his client: "A11 u n00bs are teh sux0rz!!1! u r a11 PWNED!"
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
PlayNC really messed up with Lineage II.
From it's late beta stages (from when I first got involved) through today, the economy has been hijaked by bot-farmers. Or, as most close minded people call them, Asian/Chinese farmers.
This is the major problem with in game economies. Players want them, because they can feel like they are getting something out of items they don't want. However, all they do is create a "business" opportunity for companies that will allow virtual items to be sold for cash. Players don't really benefit, especially new players, that don't hone their ability to play the game, but rely entirely on cool gear. You can spot an Ebayer from miles away.
This is one of the reasons Lineage II was not a big success in the U.S. The gameplay was only ok, the UI was poor (point and click for MMOs was a mistake, and everyone in beta told them that) and they made no real effort to clean out botters. It's only mildly redeaming quality was the Dark/Night Elf chicks in their leather thongage, making every 10-85yr old male want to play one for a little bit. And once you put a piece of armor on, away went said thongage.
One of the major reasons City of Heroes was a decent success was that there was no real economy. Sure, you could sell stuff, but you couldn't use Enhancements until you were +/- 2 levels of it's rating, so it cut the economy to almost nothing. Plus, other players had NO idea what Enhancements you received. No loot hassles, no worries. Sure, PlayNC started going nuts with balancing issues, and then World of Warcraft came out and made a huge dent in their playerbase, but it's the first MMO I have played in a long time that had no real economy, and now that WoW has bored me, I started back up, to be ready for City of Villians.
Don't think CoV won't suck some players that have gotten bored in WoW. Half my guild is waiting on beta invites.
I have a Polaroid of what the burglar did with my toothbrush that says different.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Sorry, but the ability to commit a crime does not make the crime acceptable.
Or I like the idea of some Slashdotter that said to put the thief in a virtual jail. Make his character sit in a virtual jail and get virtual bread and water and get virtually pounded in the arse every day. If the virtual world is "real" enough to invest money into it, a jail in a virtual world is just as "real".
Never succeed in the US. How can something as trivial as a video game relate to real life? So he PK'd someone and sold their stuff for real money? If I steal your loot that you did not bother to pickup because it was worthless to you do that make me a thief? If I accidentally hit a monster you had just targeted ( a KS ) does that make it a attempted theft?
If I gamble in a video game ( some MMORPGS have gambling ) does that make it illegal in my state / country if gambling is illegal?
Japanese people never cease to amaze me in their stupidity.
Film at 11.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
Very interesting! Is it a crime to steal goods that don't exist?
Interesting question considering for example, that a virtual good in a game is just digital data, much like an MP3 file is just digital data.
The MP3 file is an intangible good which produces tangible results in the real world. The virtual goods simulate tangible results, but within a fake digital world.
Where is the line drawn?
When is virtual crime a real crime? (It would seem here that it's treated as real when the line to reality is crossed: ie: he got real cash). Still very interesting... I hope the day will not come where we can no longer pretend to be thieves and criminals in virtual reality!
Finally, some sanity.
Real world= real crime
Completely fake world= fake crime
If I were this guy I'd sue the shit out of everyone involved in the game for putting me in a position to get arrested.
Seriously, would you buy a game if you knew there was a very real chance of arrest just from playing?
This is a fantastic analogy -- hadn't even considered that before. Come to think about it, this could explain why gaming addiction is becoming such a problem -- it's very much akin to gambling addiction.
Great insight.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Lineage II is a virtual world unsuitable for human minds if I've ever seen one. The other players should be thanking him for demonstrating this so effectively.
I'm worried that I may also be convicted of a similar crime if in fact "virtual mugging" is punishable by law. I am looking at over 35,000 virtual murder charges since Nov. 11 of last year. Of course some of them were Covenant Elites, so I may get my charges reduced.
? pID=2
http://www.carnagestats.com/stats/playerStats.php
I have read a few comments and not one has really got to the meat and potatoes of the issue.
A guy was arrested in real life for something he did in a video game.
I am stunned with disbelief. Talk about people taking games too seriously. whats next getting sued by the dwarf for kill stealing, or bettr yet a sexual harrasment suit brought against me by 230 lb 30 year old man because I made lewd comments to his female half-elf ranger character.
please this is absolutely ridiculous.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
This is just a video game right?
So some jackass wrote a program to make other jackasses upset. Play a different game. Whoopy do.
This isn't like he wrote a program to screw with medical documents or something.
I mean how many times have I been on an online racing game and the others are just "that much quicker" even if I hold that fucking X button down as hard as I can...
Does that mean they've "wronged me"? No it means the game is screwed up, that somehow people on the same equipment go faster and I don't give a damn.
