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?

Cheating in video games

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.

Re:Cheating in video games

Exactly! Also, if anyone thought about this seriously for a long period of time then you shoudl consider getting professional help. You have lost touch with reality.

Re:

Except these online currencies end up being worth real money, do they not? The market determines an exchange rate to USD, as with any currency. So it could, arguably, be more like stealing the chips from a poker game. As I understand it, Las Vegas doesn't look kindly on that and you can go to jail.

Re:

Except in EON, buying or selling EON Currency on EBay is punishable by account banishment.

Re:Cheating in video games

It'll get you banned by CCP in EVE as well. And CCP will take all the money from the player that bought it.

Only Partly right.

Selling ISK on ebay directly is against the EULA, however it is not against EULA to purchase game-cards for isk and sell those for local currency.

Re:Cheating in video games

"Except these online currencies end up being worth real money, do they not?"

No. There is no actual scarcity and no central bank backing the currency, nor any financial controls. The same applies to any items and other 'valuables' in those games; any particular scarcity of any particular item is purely artificial and can be instantly changed at the whim of the company (or any less than honest admin or someone exploiting the game).

The lack of scarcity based value of course doesnt mean you cant pay to avoid actually playing the game (altho anyone actually paying to not play the game should seriously consider not playing the game for free and doing something else instead).

"So it could, arguably, be more like stealing the chips from a poker game."

Casinos back the chips. Most MMORPG's do not back their currencies.

Re:Cheating in video games

Isn't the same true for money, to a certain extent? For instance, while it's highly illegal, a banking establishment could simply add money to a computerized account balance. Less trivially but perfectly legally, the United States (or any other country) could decide to print a whole mess of money.

No. There are rules about this. Money in a bank is real money, usually backed by some government, and limited in supply. If the bank were to just add more money to your account, they would be taking it from someone else. Unless that person (or entity) agreed to them transferring funds from their account(s) to another, that would be larceny. A crime. The U.S. could print more money but usually doesn't as like any precious material, the more of it there is, the less it is worth. This would destabalize economies.

The point is, unless the crime can spill over into the real world, the so called 'crime' in the computer game is only in the computer game. The only way the crime could spill over into the real world is if the game money had a real world value in term of dollars and not just hurt feelings. Since the game company does not back the game currency in the real world, no harm was done and this wouldn't be a crime. That is how I understand it.

IANAL

Re:Cheating in video games

As I understand it, Las Vegas doesn't look kindly on that and you can go to jail.

Because it's not the same thing. When you go into a casino and purchase chips, you and the casino have an understanding that the chips are merely placeholders for real money, and are exchangeable as such within that casino only by the bearer. Thus, if you steal chips from the casino or from another player it's treated the same as if you took actual money, since there was that pre-agreed understanding that the casino will unconditionally buy the chips back at their face value regardless of who presents them. It's rather like stealing a bearer-only check - the check itself is not currency, but it is understood to represent it.

There is no such understanding regarding currencies in an online game, and the poster that compared it to stealing Monopoly money is exactly correct. The only difference is that there aren't many people willing to pay real money for Monopoly scrip, and thus it has a correspondingly low resale value in the real world. If someone is so wrapped up in some damn game that they're willing to spend real money just to increase their standing, that sounds to me like a problem for a psychiatrist, not the courts.

Re:

Paying for items in games is silly, but if you enjoy the type of game that is more enjoyable with a better standing and you have more money than time, why spend the sparce resource to get where you want? Why care when others do so?

Oh, I can think of a few reasons.

Inflation comes to mind. This is a classic problem associated with bad game economies, and worsened considerably by gold farming (or equivalents). UO is a good example.

Fair play comes to mind as another example. The reason doping is against the

Re:

'If you can convince some idiot to give you their chips if you promise to give them more chips later.....

You raise a good point. If someone falls for a dumb arse scam in the virtual world, does that make them likley to fall for one in the real world? - probably. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.... Probably unfair: The people that lost the money should really take responsibility for their stupidity - and not try to sue their way out of shame.. YOU FELL FOR A SCAM, GET OVER IT!!!

BTW

Re:Cheating in video games

Well, I mostly agree... but... it's not so cut and dry as you make it seem. Think of a game like second life, where in-game money can be directly transferred back and forth for real world money. If someone ran a ponzi scheme in SL, should THAT be punishable with RL rules? Honestly, I haven't decided for myself yet what I think, but I think it's worth discussing where the line should be drawn.

