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Hacker Steals $12 Million Worth of Zynga Poker Chips
Gamasutra reports that a 29-year-old British man has been convicted of hacking into Zynga's game servers and helping himself to 400 billion virtual poker chips.
"'The defendant sold around one third of the 400 billion poker chips, and looking at the auction history where one can purchase such items, he was selling them for around £430 ($695) per billion,' said prosecutor Gareth Evans, according to a report from local newspaper Herald Express. Sold legitimately through Zynga, the full amount of chips would have brought in some $12 million. The prosecutor estimated that if Mitchell sold all of the virtual chips on the black market, he would have made a fraction of that, around £184,000 ($297,000). Evans admitted that valuing virtual currency can be difficult and that the company was not actually deprived of tangible goods, but he said that the theft could still affect the developer by indirectly causing legitimate online gamers to stop playing Zynga Poker or its other games."
I was selling my physical monopooly currency to her for $100,000 for every 100 monopoly bucks. /.
Sadly my news article never earned quite as much attention as this when I submitted it to
I hope to one day throw her in prison, even tho she has admitted to damaging my business model my lawyer is skeptical of a positive outcome at trial.
Something about suing a minor looking bad to the jury.
A lot of currency is already "virtual", ie there is no gold or even paper currency there backing it up.
which is totally what she said
Do you really think that all US dollars that are in circulation have physical representation? We are already paying with virtual money that is nothing more than a number written in a database field somewhere in [insert name of your bank here] servers.
What exactly can one do with Zynga Poker chips, even if you won them legitimately? Can they be exchanged for cash and/or prizes?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Rivalz and Zynga both sell an artificial currency (i.e. not 'legal tender' in any country) for 'real' money. Both have been the victims of a theft. If the thief in the Zynga case has been convicted then the implication is that there's now a precedent.
Rivalz' insight is that taking that precedent to its logical extreme, his sister's about to be forced to turn lesbian.