You're not forced to buy the game, it's not governmental intrusion, what really is the story?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Err I gotta say no, you're taking a subjective view. In reality it doesn't matter what is causing the frustration, all that matters is the amount. Society tells us what it's ok to die for, but that doesn't really matter. A rose is a rose.
OMG ZERG RUSH
kekekeke
The intent of the game is to allow people to havee fun. When somebody does something that, wholesale, destroys fun for the rest of the community, then even though the game allows it -- it's still cheating, destructive of the game, and counter to the real intent.
This is like when Microsoft modified Windows to 'break' DR-Dos (and Lotus and
When you go into a bank's computer system (either hacking in, or as a trusted employee) and modify your account information, you're, in theory, just modifying bits and bytes -- not unlike the bot -- but the result is felt in the real-world. Thus it is that you get arrested. It's not much different here. The computer allows what this guy was doing, but it's still against the basic rules of the system, and destroys it's intended enjoyment for the community.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Played with little rectangular bits of cardboard imprinted with color images, each unit cost well under a cent to make.
Can you see where I'm going here. . ?
As it happened, these little bits of cardboard proved to be immensely popular. People were willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for single cards at the height of Magic's half-decade rule of high popularity. --Thing is, you couldn't eat 'em. You couldn't build much of a shelter with them. In fact, they were pretty much useless. . , except as a means of holding a little bit of information by way of printed text.
As printed text is worthless to anybody who hasn't got a functioning and integrated human brain, all the value contained on those bits of cardboard existed entirely because everybody agreed at the same time that those little bits of cardboard were valuable. It was an huge act of group imagination filling a dead artifact with pretend value. --But that by itself is interesting, because it creates the reality in which people were willing to shell out hundreds of dollars, (more printed bits of paper, BTW).
So what gives?
Simple. Imagined value is just as powerful as any other kind when everybody agrees to participate in the illusion. Heck, it has been said that the health of the economy is entirely, (100%) dictated by people's belief in what the health of the economy happens to be.
Thus, Cybercrime, if enough people agree that matter-less bits of coded data, (which you can't eat or build a shelter out of), are worth something, then yeah, people are going to go to dramatic extremes to acquire said bits of imagined 'property'.
Physical property is usually just a place-holder for imagined value. In the digital world, the place holder for the illusionary value just happens to be made of the same stuff as the illusionary value itself. Thin air and the spark of imagination.
-FL
If you're in a virtual world where you commit a virtual crime, then you should face virtual punishment. If I steal something in real life, I'm not going to go to virtual jail. Just like if I steal a virtual object in a virtual world, I shouldn't go to REAL jail.
The thing that makes this instance more difficult is that the player went into the real world to make his virtual crime real-world profitable.
However, out here in the real world, there are other factors like binding contracts and ethical behavior. If he signed a real-world agreement before playing the game that prohibited such behavior, then he could face real-world consequences.
In conclusion, there is no conclusion, please move along.
When Diablo first came out their was a big craze at my school of people wanting to play it. People were always trading items around school via floppies and such ( mind you this is before Closed Battle.net ) and sometimes paying money for it.
I saw a oppurtunity.
Since this was before the major character hacking had came to be, I found a way to dupe items within the game and add sockets and everything else.
What did I do? I got all the best sets ( Immortal Kings etc. ) and began to dupe them by the hundreds. What did I do the following week at school?
"Hey were you not looking for the Immortal Kings set? I'll sell you the set for 5 bucks"
"Holy shit dude sure. *reaches into pocket and hands me 5 dollars"
The ethics of this? I'm just a guy turning a profit, thats all. Sure that I am violating the terms of the Blizzard.net and probably should be banned. But in the court of law I would / could not be charged for any crime.
Is it considered theft If I have a friend that works at Office Max that gets 50% discounts on harddrives. And I buy one from him for half off and pay 30 dollars. And I sell it to someone for 70? After all it is deception by a moral standpoint by selling it to him for 70 dollars. Doesnt matter how I got the item, just that I sold it to him for a bigger price than I paid for it.
I really do not see how scalping laws exists.
This is extremely disturbing. Seems like law emforcement services are now up for hire by big corporations. With this type of precedent how long will it be until I get arrested for not complying with EULAs or even assembly instructions on IKEA furniture ?? Geez, what is this world coming too. Someone's cheating ? Just ban his account, and prevent him from creating new ones through his ip and credit card number.
BR
It is scary to see how much power we're giving away to companies. While on the subject, I recommend everyone watch "The Corporation", documentary regarding this very fact. Corporations are taking the role of government. The universe of Snow Crash doesn't seem so distant anymore....