You've totally missed the boat.

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?

Re:

They are willingly engaging in a game where scams are not only allowed but actually encourages it. You are not signing away your rights anymore than you are giving away ownership of money when you put in on the roullette table in vegas.

It all comes back to this... It is simply a game, where this type of activity is encouraged.

in another game where this is against the rules, you could atleast make the claim about ownership and giving up rights, but not here

Re:Not quite...

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.

Yeah, but that's 400 hours that you chose to spend on playing a game to obtain an item with no physical reality. It's rarity is irrelevant. You didn't have to spend that time obtaining said item, and the time you spent is - by definition - leisure time.

Which is why I doubt that any real-world court is going to offer much sympathy, unless the in-game object can be shown to have direct real-world value (as someone else pointed out, Second Life has an official means of converting in-game money to US Dollars). It's hard to argue that an unofficial black market for virtual items gives them any real-world value in a legal sense if that sort of trading is explicitly banned by the game developers.

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.

If by that you mean that you could have earned $5000 in those 400 hours that you chose to spend playing a game, I suspect a defense lawyer's response might be "so why didn't you?".

Re:

Yeah, but that's 400 hours that you chose to spend on playing a game to obtain an item with no physical reality.

Why should the physical reality of a thing be even remotely relevant here? Lots of things that have no physical reality beyond being a magnetic charge on a HDD platter somewhere are considered EXTREMELY valuable. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the world's money does not physically exist.

Let's instead look at how value is created: People agree a thing has value. If lots an

Re:Not quite...

An assembled cardboard puzzle with 5000 pieces has a high labor value under your definition. Somehow I think it would probably not be treated as a serious offence if someone stole it.

Re:Not quite...

Except for the fact that, you know.... it's not a "super-rare item". It's not an item at all. It's this tiny little bit of data that could be replicated a million times much more easily than the monopoly money could be replicated-- it's only the game developers who are artificially setting the rarity of that data.

And there's nothing inherently valuable about that data either. You can't justify its worth by labor alone, since it's entirely possible to spend 400 hours on an endeavor that has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Spending 400 hours picking your nose wouldn't make your boogers valuable.

Real money is bits of data these days

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".

 

Re:

I can't simply go and pick up another one at the dollar store.

Oh, but you can [ebay.com]...

Wow, you really don't have a clue do you?

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?

Re:Not quite...

HOWEVER, these items in online games have MASSIVE intrinisic value based on labor.

Marxist claptrap. The labor theory of value is a load of horseshit concocted by political philosophers with no appreciation for the reality of economics. A thing has no value beyond what someone is willing to pay for it. You could spend 400 hours making carefully formed and wrapped sewage popsicles, but they aren't worth $5000. Besides, the labor theory of value requires an outside authority to set the value of your labor, and in this case, CCP has already declared (via TOS) that your work is not exchangeable for money and therefore is worth nothing.

Re:Cheating in video games

Damn right. Next thing they'll talk about puting in prison people who shoot each other in the game. Hey, murder is illegal isn't? Then why would a virtual scam be any different?

Re:

I would, but someone stole my bike. I was going to exchange my game currency for real money and buy a new bike, but now someone ripped off that too.

Give me a break

If crimes committed in a game could be punished in real life, I'd be serving life sentence for mass-murder.

Alternate reality defines the game

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.

someone is missing the point of games

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.

Re:someone is missing the point of games

He violated the rules of a game.

No, he didn't. As others also pointed out, there is nothing in the Eve Online EULA or in the game mechanics that forbids what this guy has done. There is no "exploiting" of bugs or broken game mechanics going on here. "Exploiting" of stupid people, sure, but that's a different matter.

What *is* explicitly forbidden by the EULA however, is converting in-game money to real money. That is a bannable offense.

wtf?

It`s a game. And the scam was clearly inside the rules of the game. So i see no need for discussion here.

It's all in the game

In-game crime => in-game punishment by in-game law enforcement.

Or in-game death by angry mob or assassin.

What are the rules of the game?

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.

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?

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.

When is a Con not a Con?

When its Gencon.

Duh!

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.

No Punishment

Hopefully people learn things in games. Like how not to get swindled. I think they learned a cheep lesson.

What ever happened to "buyer beware"

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

Boba style

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.

Re:

That's basically what is happening, and in fact Dentara is ENCOURAGING it.

