Slashdot Mirror
Scammers Continue to Wreak Havoc in MMO's
eldavojohn writes "We're all well aware of the scams that sometimes happen in online games like Eve Online. But despite this looking primarily like a problem with Eve Online, the MIT Technology Review brings us stories from Second Life and the very real $700,000 (USD) in Linden Dollars that has recently disappeared in what is appearing to be a classic ponzi scheme by a company named Ginko Banking. Unbelievably high interest rates coupled with some shady withdrawal limits leads to classic epic losses to investors. Eve Online was merely virtual currency but Second Life has a real monetary value associated with Linden Dollars & therefore is certain to see more and more scams pop up like this. How can Linden Labs set up a safety net to catch things like this?"
Let people be stupid.
Let people lose if they play badly or win if they're smart. I mean, this ISN'T gambling or maybe a tax scam, right? Right?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Vigilantism
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
EVE is a place where scamming is almost encouraged short of a few exceptions.
It's amazing how often people fall for it.
Some are as simple as:
Hey, I'd like to join your corp
Really? what ship do you a fly
a
you have to give it to the corp, contract it to me and we'll let you join.
OK
Sucka!
and there is nothing the person who was just dumb enough to give a ship to someone recourse wise, as designed.
Now you scam a character, and you have a paper trail, they'll reverse it, but pretty much anything is fair game.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
If Linden Labs wants a virtual world, they will need to set up a virtual NSA, a virtual FBI etc. and I guess use the same techniques one would use in the real world ;-))
This would also mean they will have to start to charge virtual income tax and other taxes as well if they don't already to pay for those services;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I don't play games such as this, but it seems obvious to me that these sorts of scams are going to happen whenever there is a real dollar value associated with in-game currency. This sort of thing wouldn't happen if the makers of Second Life would remove the exchange rate between Linden dollars and USD; and even if it did happen, it wouldn't really be news.
One more point: How can the makers of this game do this without running afoul of the banking regulations of various nations, especially if you can buy/sell Linden dollars directly from the company itself?
Linden Lab should simply respond like any ISP. That is, anyone claiming having been defrauded should go to relevant legal authorities and say so. And Linden Lab should simply present authorities (upon being intimated to do so) with the identification data of the avatar who was behind the activities.
That avatar will at least have an e-mail account, plus a log of recent IP numbers.
From those data, any legal authority can proceed to identify most users and act as they would normally.
As soon as they figure that one out, they can patent it and start selling the technology to Microsoft to use for their customers.
Wouldn't usury laws would cover cases like this, since the Second Life money has real monetary value?
Are Ponzi schemes in Second Life legal? Did the 'scammers' get to keep the money?
So, any anonymous Joe Schmoe can open a Bank in Second Life? And people are surprised when they give money to a stranger and something like this happens? Well shit, maybe I should start playing the game and create my own bank! You know you can trust me because I'm playing the same game you are! That makes us almost like kin!
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I don't really see the point of Second Life, but I find it really interesting to see what goes on in there. It's like a chance to see what would happen if we didn't have the kind of regulations in place that we do now. An experiment in economics, if you will. It's telling that regulatory bodies are starting to form "in-world", like the SLEC (Second Life Exchange Commission). The article also mentions the formation of the VWBB (Virtual World Business Bureau), like the BBB in first life.
Doesn't someone do this about once every six months in Second Life? I'm pretty sure if I troll through the archives I'll find plenty of references to people who set up "banks" in SL, and then promptly ran away with the L$ after a few months. Why people put their trust (and $!) in the hands of some random person they don't know on the internet is beyond me. As far as I know, not one of these SL "banks" has ever been legitimate. I guess P.T. Barnum was right.
I read the internet for the articles.
How does second life still drum up this much publicity? Its nothing but over hyped marketing and furries looking for some sort of acceptance. If you don't talk about it, second life will disappear.
There's an interesting article by the RuneScape development team on the problems scammers and real world traders cause for the game and about possible solutions that they are implementing:
http://www.runescape.com/kbase/view.ws?guid=diary06
Excerpts:
The majority of bots that we ban from members have been paid for with stolen credit card numbers.
Such accounts don't earn us money, they cost us money in bank refund charges.
During 2006, we banned bot and real-world trader accounts carrying RuneScape gold and items worth over 200 billion gp. During 2007, so far, we've banned over 525 billion, which has a real-world value of over $2.6 million US - that's an increase of over 250%.
I have a real hard time feeling very sympathetic to most of these people being scammed. These types of scams typically rely on the victim allowing greed to shut down their brain. I am normally one to be pretty vicious towards the scammers in things like credit cards and predatory lending, because often enough it isn't exploiting greed and get rich quick schemes so much as it is a genuine fraud and manipulation. This subprime crap and scams like this are almost exclusively greed driven on the part of the victim. Listen to the radio and you will hear dozens of commercials per day on how to get rich quick in real estate, flipping houses, or whatever other genious plan being sold. I can't imagine why someone selling real estate would try to sell a system of how to get rich by buying real estate...
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
But I've never understood why anyone would use REAL money in a FAKE world!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Can we please now come up with a way to scam all of the MyMiniCity trolls? That would be sweet.
I did it for Johnny.
Ginko's exchange rates only made sense if inflation was high too. The economy was being manipulated and Linden Labs was "printing" more money. But given Wikipedia's description of what happened, it appears exactly like what happened in the US not too long ago. The "government" changed a law about the legality of internet gambling, and this instantly caused the deaths of several companies. It's actually kind of interesting to watch how a virtual currency behaves and how to create an economic system even within a game like this.