A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
real world crime shouldn't be decided in virtual courts
virtual crimes shouldn't be decided in real world courts
so what is called for here is a virtual court
populated with individuals of good karmic standing from various games
and whose decisions should have one and only one real world punishment: banishment from the realm of the virtual
that is: a legally binding injunction against the offending real world individual from having any internet access at all for a period of time commensurate with their virtual crime
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Friends and I used to debate this all the time in Ultima Online. What if we sold someone a virtual weapon, say, on e-bay, exchanged it in-game, but had a gank squad waiting to mug him seconds later for the same weapon? After asking lots of pre-law friends, we came to the conclusion that, while definately a grey area, that it probably was illegal, and could be charged as racketering. Basically the problem lies in whether or not he intended to deprive someone of real world assets before hand. My guess is that was exactly his intent, and if so, I'm not sure he'll get off as scot free as we might think. Personally I'm suprised it took this long for such a well publicized case to come up.
The fact that someone got arrested for this is very alarming. It shows how we are beginning to attempt to blur the lines between reality and fantasy. Why? Because we don't want to deal with the harsh possibility of a dying planet and the extinction of our race. Not good at all...
It is up to the developers to determin what is a fun gaming experience.
Hardly. It's up to those who play it- THEY are the ones who decide whether or not buy it, and how long they will continue to subscribe- as such, they are the ones who ultimately decide whether it's fun or not. Did I mention that I used to play Lineage 2?
Quoting the article:
The Chinese exchange student was arrested by police in Kagawa prefecture, southern Japan, the Mainichi Daily News reports.
I bet if it was a Japanse kid this wouldn't have happened. They're just using some Chinese exchange student as a scape goat.
haha sweatshops being forced to play everquest. now that is truly mind numbing hell. I'd much rather make gucci handbags or wallets at gunpoint for regis and kathy lee.
I'd say that even with a designer, anything goes. Who is to say the designer was moral. What if the universe were designed by a criminally insane designer? Wouldn't the most moral option be to oppose such a designer's evil plans, even if it meant certain punishment?
Also, in my opinion, unless a supposed designer states, clearly, unambiguously and directly to every single inhabitant of It's creation exactly what It wants, anything goes. I wouldn't think it prudent to take other people's word on this. Without direct communication with a designer, any nutjob is free to claim any crazy idea of his came straight from the designer himself. How is one supposed to know?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I read this story, and the post on /. this morning, so I thought I would copy you guys on this:
a ge_ii
From: motherlessgoat
How did we become like this? Some guy in Japan wrote a bot for the game Lineage II and goes around mugging other players and taking their crap. Well, the guy who wrote the bot started selling his "winnings" on a Japanese auction site for real money. Then he was arrested for stealing!!! GIVE ME A BREAK!!!
It's time to get real folks. Let's start with the obvious problem with this situation:
Who on Earth would pay real money for pixilated crap? I know this is becoming popular now a-days. In fact, I recently read an article about this. How in these virtual worlds you could be a rich king and live the best life, even though you share a one bedroom apartment with your mother and her lesbian lover. Hi Dad!
Any takers for the "decline of Western civilization" theories here? Is this really what freedom is all about? Is this what we are all working so hard for? Is this something we should ignore? Is it like porn or drugs and we should just turn the other cheek when we hear about it?
Why are we having our public law enforcers tracking these guys down? The guy build a software bot and let it loose within the confines of the game. According to the game architecture this is completely legal. If this was such a big deal, why didn't the makers of Lineage II stop this from happening. Shouldn't they take responsibility for things like this? Why did the guy who built the bot take the heat? This is probably what upsets me the most. And we see this all the time. Remember when MP3s were the big rage? Or downloading movies from Limewire? Why should the government enforce a company's copyright? Don't you think that is a waste of tax payer dollars? Shouldn't those companies take responsibility for protecting their assets?
I don't know about the rest of you, but I actually care what happens to my tax dollars. And I for one can't stand to see it abused like this. This mindset must change. But how? It's called reform and there are plenty of people trying to change things. It is ok to question your government, your laws, and your traditions.
For any of you still interested, here is the article about the guy who wrote the bot and how he got arrested: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7865
You can read motherlessgoat's post here: http://youvstheworld.com/virtual_muggings_in_line
Does this mean that, as a developer, if I create content that a user uses, then I take that content away, I am held liable for "stealing"?
Why does NCSoft not have any say in this matter?
IMHO, I know some of you get pissy about MMORPG farming and the physically-handicapped who play these games for a living (making money on Ebay and IGE), but isn't this a case where the comment, "It's just a game!" is pertinent?
>No crime, IMHO, was committed.
I think you are confusing two different ideas here. If this fellow had attacked a passerby on the street in the same manner (programming a robot to beat him senseless and take his loot) he would be guilty of both assault and robbery.
