Gamer embezzles virtual cash to settle real debts As if high-profile investment scandals and the economic downturn weren't bad enough here on Earth, now folks have to deal with it outside our galaxy. Virtually, at least. Impoverished from real-world debts, the CEO of the largest player-run financial institution in the sci-fi MMO Eve Online stole thousands of dollars worth of …
Where you could steal, bully and beg to your hearts content. My first million was made begging. My first 100 million was made running a mouse macro to pick off the poor fools that put there name in the description box for their escrow transfer and left the "transfer to" box empty, meaning anyone who looked could take their stuff for free.
What he did might not have been illegal, but considering the many hours of game time it takes for a play to amass a reasonable amount of gold it was certainly unethical. And with a mentality like that, I certainly wouldn't hire him. If he's prepared to rip people off in the virtual world he'd certainly not balk at ripping my company off in reality.
I think the best punishment for this kind of behaviour is for all employers to note this cretin and refuse to employ him. Ruining his future job prospects is adequate punishment for the selfish and criminal mentality he exhibits.
CCP banned the guy for selling the in-game currency for real currency, citing that the guys actions "unbalances the game" (source: Reuters).
Now, CCP themselves sell game time cards (codes you can use to extend your subscription time in the game) both on their website and through third-party suppliers. These GTCs are bought with real currency and can be sold inside the game for in-game currency. The only limit to the number of GTCs you can buy is your real life wallet, so if you are rich enough you can buy as many as you or your in-game friends need to get an advantage.
What's the difference here? In one instance CCP get your real-life currency, in the other someone else unaffiliated with CCP does. That's it. The net effect on the game is the same with both systems, one person can destabilise the game through leveraging off the size of his/her real-life wallet.
"If he's prepared to rip people off in the virtual world he'd certainly not balk at ripping my company off in reality."
By that logic, if you're prepared to kill someone in a game, you're a potential real life killer and should be taken out of society for the safety of everyone else...
It's a game! You do things you'd never dream of doing in real life... that's what it's for!
"What's the difference here?"
The difference is that you can purchase time cards out of game, but they do not have any guaranteed resale value in game, and are subject to the whims of the eve economy and the laws of supply and demand. Although time card buying and selling does provide a way to convert real world money into in game cash, they do not provide any way to turn ISK*, the in-game currency, into real world money, which is what the individual did.
Had he done this heist then used the ISK to purchase enough timecards to play for free for years, I wonder how CCP would have reacted?
Pirate cos, well, its Eve :)
*ISK = Interstellar Kredits, but also Islandic Kronor. Funny guys those icelandics :)
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> the bank (game admins) could have simply created some more money!
> It's not as if it's like a real bank
A better analogy for the game admins might be the government... And in that case it seems exactly like a real bank to me... What is it they call it - qualitative easing or something?
Sure, other MMPORPGs have their nasty aspects, but Eve just seemed designed to encourage the nasty side of people. It was almost a glorification of bullying and scamming, and all to make money for the game owners. All in all, a very polished product but aimed squarely at schoolyard bullies.
I think the difference here is that this guy actually made money from the game.
CCP don't mind you paying THEM, and if you get a GTC and sell it in game for ISK then woo, you have some isk. But its all still contained in the game, its ISK that other players have made through (normally) the usual means. But, if you reverse that, and actually sell the ISK for real money, its a different matter., as you are making some kind of income from the game.
I do take your point though, I do think it's double standards too and IMHO no trading isk for $$ or vice versa should be allowed in any way.
It just devalues the whole game.
Its a great game though :)
"They were worried about a run on the bank? It's virtual currency - the bank (game admins) could have simply created some more money! It's not as if it's like a real bank"
Sounds much the same, isn't that called quantitative easing when banks do it?
And online games tend to be much less willing to do stuff like that, because everything is geared to taking out as much money as it going in to the game. Massive price fluctuations tend piss people off.