--
Our microcontroller kit. Your gcc compiler. Learn digital electronics.
where as this is not a "lose money" type of scam (other than your monthly payments for service to the game), i do believe it belittles the impact the game has on its players. i guess thats what i get for playin any online game, theres always a couple people out there to ruin the actual game for everyone
buts thats just my .02
We're in college now. There's girls here. They do stuff....
Sorry, but why epic losses? I don't see how this scam is surpassing the usual or ordinary in anyway
"How can Linden Labs set up a safety net to catch things like this?"
How about starting by getting a FIRST LIFE!
I have very little sympathy for people who have bad things happen to them when doing something stupid.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I would argue that the entire point of civilization is to protect the weak and/or stupid. I would also argue that at various times and places, we have all been the stupid one at some point. Lastly, I would point out that in this case, the loss of virtual currency is an actual material loss, since you can convert game dollars to USD.
People will also not improve just because you think you're better than they are.
Except in the case where virtual dollars have an actual exchange rate with 'real' dollars, they aren't so 'virtual' anymore.
How can Linden Labs set up a safety net to catch things like this?
Well, they could hire more moderators. But even then some scammers are going to get through.
Even free to play MMORPGs that are relatively new are susceptible to this sort of thing. Just look at Fiesta Online: http://fiestafan.com/
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
(emphasis mine)
Uhmmmm, hello?
Eve Online is specifically designed to have a player-driven economy and market. As in real life, it is possible to scam people in such a market. This is not just allowed in Eve online, it has in fact been close to actively encouraged (as in, people have asked devs/GM's whether it's ok to do certain things, and got a reply that amounts to "if it's not obviously prohibited by the EULA, go right ahead". It has made for some nice stories as well, some people may remember the story about the Eve Intergalactic Bank piramid scam.
The devs consider this kind of thing to be exactly as intended and have even stated so in public forums. So yes, it's a harsh game. It is actually possible to lose the work of several months in a matter of minutes.
Of course, there are still rules/an EULA, for example it's not OK to phish for account details, to sell or buy in-game money for real-world money, etc. However, if you manage to convince hundreds of people that they should invest in your piramid scheme, you should absolutely go right ahead.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Thanks Darwin! After the strong completely control the weak we'll call you for more insight...
It's our place as the strong to protect the weak, even from themselves. If that means really obvious to us laws to keep the lemmings from running off the cliff than so be it. I dislike rule for protecting people who SHOULD know better, but, how else (aside from elimination from society) should this be handled. You can't cure stupid and they are going to be a drain on the society as a whole without some directions and protections.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
How does that matter? People need to take responsibility for their own actions and choices. Gradparent was 100% correct.
http://valleywag.com/tech/second-life/virtual-worlds-supposed-economy-is-a-pyramid-scheme-230813.php
That's not even Darwin, it's Neitzche
It's way beyond social Darwinism. It's survival of the fittest with no rule of law to protect anyone at all -- it's in favour of all of the worst predatory aspects of human nature.
I don't want to live in that world. Civil society has been founded on trying to address some of those wrongs.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You've been scammed, sweetheart!
The fact that anarchistic nations never last (much less rise to greatness) must be very confusing to you. Society runs on trust, it's as simple as that. If nobody is willing to enter into contracts because they can't be enforced, or exchange goods or services for currency because it might lose all value tomorrow, or even come within shooting distance of any other person, then there is only one possible outcome, which closely resembles Quake. Nobody wants to live in that world. Even as a video game, it's not terribly interesting. Virtual worlds won't go anywhere unless there is some semblance of law and order.
Hey stupid!
How do you define the difference between 'stupid', 'Ignorant', and 'mistaken'?
Here is a clue, with very few exceptions, 'stupid' always turns out to be ignorance, misinformation or inexperience.
Second life isn't a game , it's a virtual world with real money.
"I can somewhat understand the need for scam protection laws in real life (because I'd probably have to pay for the suckers' wellfare)"
what a dolt.
Ignoring the glaring misspelling(does that mean your stupid?) protection are in place because a few people lie and cheat. Would it be ok for a Credit Card company to jack your rate up to 500% and apply it to things you have already purchased? How about the CEO of your bank taking all the money and leaving?
In order to have a civilization of any sort, there needs to be a level of trust. And most people are trustworthy. However you need protections to help maintain the needed level of trust.
Your crack on "wellfare" was completly unneeded. I wonder if that was your point? Just to rant against welfare in the most stupid way.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm an avid SL resident, and have been vocal about the Ginko subject in the SL community forums on numerous occasions.
Basically, as many have said there and elsewhere, when you participate in one of these "banks", you give your money to someone. That's how LL sees it. You are GIVING your money to someone. Whether they give it back or not, let alone pay you any extra for the privilege, is gratis, and they have no intention of doing anything about it if the owner of bank X up and disappears with the money. ANYone can set up ATM machines anywhere and do what Ginko did. Well, they can't any more, as people have already been burned and are wary, but there are still many naive people out there who will blithely go up to an ATM, see flowery words and fabulous interest rates, and deposit every L$ in their account, never suspecting that it isn't a "real" bank.
Yes, it is only "virtual money". Any real world value it holds is subject to change at any time. Most cases, it isn't a lot of money that is lost in these scams. It's an expensive lesson to learn, but it is far from life-breaking for anyone.
What is kind of telling is that LL does stop pyramid schemes and other such money scams, but does nothing to stop Ponzi schemes, like Ginko's (not-so-affectionately called the "Porto-Ponzi" in the SL forums). Ponzi schemes are a variation on pyramid schemes and, if one is regulated, the other should be as well. It is left as an exercise to the reader why LL can't seem to fathom this concept and put an end to SL "banks".