In the virtual world, however, there is no physical contact or threat of bodily harm, so there would be no case for an assault charge. However, since the virtual items stolen are in effect just data, and that data had a real world monetary value, they could very easily make a case for computer theft. In these terms, what happened isn't much different from electronically removing money from somebody's bank account and depositing it in your own.
Must... think up... something... clever!
Are we going to see an AO rated Lineage II?
Goo goo g'joob.
I hate all this skewing of reality and online games (well, not really, it's fun!). But if we want to compare then let's compare real live games to online games, well... Let's say in REAL life, I'm into fighting as a sport. Boxing, ultimate fight contests, etc... Let me skew reality a bit then...
Now, I can't just go down the street and beat people up...well, I could, but I have a fair chance on going to jail no matter how light I hit a person. Put some boxing gloves on me and let me knock someone into a bloody pulp and not only do I NOT get arrested,, but I have people cheering for me and I might get some prize money out of this. One of these is a game and the other is not. The rules of the game allow for this behavior.
Take online games...simulated violence is inherent in games like lineage. I like simulated violence because I don't have to show my bruises at work the next day when I get my ass kicked, but under the "rules" or rather, the possibilities in the game, I could get the snot beat out of me and get mugged. That really sucks,but because it is a game, and within the possibilities of the game world I have a reasonable expectation to occasionally get ganked, then I'm mostly okay with that. I can whine and bitch about it a bit, but in the end it is JUST a game.
If I'm making the analogy, I will go off on a slight TANGENT as well...performance enhancing drugs (bots?) can make the game unfair. The organization that runs the game, i.e. MLB, NBA, etc, should police their own ranks and keep performance enhancers out of the game, but why the heck should Congress get involved in the actions of a private organization to the extent they did?
my 2p...
If you are reading this, then you are one of those people whom I just can't take seriously.
The use of a bot wasn't the underlying crime. The crime was the theft of items perceived as having value and selling those items.
h _prog.htm so they have laws on the books to prevent theft (even theft of data).
Consider Japan has a cyber police unit http://www.npa.go.jp/cyber/english/policy/hightec
This guy broke the law - he stole items with a perceived real world value and sold them.
Open and shut.
The great thing about videogames is there aren't real-world consequences for your virtual actions.
It's a good thing too, don't know how many consecutive life sentences I would have received for my role in the death of the innocents in GTA:SA
Live forever, or die trying.
You all interpret the EULA in favor of the victim (bots are not allowed).
But then, you conveniently ignore the EULA clause which states that it is against the rules to sell / auction / trade in-game items.
You folks make the claim that the in-game items have real-world value, but according to the EULA they are worth nothing. It doesn't matter what people sell them for in unofficial channels, by even CLAIMING monetary losses lon the items stolen you break the very EULA that protects you from crap like bots.
Charging the theif with a crime...when the crime itself is based on values that go against the EULA...is fucking pathetic. Learn some logical consistency.
Same old story. Idiot taken advange of, perpetrator caught and strung up because there's no hope in hell of actually enforcing 'laws' in online games any more than the US is capable of winning the drug 'war'...but they think an example will somehow help their cause.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
It is up to the developers to make the game to what they believe is the experience they want to portray. I actually said that, as a gamer, you are not forced to play their game. If a game isn't fun, why on earth would you play it especially if you had to keep paying to do so? What I am saying is that the developers have the final say on what the game is capable of and the users must accept that. They can accept it by sucking it up and playing the game or they can accept it by showing them that they would rather spend their money and time on something else than their subscriptions.
One word: Korea.
Or, in more words:
You can't take the sky from me...
Playing poker isn't illegal. I believe playing poker for money isn't illegal either, in an informal setting; I'm not sure about that though. Cheating while playing a game is crummy, but not illegal. Cheating while playing a game for money is fraud, and is most definitely illegal.
Player killing is legal in an online game, and cheating is crummy but also legal. However if cheating leads to financial gain then it is fraud, and is illegal. I wonder if this chain of logic can be used to discourage cheating in online games?
As far as I am aware, using a bot is not illegal in Japan, only by the game rules. However, stealing virtual items/characters did become illegal not too long ago. They also hold game companies responsible for lost goods and characters, and can be sued. They treat virtual possessions as they would RL possessions. Leave it to Japan.
As for Lineage 2, I played Beta and saw this kind of behavior a mile away. A high-level character can go around ganking low-levels, and the only 'punishment' is that they become attackable by other characters and guards. But that leaves many characters and zone with little protection. In a sense it is a bit more hardcore of a game, but the amount of crime and farming makes an already boring game horrible.
This signature is part of a balanced post.
But that by itself is interesting, because it creates the reality in which people were willing to shell out hundreds of dollars, (more printed bits of paper, BTW).
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK on each note there is printed the words "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of" followed by the amount the note is worth.
