Labyrinthine 'EVE Online' Scam Recounted

Thanks to Terra Nova for its post discussing "a lengthy, but intensely fascinating and well-written account of an EVE Online [PC MMO] player who brokered a large investment scam by creating a puppet corporation." Terra Nova mentions that the account's nefarious author "does an incredible job of explaining the complexity of MMORPG worlds, the emotional salience of interactions, and how play transforms into work", concluding: "It's a lot of reading, but it's well worth it."

Freecache link...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right here [freecache.org] in case of slashdotting.

The best part...

[Sparr0]

As soon as a court precedent is set concerning virtual currency, and I dont think it will be much longer considering how bad the scamming is getting, all these people can sue the piss out of this guy. 480mil Isk today is worth about $500. Depending on how long ago this scam happened it could have been worth upwards of $5000 then.

Re:that was intense.

[servognome]

Probably had to change his name, since now everybody knows he's the one with all the ill-gotten money.
Poor guy, happy as heck noob with 300M, suddenly getting death threats and confused as hell why

Nope

[rsilvergun]

Your license agreement begs to differ. I don't remember who pointed this out to me, but companies running MMORPGs go out of their way to keep in game objects from having legally recognized value. The reason being is if the objects have value according to law, then the companies become liable for the investments people make in the items. For example, If I bought 100 of those Micro Warp Drives to sell or use to earn money to sell, then when the game devs changed the balance on them rendering them useless, I could quite literally sue them for reducing the value of 'My Property'. Or worse, if the publisher wants to cancel the game, suddenly they've got to pay out losses to all those ebayers. This is why the publishers themselves aren't selling items. It has nothing to do with trying to keep the game balanced. It's all about liablity

If you stop to think, it has to be this way. Otherwise the devs would be buried under an avalanche of lawsuits.