In the end, though, it is and should remain caveat emptor. In some ways, I think it is a good training ground for RL. The money involved is often nothing more than discretionary income for most folks, so losing it shouldn't hurt any more than losing it in a poker game. There's more than enough wisdom out there for people to obtain and investigate before giving their money to anyone. Whether they choose to ignore it falls squarely on their shoulders and no one else's.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
And idiot's continue to wreak havoc with the English language.
The only proper punishment, is to put the scammers' avatars in virtual second life jails and confiscate their second life properties.
Regardless of it's a game or it's a virtual life (which is more or less the same thing), the is that it's not real. If people do something dumb in a virtual life or get scammed, I assume that's the charm of the game. It doesn't affect the real person in a significant way, any more than dying in a video game.
People should take it as a learning experience and be grateful their mortgage wasn't on the line.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Already happening. From a Linden Labs press release: The company also introduced algorithms that identify suspicious activity...
A virtual world is a total surveillance society. Everything can be logged. More than that, what you do there can be analyzed automatically.
Big Brother is watching. Big Brother is always watching.
On the contrary, I can't imagine who wouldn't use real money converted into Linden $ in SL. People will actually do "work" in SL to earn L$. Most people make between US$0.50 and US$1.00 per hour. Why would you do that? Just get a real job and convert a few bucks so you can buy a new slutty dress or furry suit in SL and be done with it already.
So if you lose your money there, whether through a bug or through fraud, you're screwed. Also since the "country of second life" is not part any one country or the U.N., there are no federal or international laws applicable in the word of second life. This is the problem with virtual property.
Technically money is virtual as well since the little pieces of paper you carry around are technically worthless, but at least paper money is backed by the Government which has rules protecting you from theft. That's why First Life is better than Second Life.
There is nothing obtuse about "il-liberal". Granted, the hyphen is unnecessary, but really, learn some fucking English before you whine at people.
I can't believe that after your smug idiocy has been pointed out, you're still pointing fingers.
I don't think that Linden Lab is under any obligation to set up a "safety net" for their customers. In fact, I think it would be an extraordinarily bad idea for Linden Lab to try and regulate or guarantee the banks (beyond kicking out people who have been caught actively defrauding residents or otherwise violating the ToS).
Why? Because in Second Life, banks simply aren't needed. I cannot see any reason to hand over your Linden dollars to a third party within SL for safekeeping except to take advantage of the unbelievable interest rates that the banks offer. If the banks stop offering unbelievable interest rates, then (please correct me if I'm wrong, but) there is no reason to use them. I have not heard of the banks providing loans for people; it would be unreasonable to expect them to offer insurance; and any functions that a (genuine, reliable, regulated) bank could reasonably cover in SL could in most cases just as easily be fulfilled by taking the money out of Second Life and putting it into a real (First Life) bank.
Linden Lab didn't mention banks or interest rates specifically in their recent post on fraud and third party sites, which dealt with third-party sites dealing in fraudulently-obtained Linden Dollars (although if people stop using those sites, it would certainly help decrease the incentive for banks to run away with Residents' money). I think that it might be good if they were to put out a general warning about these banks, but that's not something I think they are necessarily obligated to do.
>I would argue that the entire point of civilization is to protect the weak and/or stupid.
I totally disagree with that viewpoint. Do you have any reference material (books, essays) to support that viewpoint?
I have no reference material to support my viewpoint, but having read your comment i am inclined to research this.
My viewpoint is that civilization is a side effect of selfishness. I want to be fitter, stronger, faster. I can be more successful if i cooperate with other people. I can be even more successful if i can control other people, and have them follow my rules.
Civilization has a track record of treating the weak and the poor very badly.
If you are infact correct that civilization was 'designed' for the explicit 'purpose' of protecting the weak and the dumb, i would love to see the proof.
It's irritating to have links on words if the href has nothing to do with the anchor text .
Make contracts enforceable in second life. Write up a simple description language for them, with in-world actions as clauses.
"X agrees to TransferLindens(Z) to Y on yyyy/mm/dd, and Y agrees to TransferLindens(Z*1.05) to X on yyyy/mm/dd+365 days" would be a simple 5% interest 1 year bond. It would be relatively simple to prove solvency at any point in time, making banks impossible to run scam from or bust. Just prevent any transaction or contract that would cause net worth (Lindens on hand plus incoming contracts minus outgoing contracts, ordered by time of transfer) to drop below zero. Players could put up real cash to finance loans by increasing their net worth enough to do so.
Loans and investments are a vital part of an economy, so it would make sense to support it with enforceable rules rather than ignore it and whine about scammers.
... that EVE Online almost encourages ingame scamming. The scammers often employ the same tricks as those in 'the real world', which makes it a learning experience. If someone gets scammed in EVE Online, it costs him some play money and a little embarrassment. In return he learns from the tricks employed and is a little more careful in the future, not just in EVE but hopefully in his day to day life too.
The scams are usually very easy to spot, but people are still taken in by them. I'd rather it be in a game.
Things are a little different in Second Life, but the focus should be on educating people about avoiding scams. If LL can bust a scammer now and then that's great, but expecting to get rid of the problem that way is expecting too much.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Oh, everything just HAS to be about you, doesn't it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Irony.
I simply don't consider a crime (in the real world) to scam someone out of fake money in a game that aims to similate a large universe with a full economy and social structure. Just like there are players who will "Pod" you, there are those who will scam you. Just the way the game works. It creates a great atmosphere and drama, IMO. The Eve scams that I recall were particularly entertaining because they were so elaborate.