Technically, they're IOUs written by the Bank of England on behalf of the government (or is it the crown?). They may have no intrinsic value themselves, but in theory at least you could go claim your ten pounds worth of gold.
Of course, gold only really has value (beyond its innate usefulness as a conductor, raw material, etc) because everyone agrees that it does...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Good God! Somebody finally gets it!
This is the perfect argument. Value is a man made precept. If a bunch of people decide that something has value and are willing to pay for it, it makes perfect sense when people put value on virtual items that the idea of value can and *should* be abstracted away from the physical object.
Right now, the only mark against it is there are many more people that believe these virtual items have no value.
Even the publishers and designers of said games are struggling with the concepts of value. As evidenced by the HUGE ebay trade going on for virtual items.
The crime here is disrupting the peace and deliberately gaming the system to have an unfair advantage. Whoever said life was fair? Same thing applies virtually.
-FlynnMP3
"Phuck! Some d00d pwned me in pvp! I'm calling the police because that's murder!"
I was playing lineage II and they robbed me of all my clothing!
http://offload1.icculus.org/freyja/images/screens
Perhaps it's time for the victims to gang up on the perp and blow his bot to pieces. If someone wants to be a criminal perhaps it's time for players to become law-people.
IANAV (I Am Not A Vigilante) but a little "old west" justice might be what's called for in this case.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I couldn't count the times I've been in games and murdered people and stolen their weapons.
Oh wait... those weren't real people?
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I don't see the problem... as long as they only arrest and sentence his in-game character for the "crime". ;)
And the companies want the government to prop up their engineered business model. That's a nice little arangement.
I agree it's gambling. Xbox Live! is gambling. World of Warcraft is gambling. Everquest is gambling. Deal with the gamble, or get out.
Depriving someone of property is illegal. By your logic, skimming from an online bank account would be acceptable, because its "virtual." This guy got real money by committing fraud. Basically, he was depriving others of the use of their paid-for game service, and making real money from it. Its as if someone rented out your house while you were away on vacation.
Thats the whole purpose of virtual reality, to do nasty things you couldn't do in real life :)
What next someone will get the chair for killing
someones pet monsters in a game?
Its kind of like heading into your friendly
neighborhood S&M dungeon, and claiming you where
raped. "Did you safe word?" "No." "Please don't
waste the time of this court, next."
Like a reputable S&M dungeon games have a way out
if you really need it. Quit the game if you can't
take the heat.
If the game was supposed to be 'nice' then they
should fix the code instead of calling the cops.
When I wrote the original TinyMUSH (wrote isn't
really the right word, it was a substantial rework
of TinyMUD). One major design goal was to make
users able to fend for themselves without calling
on a higher power for help. Don't like someone in
your space, you can eject them.
The combat version was never completed do to a
real world theft of the computer I was developing
it on. At that time 386 computers where expensive.
I wish you left the first sentence out. Its not virtual, because this guy was essentially stealing the "actual" Service, provided by the company for paying customers. Its as if someone stole other peoples' phone account numbers and sold them. The account might still be usuable by the original owner, but they still have been deprived of a service they pay for. Rather than being named responsible, the company will probably be a defendant, because damage to ther reputation and money-earning ability is a lot greater than the damage to individual users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
...the loser doing this sh*t or the losers trying to prosecute....sheesh
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
If it's found to be illegal for theft of virtual items percieved to have some real world value, how far of a jump would it be for somebody to then claim a loss of their real world value (since they paid for subscription, online time, whatever) due to death of their character by another during normal gameplay?
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
You've got it right. The value of things is not dependent on their tangibility, but on the value that people agree that they have.
The astute reader will notice that the crime was perpetrated by a bot.
This is just another sad and horrifying example of robots turning on their human masters. We really need to do something about these metal menaces before it's too late. Flesh creatures unite! The time for battle is upon us.
But you've missed the point that he did so after violating the EULA by using the bot. Once he violated his EULA, which IS subject to real-world law, he then was committing a crime by continuing to play and selling the item. (He had to log in and give the item to the other player, after all.) So from a purely technical perspective, he sold the item, which was obtained while performing an illegal act, while performing a second illegal act by logging on again after he had violated his EULA.
Now, tell me how that's not subject to Japanese law?
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
If you were hosting a "freeshard" with about 10 of your friends regularly using it and someone got cheated that wouldn't be a very big deal.
But, if you open up a large legitimate for-pay server and the same thing happens, that's a little like having someone cheat in a large casino. Does the casino owner get to decide what is and isn't against the law with regards to cheating?
What do you mean where ?
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
fucking o.O crying about losing their shit.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
(A) He did an illegal (as in "breach of contract") act by violating his EULA because of using bots.