I mean, wouldn't you be pissed off if you spent years saving up for some new in game item like a house, then the economy took a nosedive and it became worthless because the admins were giving out money to people who didn't deserve it? Oh wait....
Ebank is a PLAYER-run institution. It isn't run by CCP, and it's losses, however they occur, are not covered by CCP.
If not for the sale of the stolen ISK in the real world, this would be a textbook black-bag job - infiltrate, steal/assassinate and make good your escape. Happens all the time in EVE. Major corporations and even whole alliances have been brought low by similar operations, some of which are immensely impressive in their scope and execution. Intelligence, counter-intelligence and subversion are full-time jobs in the major alliances.
EVE is a very harsh place; abusing the mechanics of the game is forbidden, abusing other player's trust is almost encouraged.
You can certainly tell who plays Warcraft and who plays Eve in these comments. Most of the Eve player base shrug this off as a day in the life, after all, its chicken feed compared to the notorious days of the Guiding Hand Social Club - their heist claimed about $17,000 in various assets and they were hired to do it!
Warcraft players see this as some kind of grevious sin because the game takes numerous steps to protect you from scamming, fraud and variously screwing over your guildmates. And to the attention of the poster suggesting that CCP would just replace the cash, no sir, they wouldn't. Its one of the chief things that separates Eve from other MMOs - once its gone, it stays gone.
Anyway, I'm ranting like a fanboy. Virtual currency, after all, is serious business.
And well done CCP.
Far better a virtual world where players face realistic life issues than one which molly-coddles users ( and most often so the owners can keep taking their money ) IMO. If user's want a 'resurrect' button for everytime they screw-up or artificial limitations on getting screwed, find some other world.
Presumably the money stolen is still in-game so no reason the Virtual Police, Courts and Vigilantes cannot go after those who now have it. That's the joy of a virtual world - Try turning up at your bank manager's house with a burning torch, a double-plus-bastard sword and a set of D6 :-)
As to the real-world punishment, I'm in two minds about that; I can certainly see advantages of putting him back in the game and seeing how the aforesaid deal with him.
Mine's the chainmail with the empty wallet.
Really, in the sheme of Eve, this is hardly the most notable double-cross. The Band of Brothers director that closed the alliance minutes before their rivals The Goons invaded their entire space with everything they had probably cost more in terms of real-life currency losses and consternation. And The Goons themselves lost their entire Titan fund when their leader went walking with it. The Guiding Hand Social Club corp EXISTS merely to infiltrate and pillage alliances from within for example...they have stricken some rather large alliances over the years, once they get someone up the the level of director within the alliance. Etc, etc, etc...
The important thing is the Eve/CCP does not ban you for those types of offences, as long as the money stayes within their closed system. Now taking it OUT of their wallets, er, "closed economy" apparently will get you banned...although you can put IN as much as you want by buying Game Time Cards and selling them in-game (they even provide a secure transaction mechanism for their purchase and selling between players!).
Now I remember why I stopped playing Eve...
EBank is not run by CCP (the creators of EVE Online), but by other players. So no, they cannot create ISK out of thin air.
Eve is great (although I stopped some time ago due to time constraints), and yes the cutthroat environment can be hard at times, but still it is a great games and the lack of rules is exactly why it is so great.
There are absolutely mechanics which you can use to protect yourself from theft. They are, however, things that you have to do yourself. Compare this to the notorious Guiding Hand Social Club incident where lax corporate organisation was exploited to take 100% of the assets of one of the most successful corps in the game. An 8% loss can almost be written off as one bad investment here.
People attacking haulers in high security space? Take a moment to look at how your hauler is set up, design it to last until the npc police arrive rather than to hold that extra five crates of beer and two cows.
The fact that this is a game where a trip to the market involves tactics rather than right-clicking on a flightmaster and going afk for fifteen minutes is what hooks some people and drives off others.