That said, I'm all for IN GAME solutions to the problems like having scammers arrested or have bounties on their heads or something, but there's no need to take it to RL and make it a legal issue.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20071231
But doesn't Linden Labs, exclusively, control their currency?
ie: like the US Treasury and Fed Reserve system for "creating" money, Linden Labs is the UST/Fed for their world. Don't they know - with exact precision - where each and every Linden dollar is?
Imagine how much fraud you could eliminate if our own Govt could track every single dollar in the world, along with the history of that dollar (where it has been, what transactions it did, etc). Of course, we would never allow that in the 1st world....but in 2nd life? I would expect them to do that.
So, why aren't they? It seems, in a way, they've lost control of the very economy they created.
Make like Jabba;
Put a bounty on his head so high that he will never be able to tread in empire space again.
I have a virtual lien on my virtual house! Where will my virtual kids live? When will the virtual government step in to save us!
2nd Life is peanuts compared the under-market in countries even as advanced as the US. As much as 20% of US economy (trillions here) is off the books.
Recycling stories that are almost a year old, are we??
I'm too lazy to go look it up, but when I read about Ginko's antics and them doing the same exact thing on the Slasher, over a year ago, is when I went and checked out SL. Yeah I only 'played' it for about a day....
...nature's way of telling you that you're a dumbass.
It's financial Darwinism. And, as mentioned many times, the best cons take advantage of someone who "THINKS" that they are scamming someone else, to get something for nothing.
If you are SO gullible, that you think the widow of a Nigerian minister will out of the blue contact you to help claim $millions in aid money, then you, sir or madam, are a dumbass. I don't care if you're a blue-haired granny who makes wonderful cookies for your grandchildren and always is willing to help someone down on their luck.
Dumbass doesn't mean "bad", it just means stupid. And you can't legislate against stupidity. You can apparently ELECT it, but you can't legislate against it.
The moral of this of course, is that if granny gets taken to the cleaners, then perhaps her family shouldn't have let granny so loose on the financial leash, should they? And the upshot of that? Pay attention to the people you care about. Be interested in them and their lives, in what they're doing. If they're going off the rails and you care about them, get involved.
-Styopa
My only fear with these schemes is the extent to which they can be used to fund organized crime, or terrorist activites. That's not Linden's problem though, that's the job of 1st life policing agencies (assuming they work properly). There's no chance it could rise to the level of real world Savings and Loan or Subprime crisis because those happened under a veneer of government approval. Real world banks rise to such dizzying heights on the basis of government patronage: FDIC and legal tender laws, banking commissions providing the illusion of oversight.
It would be an interesting experiment to scrap the SEC, or any government enforcement of contracts, but what would happen is that another nation would choose not to do that and would grow stronger and then choose to take what's yours militarily, or through some other method of economic warfare.
In SL, people don't have to worry about military or economic warfare. Nobody can force you to sell your land, or can destroy it militarily (consider how the US military altered value of land in Bagdad).
Asking for proof for an opinion definitely puts you in the stupid class. Sounds like you don't know how you're getting pwned every day, according to your opinion.
The same way all Internet hosting companies set up safety nets to catch things like this. Is it your web service provider's responsibility to set up a safety net for people who get scammed on websites they host? Still not sure why people think if you interact using a 3D browser, it's fundamentally different from doing so on a 2D browser.
Internet service provides should not become a law onto themselves. If things are occurring in cyberspace that we don't like, we already have governments and laws to deal with these things. Let's not create more, nor give hosting companies responsibilities they're ill-suited to deal with.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
And if you are too weak to defend your property by yourself, be expelled from it by the first gang who walks in. Social Darwinism is wonderful as long as you're the strongest guy around; the problem is that you aren't, most of the time.
Scam protection laws exist in real life because without them investing is a lot riskier than with them, so they encourage people to invest their money which in turn helps economy. And it's not like Linder Dollars are any more virtual than the contents of your bank account: they're both numbers in a computer's memory.
Anyway, the solution is to treat Linder Labs as a bank, since they act as one to the point of printing their own money which is officially exchangable for US dollars at a fixed rate, and responsible for dealing with this kind of things. Alternatively, treat their virtual economy as any other foreign one.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"Also since the 'country of second life' is not part any one country or the U.N., there are no federal or international laws applicable in the word of second life."
If that were true, than gambling wouldn't be banned in SL (US law), and you wouldn't have to pay VAT on income earned in SL (EU law). Laws exist and apply, and scamming is old as a mankind. Nothing to see here, move along.
Post:
No matter what, people will scam for money because even if its not worth real money, its still worth something to someone.
Sig:
Calm down. It's all just ones and zeros.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I'd start with the Veil of Ignorance. It's a social theory that basically says, "imagine you know nothing about what you're going to be like or your station in life. How should society work?" His basic conclusion is that we would do a lot to protect the people on the lowest rungs of society for fear that is where we might end up.
:D All kidding aside, while the "consequences" of EVE may be fun to you and some others the grand parent has a point. World of Warcraft has more people logged on at once than most games have total subscribers. This is not a coincidence, it is because people find it fun. One of the reasons is because WoW is a game that doesn't punish you. You can do what you want to do and not have to worry about major set backs. It is something like a single player game in which you get to save as often as you want: You may not always be able to move forwards, but you don't have to move backwards. That appeals to a whole lot of people, and they are not wrong for liking it.
Also the grand parent does have something on the mentality of the kind of people who are drawn to a game like EVE. There are people out there whole delight in causing pain to others, and EVE is a game that allows them to do that. As such you are going to get a concentration of certain kinds of players in it, kinds of players that many might accurately call pricks.
Yours,
T. Hobbes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You can never go wrong with the ingredients for Egg Nog and Cookies.