(B) He then logged on again after having violated hs EULA in order to sell the item that he had obtained though illegal means.
If he sold the item after a legitimate defeat of his opponent, there would be no issues. The method of the defeat, however, was through a breach of contract and the continued logging in was illegal use of a service that he was no longer licensed to use due to violating the EULA. Because of those two situations, I don't consider this to be a non-event.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
The whole point of games is that you can do things outside the bounds of normality. I'd suggest the guy who got vitually mugged in the game seek psychiatric help rather than police help. He's obviously got problems differentiating fact from fiction.
The issue is not that the perpetrator didn't do anything wrong
I was replying to: "If it is possible to become 'invincible' in the game, its not the fault of the person who used it, its the fault of the gaming company for allowing it to happen.
The game involves real money and looting, this should be expected and the players know the risk coming into the game. No crime, IMHO, was committed."
Where the original poster seemed to think that anything that can be done in the game is the resposibility of those who didn't specifically take steps to completely prevent it, and not the responsibility of the person who did it.
I don't know what "the" issue is. My issue is: Just because someone didn't stop you from doing something doesn't mean you aren't responsible for your own actions.
Doing something wrong in a silly little MMOG means you should get punished in the silly little MMOG, not the real world.
He did something wrong in the real world, outside the game, when he sold his ill-gotten virtual loot.
That is why he is facing out-of-the-game consequences.
The fact that these items get sold for cash in the real world only further reinforces how MMOGs are simply being taken too far.
True, but irrelevant to the question of responsibility on the part of the perpetrator of the act, and not on the part of the people who did not make it impossible to do said act.
Your analogy is completely off.
Why? Because I refer to behaviour in the real world to make a point about behaviour in the game's world?
analogy
Pronunciation: &-'na-l&-jE
Function: noun
2 a : resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike
You can't take the sky from me...
wholly shit dude is that link for real?
does anyone have a video of this thing seeing thru walls? how come slashdot doesnt do an article on this guy!
Of course one could go the other way. For the sake of example, here's the numbers. Assuming you pay $13.00 a month for unlimited access, and there are 720 hours in a month (24 hours a day by 30 days a month). By my calculations it is: 0.0180 $$/hour. Show me how many hours you put into your character and I will multiply it by $0.018. As my dad was know to say "Don't spend it all in one place!"
That really is a pretty good MMO idea. Two factions in a game: one tries to run around and commit as many crimes as possible, the other tries to stop them however possible.
You could get more complex than that. The "good guys" could be composed of a loose organization, rather than just one group (ala CoH). Some could choose to use detective work, to wear light armor and carry a little revolver since they're probably not going to get shot at very often. These guys are PIs, and they catch their criminal PCs with the intent of jailing them. Another group of good guys could be Judge Dredd-type vigilantes, who get more heavily penalized than the PIs if they arrest criminals without a rap sheet (and even more heavily so if they kill them) because they have more freedom to do so.
Someone would, of course, get the idea that the criminal's game is more to rack up crime points than to outwit the PIs and outshoot the vigiliantes, so you'd have problems with good guy characters being attacked on the server level and crap, but maybe not more so than in other PvP MMOs. Of course, the Children's Crusaders (Protect the Children! is their war cry) would hate it, and would say that you could plot real crimes using the game as an engine. Well, you sure could, and you'd end up with plans that include calling in a stolen Osprey helicopter to hold off Judge Fredd.
There's a market to be made in paying some players to play, and charging others to play...
I mean, if you can pay folks in developing countries a low hourly wage to play "evil demi-gods" or some such in control of bots that are almost indistinguishable from real human beings, why not use them to entertain the "paying customers" instead of leaving them trying to make a living by griefing? (There could even be some kind of in-game rating system built around implicit and explicit player feedback... It'd be especially entertaining watching a paid "bad guy" messing with a really nasty griefer.)
1995 called, they want their buzzword back.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
IF i exploit myself into a really good camping spot in CS and i kill someone with my awp from there does that meen I should be booked on murder-2?
Money. The root of all evil, of course!
This man is criminal because of the ability to exchange the items for real cash, which is based on the assumption that they have real value outside the game.
If you'll recall, selling in-game items for real money is a violation of game rules (on most MMORPGs, though I've heard some providers permit it, in which case I have no quarrel with those parties) and policy. This is not allowed.
What we are witnessing is a very clear side-affect of this policy abuse that all you money-grubbers seem to be okay with. Do you actually think this guy would be stealing so many items if he couldn't sell them? He's using a bot, so he doesn't really appear interested in playing the game or actually using the items, but is only doing this because there is a profit to be made. This type of game abuse is a direct cause of another type of game abuse; buying and selling items outside the game with real money.
