Labyrinthine 'EVE Online' Scam Recounted 51
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."
Re:The best part... (Score:4, Insightful)
Laws do not apply ex post facto. You can't change a speed limit from 60mph to 30mph and then mail tickets to everybody who drove on the road while it was 60mph, and you can't prosecute this guy for virtual currency fraud when there was no law against it (and still isn't). The victims are welcome to sue in civil court, assuming they even know anything more about the guy than his online avatar name and a library phone number, but it'd be a rare judge that would take them seriously.
What he did wasn't right, but at the time it also wasn't wrong (still isn't). Besides, this is fake money. Fake. As in, not real.
Re:The best part... (Score:4, Insightful)
As to the law applying, its a matter of PRECEDENT. I didnt say they would pass a new law. They dont have to. As soon as a judge rules that scamming virtual currency is against EXISTING fraud laws then what this guy did becomes illegal, in a somewhat retroactive fashion. Precedent doesnt have to pre-date the crime, it only has to pre-date the day its applied again in court. This is why you sometimes hear of a court postponing a decision until a [higher profile / more important] case in a [higher] court is decided which will affect the outcome.
Re:The best part... (Score:2, Insightful)
Virtual money is not real money for those reasons. It's a virtual object--property--that you can sell for any price you can get for it. Heck, using your "converting from one to the other" theory for currency, someone could probably sell air to another person and argue that since it's worth money air's a form of currency. Don't argue that virtual money's a form of currency, argue that it's PROPERTY. Property can be created from scratch: currency cannot.
It's a RolePlaying Game (Score:5, Insightful)
Shooting one another is fine, but lying isn't?
Role-playing a crook (Score:4, Insightful)
He first got people to make little "pilot" investments of 1 million isk, and paid them back on time. Meanwhile he was collecting new investments.
Doesn't take long to see where this is going, does it? But for some reason, skeptics were in the minority. Despite warnings of a Ponzi scheme, more than half the people in my corporation started giving this guy money, to a total of about 1/2 billion isk. They never got a dime.
I wouldn't be suprised to find that all those who did get paid were shills. The guy kept posting apologies and excuses on the various player forums, and managed to keep convincing people to give him money, and keep his original investors believing they would get paid.
I guess people thought that because it was a game, that no one would rip them off. But think about it, it's a game designed with PIRACY as one of the coolest ways to make money.
But people didn't or couldn't see that the whole entire operation took place completely within the game mechanics and environment. No cheats or exploits were used. If anything "illegal" happened, then it's only within the game world, which is designed to encourage "illegal" behavior anyway.
I'm sure Morbo had a great time. I imagined someone doing this in preparation for a term paper on Charles Ponzi or the gullibility of the average investor, etc. My hat's off to him, wherever he is.
Re:The best part... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you've ever played Eve, you'll know (or you should know) that this is what the game is all about. It's about lying, cheating and stealing. All the other activities of the game are there only to give context to the end game - PvP. Every ship, missle, player corp - whatever - represents hours and hours of dull, repetitious effort and it's designed to do that to make PvP - in whatever form, combat or boardroom - that much more viseral.
The guy didn't do anything outside the rules of the game. What he did is nothing different then winning a PvP combat fight. That's the way Eve was designed to be played. You can't sue a guy for beating you at a game.
Not worth it (Score:0, Insightful)
Very well writen (Score:2, Insightful)
I feel sorry for HardHead, if I had been Nightfreeze I would have given him all the isk's rather than give them to any old n00b, but then again I probably could not have gone through with it either.
Ultimatly Nightfreeze encountered the biggest problem with RPG's, once you beat the system there is nothing left for you. You feel like a hollow shell, don't want to play it any more cause its pointless, you beat it but you have nothing else. It's a very deep low after the high of just having 0wned the system.