Friday, August 19
Online mugger arrested
This is just a bit weird for me to deal with. A Chinese bloke has been arrested for mugging other characters in an online role playing game, nicking their Magic Boots of Waterproofness or whatever, and then selling them to other players on an online auction site for real money.
There will now be a race to write the first online police procedural.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
That's just whacked. Although I suppose if he's making real money of it, and therefore depriving other people of real money... Surely he's committed fraud, rather than mugging though?
I think the striking thing here is to remind us that there are people so obsessed with online games (and surely, therefore, out of touch with reality?) that it's possible for events in them to affect the real world like this. My new flatmate spends rather longer than is healthy playing 'world of warcraft'. Nice flatmate and I find it somewhat worrying.
Well, is he, though? I mean, the fact that one can routinely buy and sell these things for real money implies that it must be legal - if my character, I don't know, kills a dragon and gets a Bracelet of Crunchy Goodness, then I can legally sell it to your character for real money.
Now, if I get something from you in some other way - my character saves your character's life, and so you repay me by giving my character your character's Pogo Stick of Righteousness, that presumably is OK - as would be my selling said pogo stick on an auction site for real money etc.
So if my character beats up your character and nicks his Flippers of Moral Clarity, is that theft, or just me roleplaying my character as a violent thug?
A twist may be that this guy was using a software bot to do the mugging - but surely that's just a breach of the terms of his account, rather than actually a criminal offence...
Better hurry up on the novel. I notice Charlie Stross has a concept for a novel in which an online bank's IPO is derailed when one of its branches in an online game world is robbed by a gang of marauding orcs - difficult to explain that one to the investors.
But if he's cheating and breaking the rules of the game, and then exchanging these items for real money by purporting to have aquired them legitimately, surely that can be construed as fraud?
It's still ridiculous that you can exchange game items for real money at all...
Yes, I am still at work. Yes, my life sucks.
Ah, the lawyer speaks. (What's the whole shaking hair around thing? Are you allowed to do that in court? "M'lud, I must crave the court's indulgence for a five-minute moshing break.")
But, grif, the tricky bit here (pushes glasses down nose, looks over the top of them) is that, as far as I understand it, taking other characters' virtual property off them without consent is legal - in fact, it's a major feature of the game.
Good point that the sale may not be legal (although tolerated). That might be the key.
Have fun in NY. I just remembered - you shouldn't take fluorescent light signs on the plane, because they could contain mercury, and if the tube breaks, mercury plus aluminium is bad. Very bad.
Post a Comment