This happened weeks ago, took your time reporting it. He has no plans to return because he can't. After being banned for breach of EULA if he tries to start a new account CCP will ban that too.
CCP don't have a laissez-faire attitiude to the darker side of the game, they actively encourage it. This is the big selling point of EVE over every other game on the market. New Eden isn't Hello Kitty Island, it's a dystopian view of the future for adult gamers.
Everyone here seems to completely miss the point with GTC's. CCP don't make a penny from people "buying" isk. What you're really doing is selling your game time (which you've purchased via a GTC) to someone who doesn't want to pay RL money for it. You're never selling the GTC to CCP for isk, it's always a trade with another player. This is why the isk price for GTC's fluctuates based on the amount of demand for isk vs game time.
He ran a private bank in an MMO world. If it was a real bank, he would magic money out of thin air, seven times the amount of the deposits and sold that instead!
So if anything the guy's bank was LESS crooked than the US Federal Reserve, because he actually SOLD the deposits, whereas a private bank like the Federal Reserve does not actually lend out it's deposits at all...
Instead they magic out of thin air the money they lend, up to 7 times the amount of the deposits. And if the depositors want their money, the bank gives it to them (those deposits are never actually lent out, they are deposited with the central bank), whilst still having zero assets it has lent out 7 times the amount of money it once had deposited.
So this guy is 7 times less crooked than the Federal Reserve at least.
Admittedly an impressive one, but thefts are not rare in EVE.
@Richard - the bank is 100% player run and owned. There is no official bank service in the game. Money most definitely is finite, even though they have a lot of it.
@Anon "Laissez-faire or double standards" - buying ISK via time codes is a lot more expensive than via 3rd parties. It is also well controlled so there is no chance of scamming while all the chinese gold farmers will just take your money and never send you the cash, or infect you with a keylogger then clear your cash out.
@Feef - scamming, metagaming, etc is all within the rules, he only got b& for selling ISK for IRL money, which is not allowed.
Yeap, count me as an Eve Fanboy and yes, this is my in game name as well.
6 years on and i'm still loving the game and things like this do nothing but make me appreciate it and CCP more. CCP have tried to create a chaotic universe, with the few rules that would probably exist in such an evironment where war is everywhere and very little control exists. Yeah there are ripoffs and death around every corner but so are the rewards and the fun.
I wonder how many people have (or will have) played WoW or any other mmorpg for six years? I know a LOT of people in Eve have ......
ITS A COMPUTER GAME FFS
Its a make believe world were you can do stuff which you wouldnt do in the real world. I for one play counter strike, where as a terrorist I take hostages and blow stuff up. Maybe I should be detained as a potential terrorist becuase obviously some people struggle to tell the difference between the real world and fantasy worlds.
IDIOT
Alan
by Charles Stross is an excellent near-future sci-fi novel with a similar event depicted, and then the real-world ramifications are explored as well. The money is real enough to upset the people who lost it, real enough for people to trade government backed notes for it, and real enough to help treat a child's medical problems. That seems real enough.
I have a higher opinion of him than of the people who sell game credits on eBay (however they acquired them... I don't really care)
If you're going to capitalise on virtual money then you're a bit of a dullard to begin with. At least this guy did it with some class.
Also, @ Steve Roper:
"Ruining his future job prospects is adequate punishment"
No, ruining his future career prospects is unbelievably harsh and draconian punishment and would probably force him to turn to crime where it wouldn't have been necessary before.
Paris, because she can plunder my resources.
Nope, I have no problem with that, and was paying for two accounts and frequently buying GTCs to fund major ship purchases (I can make more money in the real world than in game).
No, I really didn't like their attitude towards allowing scamming - there are very simple mechanisms they could put in place that would easily stop it, and yet they don't. The constant begging and scamming in Jita (the main trade system) is enough to turn many off, and it would be very easy to prevent or crack down on - but CCP does nothing for that, even when it is THEIR brokerage system that makes it so easy to scam other players by mis-listing merchandise. Or the problem that BoB had with a single director being able to wipe-out the largest alliance in Eve all by himself, because ANY alliance executive can dis-band the alliance in 2 minutes work - again, easy to prevent by making it a majority directorship vote, or by making the CEO required to do it. And the list goes on...