But I have bought materials at the Auction House that cost me 10 silver and I couldn't sell, even though the market looked like they were worth 5 gold, so maybe some pump and dump AH players are succeeding at such scams in WoW.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If you believe that "civilization" means laws/customs against killing unwanted infants and the elderly, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
If you believe that "civilization" means the rule of law, where the wealthy, influential and well-connected cannot run rough-shod over the common man, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
If you believe that "civilization" means public safety is seen to (to some extent) by the government, rather than a "might makes right" society, then "civilization" protects the weak and poor.
Yes, civilizations do go against these principles. Generally, the real does not live up to the ideal, as shown by the abusive behavior of nobles in the Middle Ages, he poorhouses in 19th Century England, and slavery in America. But a "Lord of the Flies" situation is neither civilization, nor protective of the weak and poor.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Stupid is when you are ignorant and/or mistaken but you don't think you are and won't admit it, even when the evidence is staring you in the face so hard it can see the inside of your scalp.
Try working in end-user supoort; you'll soon be painfully aware of the myriad shades of all three.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It is all well and good to say "they should have known" but that is clearly "high insight" where if they did really know they would have never fell for the scam. Capitalism benefits from having fair trade where "con games" are a thing that damages the system. Just like in the real world, I'm all for rigorous investigation of scam artists because it doesn't do me any good finger waggle at my neighbors falling victim to stuff. I'm all for investigations of scamming in MMOs if not to add more features to the game (specifically anti-scammer features). I'm especially for it if it turns out that it is a bug in the system the scammers are exploiting.
There are arguments made in situations like this and other real world situations like the ARM Housing Crisis is that both sides should be punished since blame on both parties. The problem is that it often requires people being scammed to report it to figure out what is going on. If players are given no incentive to report the problem, mainly the big incentive that they can reclaim their stolen virtual property, then why report it? In this situation you are better off trying to scam back which may just make the system spiral that much faster into anarchy. This maybe what the designers want, in the case of Eve ONLINE, but probably not what Second Life had in mind.
As for anti-scam features, at this point all modern MMOs have "micro-escrow trading systems" but I think it is time to move a "macro-escrow". Right now if you want to trade with someone, you walk up to them in game, initiate a trade, both parties see the items/money/etc, hit "okay" and walk away. This is a "micro-escrow" system which works fine for "bazaar/farmer's market" style trade. To advance beyond this "bazaar/farmer's market" you need a system that extends this in time and scope and comes much closer to a true escrow trading. For instance, going with buying a car one rarely shows up with $25k in their pocket and buys on the spot but this is how almost every MMO expects you to behave. To extend this to Eve ONLINE, it would be awesome to have a system where you could buy a ship or whatever using financing from someone else where that party holds the "deed" to the ship till you pay them back. This opens up other new ways to do some real world economy in the virtual world that is beyond the stuff we see now. Basically, MMOs need a "trade window" that stays open for days or months, that doesn't require the players to see each other, and that can be ok-ed or revoked at their descression. Of course the devil is in the details where if a party revokes a long term trade, trying to sort out who gets what is left over is often determined in arbitrartion/courts which I'm not sure many MMO designers are exactly interested in supporting.
Sez you. It's that kind of thinking that gave us this stupid "war" on drugs. How about we allow other people to live their lives and reap the consequences, good or bad?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Removing the legal exchange won't prevent it. Look at Diablo 2 and the insane rates of SOJs on eBay in the beginning. No matter what, people will scam for money because even if its not worth real money, its still worth something to someone.
I submit that if someone will pay you real money for something, then it IS worth real money.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
So somebody went through the trouble of setting up a whole virtual world where people wouldn't hurt themselves, and they managed to do it anyway?
I hate to be cold, but they kinda deserved what they got. Darwin's law. If you're extraordinarily stupid, you fail.
LL or CCP (makers of EVE) can stop this the same way real credit card companies find fraud. Velocity.
Given that all monetary transactions go through a single transaction system. Those transactions can be monitored by a set of fraud rules. I'll use EVE as an example, since I play the game. Rules would be like:
- Player donations into an account of X ISK over Y hours exceeds Z
(probably hacked accounts feeding a central account)
- Player donations out of account of X ISK to more than Y different players
(probably an ISK-seller)
- Player donations into an account from more than X players over Y hours
(could be ponzi schemes)
Each scam that comes up will have a pattern in monetary transactions that can be flagged using these rules. once an account is flagged, a security representative can review the specifics of the account and determine if it is potentiall fraud, and perhaps suspend the account.
Human interaction is critical here, because the rules are not perfect. For example, the last rule would trigger for most EVE-Radio DJs that run lottos during their on-air time. A perfectly legitimate concept. That where the addition of a white list becomes useful.
A few hours or days with an "expert" who works for a major bank would help curb these issue somewhat. The bad news is, these systems only work when installed in the core of the transaction system. Only LL/CCP can solve this problem, and they have to WANT to solve it.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
reference gambling and power chips
But...Linden Labs can *still* track the transactions via your user accounts.
They know 10,000 LBs went from you to Joe Hacker, don't they? They also know where those LBs went after Joe Hacker got his hands on them. And so on and so forth.
Point is: The Lindenbucks can always be tracked and followed. If they money supply is "hacked", it should be obvious and known within minutes.
So, you want to run an online bank do you? Well what's to stop me from... 1) Taking people's Linden dollars 2) Cashing them in for real dollars, investing the real dollars in some sort fund that closely matches the Linden Dollars to real dollars exchange rate, plus pays out a dividend of say 5%, maybe just a simple CD/Savings account for that FDIC insurance. 3) Using the resulting dividends to pay a 3% interest rate on all Linden Dollars in my accounts 4) Profit on the spread! The scary part is, this sounds almost viable as compared to people who invest money in scammers. Of course the risks here are that the exchange rate on Linden dollars can go to hell on short notice, also investment underperformance on the dividend side (though I can peg my dividends to a variable rate based on the performance of the fund and mitigate that risk). Anyways this is just my thoughts, anyone who actually undertakes this is probably crazy...