Dentara put a 1 billion ISK bounty on himself, bought a top-end ship with top-end gear (another 500mill to 1bill), and started PvPing with it, AND told everyone he was doing so (although not where).

Note that Dentara is not necessarily that good at PvP - I've heard he's gone boom quite a bit already. That money is already being distributed to those who kill him and those who sell high end gear on the market.

Stop calling it "real world" versus "non real"

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.

Let's answer this right now

From the journals, here's some food for thought: Does a "crime" committed in an alternate world have any ramifications in the "real" world?
Maybe.

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?
Um... nothing? Murder is a punishable criminal offense in real life, but we don't dream of prosecuting people for doing it in a game.

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?
You wouldn't. It's stupid to try and hold someone responsible for what they did in a video game. Again, how many of us would be in jail right now for all the people we've killed in video games?

And can they be punished?
Well, legally we can't. But there are people in Guantanamo Bay with less proof of having committed a crime.

Game-Life consequences.

Generally any kind of scam in game works against the player. Especially in Eve.

For example most players won't deal with people under a certain number of skill points as the points are created over time (not gametime). This means players with lots of money generally have to have the skills to show they are a legtimate character and not someones ALT.

It is possible to create an ALT by just buying a second account but it costs money. You also tend to leave a trail unless you have been planning this for sometime.

This is the third biggest Scam I have seen (I'll let someone supply the links).

Search for "A Great Scam by Nightfreeze"
1. Scammed loads of money out of people by pretending to buy a blueprint. The overall scam itself was brilliantly done and the guys where asses for doing it but at the end his friend got greedy and the leader of the scam deleted his character (after giving the cash to some newbie).

http://www.mmodig.com/?p=155 [mmodig.com]
2. I don't know what caused this to happen but it was a paid hit. The person was killed, and thier corporation looted on a scale not seen since Enron.

So in the end you should be dealt with in game. I have seen other players steal from corps only to have thier clones turned into corpses scattered through the system to the point they have to quit the game.

If anything this is really a learning experience for players. Would you prefer to be scammed out of virtual cash or real cash? Remember that next time you need the wallet inspectors in game.

This is the whole point of EVE

EVE is a PvP game where players are pitted against each others. Unlike most other MMOs, however, it goes way beyond killing each others.

CCP made a lot of efforts to setup complex and realistics economics in their game for the sole purpose of making all kind of swindling possible.

People ripping each others of money, corporate politics, corporate spying, economic war, thief, and of course murder are possible and encouraged in EVE. The whole game is built to enable these things to occur, and it's what people playing that game seek.

So why on earth should it be punished? You can't complain about getting conned in EVE anymore that you can complain about getting slaughtered in UT2004, because it's the reason why you play the game in the first place.

Kill them all!

A mage threw a fireball that was created in his hands from thin air. He is currently serving time on back to back offences against the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

In related news, a druid violated the law of conservation of mass by morphing into a 300lb bear and gryphon rider violated the laws of gravity by actually making some big fat retarded looking rat with no hair fly. These two individuals remain at large, and should be regarded as dangerous. If you see them please call the "I'm an idiot for applying the rules of reality to necessarily fictional games" hotline.

Down with in-game violators of the law!

Online Crime must be stopped!

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 [blogcritics.org] where a group infiltrated another group [klaki.net] 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.

Do you think virtual income should be taxed?

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.

Ridiculous!

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.

Ridiculous

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.

Re:

In no MMO I've ever played was it OK to exploit game mechanics, or even misinform people to get a better deal.

I believe that in EVE Online, it's perfectly fine to con people in this manner. It's not okay to exploit game mechanics to do so, but convincing them that their money really belongs with you is within the rules of the game.

Re:

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.

Re:

There is no way that this money can be converted back into RLC (real life currency.) If there was a way, and he did, then he could easily be punished under fraud/racketeering laws. But again, IANAL.

Yes, there is [ebay.com]. ATM the bid on 1 billion ISK ~100$, so 700 billion ISK is about 70000$!

What was the name of that MMORPG that would let you move game currency into the real world and vice-versa?

Second life.

Re:Property & the internet

Of course, the game manufacturer still owns everything, but an argument could be made based on the value of the labor to you and the fact that they've effectively stolen YOUR time and YOUR labor.

How is this substantially different to salaried labour?

And then the boy suddenly realized that playing a game is NOT labor, that pretending to do something tangible was NOT itself doing something tangible, and that he was NOT being paid by the game company in gold coins to kill ogres -- but rather that it was al