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08.19.05
Getting
Mugged In A Computer Game?
 By
John Stith
That's right. A man has been arrested in Japan for computer game crime. He was
using bots to beat up player characters, take their stuff and then sell on the
computer game black market in the computer game called Lineage II.
Computer games are meant for entertainment, period. People sometimes get a bit
further into them than they should. GTA brings that to mind. People have picked
up items in these digitized games and turned around and sold them for real money…
thousands of dollars in some cases. Since there is a perceived value and people
have paid money for it, it can be stolen and that's just what happened here. It
doesn't matter that all this is being done on something that will be obsolete
in a year or so. Heck… EverQuest set up a network on its own to be able to buy
and sell stuff for real money.
A number of naïve players were beaten and robbed in-game and had their virtual
objects stolen by bots. The items were then fenced on an auction website in Japan.
The bot deal made the situation impossible for the player to win.
Some stories went on to discuss this as another form of cyber crime and New
Scientist even talked of reports of online scammer sweatshops in countries
like China and Indonesia where people monitor teams of bots to generate money
and avoid bot traps.
This all seems a bit absurd on the service. Well, not just on the surface but
in an era where more and more things are moving to the online world, this kind
of stuff is going to continue to occur. The Internet is becoming a more social
environment, with games and shopping malls and all kinds of other features, then
one can only expect that social problems will go right along with them. I wonder
if they virtual pepper spray?
About the Author:
John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
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