...in bed
In-game contracts are automatic, and essentially just as reliable as the in-game economy itself.
I would argue that the only reason that the weak and the stupid put up with civilization is that they think it benefits them and protects them. The strong need no such protection. Since civilization can't continue if the masses refuse to play along, this suggests that the original poster's opinion may have some merit.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Caveman Ogg take food from Old Woman because Old Woman Weaker, Ogg Stronger! Caveman Ogg cheat Bearskin from Ugg while hunting because Ugg Dumber, Ogg Smarter! Against Tribal rule, but not against Ogg rule because Ogg Stronger and Smarter!!!
But Ogg get sick from food. Ogg think Old Lady sneak in purple mushrooms. Ogg think Tribe need rule against purple mushrooms! Caveman Thugg take Ogg's favorite club and hit Ogg head while Ogg sick and weak! Ogg think Tribe need rule against taking Ogg favorite club and hitting Ogg head!!!
That's an account of justice, not an account of how real civilizations in the real world were set up and why they were set up that way.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Somebody had to say it.
Ah, but you see, if the weaker guys organize, they are clearly communiststs / unionized lazy bums / collectivists / left-wing bleeding heart liberals, so the big guy has legitimate cause to call the government to protect him. After all, the strong picking on the weak is just the way of nature, but the weak banding together and ganging on the strong is unfair.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
A bunch of STUPID people lost their money on the internet?!? SHOCKING!!! For some reason, my compassion meter must be broken or something, because I'm having a rather hard time giving a shit.
If it's too good to be true, that's because it is.
I'm sure you know that woman who walked up to in the bar and said "Hey, I'm just looking for a good time?!?" And how 6 hours later you found yourself in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney...
The internet is just like that... a kidney stealing bitch... only she'll take both kidneys...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I mean I would figure that games would get press mostly based on their impact, which is mostly based on their player base. The more people who play a game, the more impact a game has on our society. It's similar to watching sports: Basketball has a much more major impact in America than many other countries because more people watch it. Thus it gets talked about more.
However it seems to me that I see more articles about Second Life, which relatively few people play, than World of Warcraft, which has -by far- the most players of any MMO. This doesn't make any sense, I'd figure WoW would be the most talked about by a large margin for that reason, and still other games over second life.
I'm not sure if they have a really good hype machine or if there are just a bunch of suckers in the media, but I really would like to know what about it merits so much attention when it seems to be a pretty minor phenomena in the online gaming world.
Ask any of the Russians in Red Alliance how they finance their Moscow penthouses!
Same goes for BOB and any of the other larger alliances who allow farmers to mine and rat out their systems for REAL CURRENCY paid to their leaders.
ISK sales are a huge real money profit for these scammers.
Not to mention the Chinese Sweatshop farmers.
I once backstabbed my own corporation and alliance in a low sec war. Great times. Later on I have stolen great amounts of ore, and slaughtered people in high security areas. Sometimes I have manipulated the market prices of a region to net me hundreds of millions in profit. Sometimes I have sent newbies to do courier missions to the most dangerous places in game, leading into me getting the collateral money.
It's not really griefing. Eve online is not hypocritical game but a very realistic one. MMORPG. Role playing game. It is a role as well to be the really bad guy and do some non-consentual pvp on many levels. It's adultish in its own way and very satisfactory - especially as the opponents are upto similar things against you constantly.
Please note however that it does not mean that you'd lose very much in Eve. It has got its own sandbox activities or "safenets" (missions, manufacturing, ratting) that allow players to rebounce back quite effortlessly. I really did not like the article's tone that all this "scamming" is somehow bad. It depends entirely on the environment. Eve was built the way that it is actually encouraged PVP and can be in that environment very fun.
>Asking for proof for an opinion definitely puts you in the stupid class.
Their very well could be research done on this topic.
Have you heard of the concept of the Rule Of Law, which says that laws should apply uniformly to everyone, not just the rich?
Have you read about the Magna Carta, or the code of Hammurabi, or the Solonic laws?
Society is one long march from tribal feuding to widescale democracy -- the assertion, in the US Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, weak/stupid and strong/powerful alike.
At almost every stage in history what you see is more and more weak people gaining more rights. There was a time when there was no voting: it was rule by the sword. Ancient Greece (among others) started voting, so that rather than just one strong person running the show, a number of less-strong people who were still all rich men voted on what they were going to do. Then landowners began to get to vote, then merchants, then slavery was abolished, then women got to vote... You don't see a trend here?
Civilization is a balance between selfishness and altruism. Altruistic groups, where people do things for other people with no reasonable expectation of reward, outcompete selfish individuals. Within a group, however, a selfish individual tends to outcompete other people for a short time, until reciprocity makes people start to shun that person. Selfishness is generally only effective in the short term, in other words.
Civilization has a track record of treating the poor badly, but over time, it also has consistently been granting them more and more rights, and treating them better and better. If one argues that we are more civilized now than we were 2000 years ago, and one observes that nearly everywhere the poor and weak are being treated better now than they were 2000 years ago, one can at the very least conclude that increasing civilization is correlated with the weak and poor being treated better.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Look, it's easy to indulge in one's "fair world" bias and blame the victim of various scams for being stupid, but it's not a real useful way to look at the situation.
Like joining a cult, nobody gets up one morning and says "I think I'll be taken in by a pyramid scheme scam today".