While what he was doing is certainly rotten, I blame the buyers first and foremost. People who buy and sell game items with real money from other players in violation of their terms of service should all be banned.
I don't believe the kid should face criminal charges. I believe he should simply be banned from the game.
...did I commit murder? What if they respawn? You've me all confused. :)
Seriously though, what if there's a game where the whole point is to rob the other players? Would everyone playing it break the law? Clearly not.
What if it's just possible to rob people to "add flavour"? Where's the boundary?
If you can be arrested for stealing property in a game that simulates ownership, why not be arrested for treason in an espionage game, or for terrorism for playing "Destroy all humans"? Should you get civic awards for Sim City? What if I gain a point through subterfuge that my friend should by rights have gotten? Can he sue me? Clearly not. It shouldn't be different when money is involved.
What people have to get used to is that a virtual world is just that, virtual. A virtual crime is similarly virtual. Think about it as a simulated crime.
There aren't victims as much as there are losers (meaning non-winners). They paid extra money to give themselves an advantage in a game (which, frankly, I disapprove of... but I digress), and they still didn't win.
But it wasn't their money that was stolen, it was simply that their advantage was removed. The money was gone long before that. Incidently, I also don't see that they ever owned the things that were stolen... They were granted use of a feature in exchange for money by someone that was previously in control of the feature.
I'm not going to get into the ethics of stealling from a virtual game, but stealing/mugging is allowed in L2. you may argue that it represents a virtual world where there are rules etc etc.
however, just like how you can steal cars and how you can slaughter people in other games, stealing and mugging is one of the many actions you are "allowed" to do.
if you played any of the final fantasy series or maybe even an online rpg where 'thief' is a valid persona, then your goal in the game is TO STEAL.
What this guy did was wrong, by botting (which is fraud) and selling the rare items (which he obtained fraduently) for real world money. however, if i was a character on L2 with the class 'theif' and i stole a rare item from someone, I'd be perfectly within legal bounds to sell that item if i wanted to with no repercussion, besides getting rich.
HD Trailers
To ban people like this from all games. Commit a "crime" and don't ever play these things again, or at least for some specified period of time. Yes, I know the technical difficulties are tremendous, as are legal, but it might deter some of it. And I don't think this guy should be prosecuted, though he's icky. I just don't see the basis. It's entirely possible this will get thrown out.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
Flesh this out, publish it, and I smell a Nobel prize in economics. Seriously, though, very well said.
--Leo
...each other he would not have made it possible. Therefore the fact that some people in this game of "real life" are more powerful than another then it is god's fault for allowing this to happen? Therefore people who mug should be banned from this life... Wait this all is not sounding so good.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
IANAL, but I don't think this all hinges on intent. After all, if robbing an in-game avatar of their virtual property is okay and is an accepted part of the game, then a group doing it in an organized fashion is also okay. As far as I can tell, racketeering is for things that are illegal. If I intend to complete the transaction that I agreed to, and then try and ambush the other player afterwards and get my item back through methods that are an accepted part of the game, well it is a dirty trick, but I think it is legal.
One shouldn't expect anyone to be willing to trade with you again. And some people might take it personally and hunt you, but that too is part of the game.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
IRL, if you buy stolen goods, even if you had no way of knowing they were stolen, and it is discovered the authorities will return the goods to their rightfull owner with no compensation to you. Your only recourse is to go after the person who sold you stolen goods.
I don't see why the game-maker has any obligation to refund the money of the person who bought goods (which is against the TOS) from a cheater.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
IS THAT THIS IS A FRIGGING GAME!!!! A dude got picked up by the cops for PLAYING and WORKING OVER AN ONLINE GAME!
Jesus Christ! Next thing you know people will be arresed for their characters under age 21 in Sim City for buying online Sim Porn at the Sim Store!
Damn!
Right, I'm too lazy to RTFA, but I'm just going to assume that the guy is being taken to court for sabotaging a game and using it to obtain untaxed money from items not marked for resale, not actually for winning at said game. Thus is my faith in humanity kept intact, by not reading the article and finding otherwise.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Haven't RTFA but.. my room mate and I were discussing what would happen in the event that someone in the real world took out a real bounty on a virtual character? (i.e. paying someone money with a high level character to kill another high level character) What kinda law would be broken if they were caught in such a circumstance? ;) Just musing that's all.
Cheers,
Mike
give me 5 dollars or i'll mod you down
virtual pounding.
haha, now that's funny.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Okay, this smells of bullshit... As of C3 players can no longer drop items unless they go red (pk another player), PvP and lose with more than 5 PK counts, or get trained (a player aggros a bunch of mobs on a player and the player dies, and possibly drops)
Furthermore, I bet half the people here saying 'It's just a game' haven't even played Lineage 2. First of all, it takes almost two straight months botting to get to a point where you are able to compete with anyone else (most players bot, Chinese sweatshop farmers control the economy, NCSoft sucks in customer relations). Getting money and equipment takes a huge investment of time.