So my issue isn't about CCP making money (which they deserve for a such an impressive experience), but about their being quite happy with scamming - as long as they are not the ones being scammed!
Thank you for playing EvE-Online
If you would like to buy ISK legally, please buy PLEX game time certificates via CCP and sell them for ISK ingame.
Buy ISK out of game via Chinese/Vietnamese Gold famers then buyer beware, if caught then all buyers and transactions in recoreded in the logs will be traced, banned or billed for the Illegal ISK transacted.
Huge transactions of ISK are checked for Illegal activity, so spending $1,000+ on ISK is simply asking for trouble, and no you cannot have your illegally bought TiTan back ;)
Have a Nice Day
This kind of thing is what makes Eve interesting (to me), when you lose something its gone - the game doesn't cuddle you, help you on your way and give you your stuff back to stop you crying.
Most Eve players are grown ups and understand this, this is probably why they are generally not the ones going OMG!
And yes, I am an Eve fanboi
I think Steve's analysis of the man's charcter is pretty good, however fajensen is correct. Where have you been for the past year Steve?
By displaying a complete absence of any ethics or moral compass he has demonstrated that he is perfectly qualified to work at a high level in a financial institution. His only motivations are pragmatism & self-interest.
The scary part of the above is that every word is true.
Mine's that rather nicely tailored crombie being brushed down by the lackey - sorry, bank porter.
"What he did might not have been illegal, but considering the many hours of game time it takes for a play to amass a reasonable amount of gold it was certainly unethical."
Let me translate. "Wah! His fictional character stole fictional money from my fictional character in this fictional environment!" If any action taken in a GAME affects your REAL life to any significant degree, then you have a serious problem.
"If he's prepared to rip people off in the virtual world he'd certainly not balk at ripping my company off in reality."
Oh, you're right! I mean, it's not like we were doing this at least 17 years ago in such games as Solar Realms Elite (and later, Barren Realms Elite), Trade Wars 2002, or Operation Overkill II. Man, I hope he never played Mortal Kombat. If he dead, then "he'd certainly not balk at ripping my" body to shreds. After all, if he did it in a fictional environment, he'll most certainly do it in real life if given the opportunity.
As for his comment "I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it. But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation.", at least he's honest about it (and also takes responsibility for it). That puts him above 99.999% of the population.
"They were worried about a run on the bank? It's virtual currency - the bank (game admins) could have simply created some more money! It's not as if it's like a real bank"
Unfortunately that's exactly like a real bank and we're very much in the process of creating some more as we speak (QE)...
Yes, it is. And if what he did was done in context of the game I'd fully agree with you. If he'd ripped off his partners and used the money to buy a new mega-battlecruiser or something I wouldn't have said anything - that's what gaming is about. I also used to play Barren Realms Elite and I've also ganked my share of newbies. But what he did here was to win the trust of other players with the intent of defrauding them *to make REAL money*. He let the mentality of the game spill over into real life. To further the "if you kill someone in a game does that make you a murderer" analogy - if you practice assaults and make friends in the game for the purpose of recruiting people to really go out and kill a dozen class/workmates - yes, it does.
That is why I stand by what I said. He's prepared to defraud people for real-world gains. I wouldn't want someone like that in my company. End of story.
I don't understand why anyone would play a game where you get picked on all the time.
I mean, it's not fair that you get shot at without them REQUESTING permission to fight.
Also it's so stupid that if someone con's you, then your screwed, I have heard that CCP don't deal with in game scammers.
Where is the fun in getting scammed? losing all you have worked for to some stupid buillies who want to kill you for no reason.
Sigh. I think we should all plays Sims 3!!!
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