People have been taken by scams usually because the scammers are often very, very, good at what they do. Not that some people aren't painfully stupid, or even worse, stupid and _greedy_, but the reason victims of fraud look so stupid is hindsight bias. Once you know that "offer X" was a scam, of course it looks like the victim was an idiot.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
What's to stop you? Primarily the fact that there is not an active, liquid futures market with which to perfectly or even approximately hedge $L against the USD, creating significant downside for you if the dollar loses value. Your step 2 is not viable.
On the question of how to solve the problem, it seems to me the best way to do this is to allow for one user read-only access to another's accounts, assuming both agree, of course. This would allow the creation of 3rd party rating agencies, which would verify banks are legit and charge them for their services. If a rating agency verified a bank that went under, its credibility would be shot and it is unlikely anyone would continue to use _that_ rating agency. But then again, I am a rabid freemarketeer who believes that the market solves better than some arbitrary rules by LL, so my words should be taken with a grain of salt.
Laws should not protect anyone, actually. Know what they should essentially do? Reduce unnecessary expenses and hand over the monopoly of force to the government. That's what they're here for.
Look at it, what is the core of every law? Let's only concentrate on the important parts. And let's assume it's a negative law (i.e. it forbids instead of allows). The core of every legal system is to make it illegal to harm another person at their body or possession.
Why? To make it unnecessary to protect either constantly. This in turn also means that you hand over power to the government instead of wielding it yourself. You hand that power over to the government against the promise that you don't have to constantly fend off people who want to either harm you or take away what you have.
If you took away laws, you'd have to surround yourself with people who you trust. Enough to assume they won't kill you to take your stuff and you promise them protection in return. You'd have to spend resources for this protection, you'd have to spend time and energy to achive that security the law offers you.
Whether it should protect the "weak" is debatable. First of all it would depend on the definition of "weak". Should the law keep me from doing something "stupid"? Should it keep me from throwing my money away for snake oil? Should it keep me from killing myself?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The question is not whether we should abandon civilisation and return to the rule of the strongest or rule of the largest mob. The question is whether it is sensible to protect people from themselves and disallow them to be stupid (and suffer from their stupidity).
You cannot on one hand complain about nannystate tendences in our legal system and on the other hand demand to be protected from your own stupidity. It's like demanding to be allowed to touch the hot stove and then complain that nobody kept you from being burned.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Since we're rating people by spelling,
that would be "you're stupid" geekoid
That's because Second Life *IS* the most popular MMO. I'm currently unable to verify my numbers, but at a time when Second Life reached average of 40K concurrent users, my WoW friends told me that WoW had average of about 30-35K concurrent users. And that was about 6 months ago - currently SL has average of 50K concurrent users, peaking at 58K, and I would suspect the gap is increasing.
Besides, SL is the first MMO without the RPG part. It's much more interesting technological and social experiment than other MMOs, exploring a lot of new concepts MMO games (as compared with MMO platforms) simply don't have. WoW simply doesn't have user-made banks like Second Life and real life have, and that's just one example.
In MMORPGs, you can grind, you can hack, and you can trade in a very limited way, and that's about it. In Second Life, you can make and/or play MMORPGs, you can dress, you can do business, you can chat, you can teleconference, education segment is going strong, and so on.
In most other MMOs, when you cheat the system, they either reverse the damage you've done, or they kick you out (sometimes both).
In Second Life, could it be argued that since crooks exist in real life, they should be allowed to exist in the virtual world ? Then you'll have virtual cops to look out for them and/or make deals with them. If they really want to call it a social experiment, this is precisely the kind of social dynamic they should be pursuing. Real-life people are dumb enough to fall for these schemes, let the virtual tards fall for them as well.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
So people are paying money for pretend object in a pretend world and other people are stealing the pretend money they get from the pretend objects. I can track so far.
There is nothing to tie this pretend dollar to a real dollar except the goodwill and honesty of the people who own/run the pretend world. I mean, think of it. You have this pretend dollar and you say it's worth 10 actual dollars. But who cares what you say? It's what the market will bear, correct? In theory, yes.
But who controls the amount of pretend dollars in circulation? The owner of the game. I hope you see where this is going. As much as a scammer as the bank dude is, the owners of this pretend Second World are the real scammers because they're selling you pretend dollars for actual dollars. They can increase the supply any time they want. They can walk away when people won't pay for pretend dollars anymore. Or they can dump a trillion pretend dollars into circulation. And it would all be legal, and legitimate. I'm guessing you agreed to that in the EULA.
So at the end of the day, the bank scammers are the petty thieves. The grand larcenist are the ones charging for pretend dollars. But to be fair to the people who run Pretend World they are merely taking advantage of people who would have been taken advantage of by somebody else.
Remember this conversation when the Pretend World is down the toilet and you're thinking you were scammed. You really weren't. The owners said "give me your money" and you did.
I don't play Eve, what I'm going on is the OP's comment "As in real life, it is possible to scam people in such a market."
The first four words kind of implied that's what they were trying to simulate. Sorry for the confusion.
In any case, I wasn't suggesting they bring in RL police, but rather that the game should include whatever law enforcement makes sense in-game as part of the simulation.
Stomp their feet and hold their breath?
It's not like the truly stupid are a majority. Granted 'the masses' aren't smart, but stupid enough to fall for a Ponzi scheme? OK, ok Social Security, but I for one have understood it's Ponzi nature my entire adult life (2017 is going to be here fast). Still most people take care of themselves just fine. The only reason I'm still flushing any money down the SS hole is that it's taken 'at gunpoint'. (Way off topic)
The key to not being stupid forever (all jokes aside) is to learn from your mistakes. Mistakes must be painful.
