Slashdot Mirror
When Is a Con Not a Con?
From the journals, here's some food for thought: Does a "crime" committed in an alternate world have any ramifications in the "real" world? Case in point is this article from the Gamers With Jobs site outlining the exploits of one Dentara Rask, a character in CCP's Eve Online massively multiplayer online world. According to the the article, Dentara Rask ran a
Ponzi scheme within the game, amassing a large amount of on-line wealth (700 billion ISK), and then bragging about it. The question is posed: since a Ponzi scheme in real life is a punishable criminal offense, what about when it happens in a MMORPG? Assuming there are no rules within the game environment to prevent this, how would you go about punishing someone in the real world for something they did in an artificial one? And can they be punished?
Trying to get any kind of RL punishment for this would be like calling the cops because somebody stole a stack of $500s during a game of Monopoly.
Should you also be able to sue Quake 3 players for murder? hmm?
With few exceptions, games generally exist to provide an alternate reality. Enforcing laws from the real world into a virtual world would seem to render the whole point of the game moot. If the game's authors want to enforce certain aspects of normally accepted culture or law into the game, it would seem they would do so.
He violated the rules of a game. If the game is part of legal gambling, then that may be a crime. But this is presumably not a gambling operation. So, if it's not a gambling operation, then violating the rules is roughly like cheating at Scrabble or Monopoly.
In any case, the appropriate punishment for virtual fraud is to demand virtual restitution from the virtual character and put the virtual character into virtual prison. That is, unless the virtual world is supposed to be lawless or anarchic, in which case he did exactly what he was supposed to.
In-game crime => in-game punishment by in-game law enforcement.
Or in-game death by angry mob or assassin.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
Does it violate the rules of the game? After all, no one gets upset about the mass murder and genocide that occurs routinely on PvP servers in WoW. It's part of the game.
There's a difference, though. There are rules in the real world saying that something is illegal. There are no rules about it in the game world. Piracy is illegal in the real world. (I'm talking about the "arr matey!" kind, not the "RIAA" kind.) But it's permitted in the game world of EVE. Should the pirates be brought to criminal court of piracy in the spaces of EVE?
This story is just ridiculously stupid. It's a game. Only the game's rules apply. Whatever the rules set out by those who run the game are the only rules that matter.
Get conned while playing a game? Learn from it and just be glad it wasn't real.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The stack of $500's in monopoly has no very little intrinsic value based on labor, because it only takes a couple of bucks to get a whole new stack. Therefore, someone calling the police about a stolen stack of monopoly money is doing it for only sentimental reasons, or no good reasons at all. The amount of labor it takes to get the item outside of the game is much, MUCH, less than it is inside the game.
HOWEVER, these items in online games have MASSIVE intrinisic value based on labor. If there's only one of such item known in existence, and I've put 400 hours into obtaining said item, I can't simply go and pick up another one at the dollar store. There is no equivalent conversion in the real world, and if someone steals the item, they're essentially stealing 400 hours from my life. Those 400 hours of my life have massive value, both to me, and in the real world, where it could easily translate to $5000 or more dollars.
Saying that monopoly money is analogous to a super-rare item in one of these games isn't really true.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
When its Gencon.
God spoke to me.
Listen up folks, it is a GAME WORLD. Nothing you do there should subject you to any sort of sanction in the real one. The whole point is to be able to do things you can't do in reality. After all, in the real world you can't kill people, heck you can't even kill most things. In most games though you wade hip deep in gore. If the game system doesn't provide a 'fix' then exploiting it is just good play according to the rules of the game world.
Playing for hundreds of hours doing the grind is only one path to success, it is perfectly fair to play smarter, instead of harder. To realize that the in game obstacles might be hard but the stupidity of players is a constant and can be exploited a lot easier. And some people like the interraction with real people more than the challenges placed by the designers.
Running a Ponzi scheme depends on a steady supply of idiots, something no rule in a game is likely to dry up the supply of. Face it, they should be legal in the REAL world so long as the financials are fully disclosed. It is the fraud (like the US Social Security system) that makes any real world Ponzi scheme immoral. Run it out in the open and any person with a few brain cells still functioning would instantly see it for the scam it is and as for the others... it is immoral to let a sucker keep his money after all.
Democrat delenda est
Hopefully people learn things in games. Like how not to get swindled. I think they learned a cheep lesson.
I mean, seriously how did the "investors" in this bank think that this was legit? Real banks make their money primarily from loans, ie they collect money from savers and loan it out to others at a higher interest rate. However, banks have a lot of legal means to collect on debts. The bank also usually takes collateral.
A video game bank not run by any central authority doesn't have that power. So suppose they did try to make a legit business out of lending others money. How could they collect? I guess they could take some equipment as 'collateral" but if a player is taking the loan out to buy better equipment what is to prevent that player from reneging on the debts? He no longer needs that old equipment. And there certainly aren't repo men in the game who can take back the property for you(I guess you could destroy it, but you don't gain much). I suppose they could resort to mob style "break your thumbs" type tactics, but they would have to be a powerful player or a player with lots of allies to even do that. Plus, I don't exactly trust "Mob Savings and Loan".