This game was made for koreans.. the grind is horrible for most US players who just want to have a good time...
Geez, the all-around good guys make me sick.
Actually Ultima Online, one of the original kingpins of MMORPG's did have a virtual jail to which you could be teleported and imprisoned. I was sent to it one time for pickpocketing (although it was my friend I was pickpocketing and it was merely for practice so once I managed to summon a GM I was freed).
i've played L2 before... it wasnt pretty but i DID gain some perspective on what may have happened.
at worst this guy broke the TOS by botting and then selling the items (according to American laws i guess). i am highly suspicious of any person that uses a BOT to PK... that just doesnt work. Bots do not make you invincible they just make you predictable. I once saw a person make a pile of money that led to 10 uber dragons and laughed my ass off as a bot automatically started picking up the money off the ground and walked right into all 10 dragons. I think what happened was is he used a bot to acquire items/exp then used his new uber char to slay people.
SOLUTION! If you dont want your stuff to get stolen then buy a virtual "gun" a.k.a. buy your gear/characters and then beat the hell out of him... or get a group and start beating on him... or even BETTER! dont fight back. In L2 if you dont fight back then you cant drop gear (AFAIK) or the chance of you dropping is like below 1%. camp out next to a guard or something. they slay any red tagged people... or train the guy with enemies! there are lots of ways out... arresting an asshole, satysfying though it may be, is not the answer
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
http://wowseriousbusiness.ytmnd.com/
Online chess should definitely be made illegal. I mean, not only are you murdering helpless pawns, but your main goal is to kill the King! Not only is that murder, it's regicide!
Why is it so hard for some people to understand that this is a GAME. Beating people up and stealing stuff from them is part of the game.
...because the other boxer put a couple rolls of quarters in his gloves.
Not by using bots it isn't. That's an exploit, used for illegal financial gain.
If you want an analogy, it'd be like a boxer complaining that his nose was broken in a sanctioned fight.
The bots are cheating, the rolls of quarters in boxing gloves are cheating.
Get it? Cheating at a game to make money is not ok.
You can't take the sky from me...
Yes, something taught in high school economics courses is clearly worthy of a Nobel Prize. What wins Nobels in Economics is ridiculously advanced mathematics and statistics, game theory, and financial market formulas. Sorry.
Are you saying that since the guy received real cash for his virtual muggings that real world jurisdiction comes into play? No. Jurisdiction only counts on where the crime was committed. If a crime, as defined by the authorities of a virtual world/game, is committed, they have jurisdiction. No crime was committed under the jurisdiction of Japans' police. If the crime was committed in China and the criminal was on Japans' soil, along with the loot from the crime, Japans' law enforcement would only be responsible for extraditing the criminal to China for prosection at Chinas' request, if Japan agreed.
Since NCSoft does not define the muggings and theft as criminal activity, although it is still mugging and theft, it is not criminal as it is their jurisdiction. If there was a crime committed under their jurisdiction then it is up to them and NOT JAPANESE LAW ENFORCEMENT to bring the criminal to justice, on NCSoft grounds (the virtual world).
The only possible crime is violation of terms of service, which would be akin to using a screwdriver for a hammer.
Furthermore, if you want to argue that because he profited from his virtual theft he is accountable under Japans' law for assault and robbery... was there a PK involved? He should probably be prosecuted for murder as well. I hope he gets the death penalty. [/sarcasm]
Are you saying that since the guy received real cash for his virtual muggings that real world jurisdiction comes into play?
Absolutely. Even though it's 'virtual', the offender deprived the other players of the value of their possssions. There's no way around that fact.
Tell me...if someone steals some stock that you own (you don't physically have it in your posession, it's all just numbers in a computer system), have they committed a crime?
If game makers want to allow theft in their games, they better figure out a way to remove any real-world velue from the stolen items.
Who turned this guy into the cops? NCSoft, the auction site, one of his customers? I hope it wasn't NCSoft who reported a "crime" to the police and then gave them the guy's registration info to bust him. I could understand if one of his customers reported him for fraud and they arrested him for fraud but it says he was arrested for his actions in the game. Doesn't there need to be a law against something before the cops can arrest people for it? What are the Japanese police going to do when I log onto the Japanese L2 servers from the US and start ganking people for items? Try to extradite me?
...just compare yourself to Thomas Jefferson?! Look, you may have taken up some of his ideals, but that dosen't make your thoughts on them correct, you insipid troll. There is such a thing as intangable property, rights, etc. Read the Federalist Papers sometime, eh? Hell, just bother to know what you're talking about sometime. :)