One indisputable fact, if you subsidize stupidity you will get more of it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"But despite this looking primarily like a problem with Eve Online ..."
I don't think scamming is a problem in EVE-Online, I think it adds another dimension of depth that makes the game all the more entertaining to play. It makes you think things through and also adds a level of risk that you just don't find in other games.
Now I can see a problem with scamming in 2nd Life since the money there is actually tied to real dollars. But I don't like Second Life, it's boring because I can't rob and kill people when ever I want so, I'll stick to EVE-Online. Yarr!!!
Very well said.
second *REAL* life... copying real life issues!
Come on...this happened way back in August!
Although not technically legal, EvE Online ISK has -always- had a monetary value.
Using current figures, the loss of a normally fitted dreadnought would be as high as £50. A faction (well) fitted dreadnought would be well into the £100s. And these things get scammed and stolen through corp-thieves.
One of my friends about a month ago got scammed out of BPOs for building capital ships. With real value of roughly £500-600 (even more if you take into account that they were worth more because they were researched).
Things like that happen on a daily basis in EvE.
Android Software Engineer
FYI, scamming in Eve is by design. It is part of the game and thus not a 'problem'.
Maybe you could write an article about the evils of mines in minesweeper?
It seems to me anywhere you go in WoW you get ganked by people with skulls instead of levels who think it's fun to make people who can't defend themselves have to walk back to their corpses over and over again, or else stop playing for half an hour to recover from resurrecting at the graveyard.
I don't know how many of you have read Charles Stross' recent scifi novel "Halting States" but it's about scams in MMOs. It's pretty good. I like Stross better when he's writing about the near future than the year 3000.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hear, hear.
I've been flabbergasted by the rise of frank admiration for bullies and acceptance of social Darwinism over the past few decades.
The Slashdot crowd seems to be especially prone to accepting this as long as it is mental strength and weakness that are involved. I'm afraid that they have forgotten the decade during which they were vulnerable to being scammed and are not allowing for the future decades when they will again be vulnerable to being scammed.
We all have times when we are weak and need protection.
Sure, civilization does treat the weak fairly well. But was that the reason for its creation?
As it was the powerful who did the creating, it seems unlikely.
If our decision makers were veiled, that might apply. As I know where I ended up, as do they, and don't think I'll be born again, your application of the theory to the real world holds little weight.
Obviously he's right, if we were charged with picking the best society for ourselves to be thrown into randomly, we'd pick a nicer one for everyone than we make after knowing our own position.
But what application does that have to how society did develop? Except perhaps in areas believing in reincarnation, this should have had little effect as those who could do something had little reason to do so, as it obviously had nothing to do with them (having already being born).
That's why I said 'correlate' in the last sentence -- I don't think that treating the weak better is the reason civilization exists. I think civilization exists because cooperative group effort makes that group outcompete other groups with less cooperation. As such, civilization is a competitive evolutionary strategy: it exists, and expands, because people who do it survive longer and can better care for their children. However, since it is a cooperative group effort, I think that over time giving more power to weaker members is an emergent quality, although that might have to do more with group psychology and the (mostly human, only sometimes observed in other animals) tendency to try and force life to be fair that we exhibit. In short, people want life to be fair becausse it makes them feel more in control of their futures, and they will pay, in labor or money, to try and make it fair. Since humans have empathy, we will as a group do the same thing for the weaker members of the group and over time pull them into the group. It's weird behavior, frankly, but we've been doing it fairly consistently for all of human history, and it is, well, nice. So, more power to us as a race: we're not unrelentingly horrible.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Well then, since I didn't complain about "nanny states", I can still say that fraud resulting in the theft of real property is still a crime and ignore your false dilemma. If you think fraud in theft is OK in the real world if people fall for it
If the money in Second Life can be exchanged into real dollars, then at some point, you will have committed fraud -- it's not Monopoly money. If it's of a sufficient dollar value, it's a potentially serious crime.
Do I think it's easily enforced on the internet? Nope. Do I think consumers need to be more cautious on-line? Yup.
If this was a bank, the police would get involved. But, alas, Linden Labs isn't a bank any more than paypal is -- so, you really have no protections. I just never understand why people are so much more naive on-line than they are in real-life. I don't think it makes them stupid or deserving of what they get, but I think some of the first training we give people on the internet should be a healthy dose of skepticism.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I humbly think that the Magna Carta does not fit your point of view, as it was imposed upon the governing rule. Same goes for the French Revolution constitution and the American Declaration of Independance.
What you post translates to advocating capital punishment for being a victim of fraud.
If you are going to advocate capital punishment, call it like it is instead of hiding it behind silly synonyms.
Congratulations on being a complete jerk, even when demonstrated wrong.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
If you get / got scammed in an online game, You Are A Fucking Retard, and it was probably your own greed that led you to be scammed anyway. Go fucking die already, you'll receive no sympathy here.
Just because the computer is a "new" form of tech gear for some people...doesn't mean they should be given the right to use one (without proper knowledge). Now I'm one for the idea that all SHOULD own a computer...it is a day and age that demands it.
It is also the day and age where its almost required that you have a car (in most areas)...but you dont see the state allowing you to drive one without proper knowledge. A fool driving wihout a license (proper knowledge) is soon parted from his money as well...yet I hear none of you arguing for his rights. These "fools" are no different.
At least I had enough common sense to not expect to know how to drive a stick before I learned, likewise, these people shouldn't hop on the computer/internet and expect to understand how it works magically. Shit this type of thing happens every day and is in newspapers at LEAST once a month...yet these "fools" in question expect the internet to be different? In a setting where anonymity is around every corner? Screw that...protect your neck. Be a fool if you want. It isn't my money, after all, my mom didn't raise a fool.
This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!