So what on earth did the players who gave this person money think he was going to do with it? 10% no risk returns don 't exist in the real world(well, aside from hyperinflationary periods at any rate), so it should have been pretty obvious to anyone with half a clue what this guy was up to. Another greedy rube got fleeced(virtually at any rate). Boohoo
Monstar L
Not quite. *Most*, not all, Ponzi schemes are illegal. Governments generally reserve that right to themselves, and conduct them if they believe (not necessarily correctly) that to do so would serve the public interest. See: Social Security, issuing debt.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The best way to deal with something like this is to pretend that it is real (in game of course) and deal with it the way that the game world would. How about bounty hunting? How about military/mafia recruiting players to hunt him down? Keep it a game. If people fall for a scam in a game, get back at him in the game. Don't suspend his account. That's just lame. I'm sure that not many people would continue to risk their characters' well being and those that do have it coming. Also, I think that would make an interesting off shoot for people on level a billion and have nothing better to do than start a war; new game content dynamically created.
MMORPG's are in fact actual economy units governed by their own rules.
Asking whether game crime should be punishable in real world is like asking whether crime comitted in Belgium should be punished in Australia.
The game developers have ultimate power over their world. If they want to confiscate those 700mln ISK (whatever the hell ISK is) they can do it with a mouse click, a lot easier than in "real world".
If game developers want to cooperate with police for creating "interworld" laws that apply in there and give a specialized institution the jurisdiction to enforce those in a game then ok.
It's not up to the government or whoever to mess into the games' internal affairs however. It's not a lot better than invading an actual country.
Yes you can convert virtual assets to real, but I can convert dollars to euros as well, this doesn't mean that US should mess into EU's business.
OK, people are missing some very key pieces of information here.
- No ISK was stolen from anyone. *ALL* of the ISK belongs to CCP, the company that runs the game. It is bits on their servers and part of the user agreement is all of the in-game objects belong to CCP, not the players, and this is something you therefore must agree to when you play.
- When you play the game, everyone agrees to play by the rules. One of the rules is that the vast majority of in-game schemes are LEGAL. Player A took a legal action, and as a result of legal action A, the game master (CCP) reallocated the in-game objects from other players to player A. If you were the other players, tough, you played the game, you 'lost'.
- It is just plain logically silly to accept that players can blow up each other's ships and not accept that players can convince other players to hand over their in-game money. What's the difference? I'm flying around and somebody blows me up, you wouldn't suggest I call up the cops and file a vandalism report would you? So if someone convinces me to give them in-game money, and then doesn't pay me back, that's suddenly a crime?
paintball
If I dig a hole, and it takes me 2 hours, how much is the hole worth?
If I refill the hole, and dig it again, putting in twice as much labor, is the hole now worth twice as much?
paintball
Did you know that in this game you can also kill people???? Won't someone think of the children??? If it is legal in the physical world to "kill" someone in the game, then why would it be illegal in the physical world to steal "money" that has no official worth in the physical world? It may be a violation of terms of service punishable by banning, but it certainly doesn't seem like an offense that should be prosecuted by any government in the offline world.
From what little I know, this type of activity seems par for the course in Eve online. I remember reading about an event that occured last year where a group infiltrated another group and basically acted as undercover agents. They got into the highest ranks of the group then killed the CEO, destroyed ships and took over some assets.
Call me crazy, but that sounded pretty cool to me. It sounded much cooler than any scripted or planned event I've heard about in any other online game. So does this latest event. If you have created a game where the players can create such interesting events rather than have to artificially create them, it sounds like you've done something right.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Simple question: Do you think that virtual income, ISK, gold, etc, should be taxed? If not, then there should be no punishment for this other than what the game developers decide to do.
Fuck, this is supposed to be one of the draws of EVE! It's a game where the devs don't hold your hand and baby you! Anything can happen.
There's no difference between "real" money, monopoly money and this "super rare item". They are all bits of data which reside on computers somewhere. They can all be replicated a million times at the press of a key.
There is NO SUCH THING AS INTRINSIC VALUE. There is only supply and demand, this applies to "real" money just as much as it applies to monopoly money and "super rare items".
Deleted
But surely it wasn't stolen. Theft involves depriving the item's owner of the item.
The item in question belongs to CCP Games who still possess it. How is that theft?
Is there anything in the game against a guy playing an evil mastermind of crime? Hey, guys, you don't mind going around killing orcs or whatever, but you do mind when something happens to YOU? Ok, it was something that REALLY sucked, and, guess what? You *let* yourself be sucked, by the rules of the game. It's a GAME, and you LOST.
You feel cheated? Did the guy use some kind of software to take illegal advantage in-game? Did he use exploits in the game? Did he do anything except play by the rules of the game? If he didn't, guess what?, he didn't cheat. He deceived all of you fair and square. Furthermore, I bet there were plenty people advising against putting your money there because there was no guarantees.
Next, whiny boys will start complaining to the FBI that they were killed on Counter Strike. Multiple times. With head shots.
(8-DCS)
And PKs should be prosecuted for murder! Yeah, that's the ticket!
To whoever posited this, please, step away from the keyboard and try to get hold of a life. A real one.