Virtual Crime - Known Cases

Known Cases

In South Korea, where the number of computer game players is massive, some have reported the emergence of gangs and mafia, where powerful players steal and demand that beginners give them virtual money for their "protection".

In China, Qiu Chengwei was sentenced to life in prison after stabbing and killing fellow The Legend of Mir 3 gamer Zhu Caoyuan. In the game Qiu had lent Zhu a powerful sword (a "dragon sabre"), which Zhu then went on to sell on eBay for 7,200 Yuan (about £473 or US$870). With no Chinese laws covering the online dispute, there was nothing the police could do.

In the game The Sims Online a 17-year old boy going by the in-game name "Evangeline", was discovered to have built a cyber-brothel, where customers would pay sim-money for minutes of cybersex. This led to the cancellation of his accounts but no legal action, mainly because he was above the age of consent.

The term "virtual mugging" was coined when some players of Lineage II used bots to defeat other player's characters and take their items. In Japan, the Kagawa prefectural police arrested a Chinese foreign exchange student on 16 August 2005 following the reports of virtual mugging and the online sale of the stolen items.

The virtual economies of many MMOs and the exchange of virtual items and currency for real money has triggered the birth of the game sweatshop, in which workers in the developing world, typically China (although there has been reports of this type of activity in Eastern European countries), earn real-world wages for long days spent monotonously performing in-game tasks. Most instances typically involve farming of resources or currency, which has given rise to the epithet Chinese Adena Farmer, because of its first reported widespread use in Lineage II. More egregious cases involve using exploits such as in duping money or items, such as a large-scale incident in Star Wars Galaxies. Both practices can place great stress on the creators' artificial economy, requiring robust design, and often repeated updates, to preserve reasonable work/reward ratios and game balance. There have also been reports of collusion (or vertical integration, depending on the source) among farmers and online currency exchanges. In 2002, a company called Blacksnow Interactive, a game currency exchange, admitted to using workers in a "virtual sweatshop" in Tijuana, Mexico to farm money and items from Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. When Mythic Entertainment cracked down on the practice, Blacksnow attempted to sue the game company.

It was reported on 14 November 2007 that a Dutch teenager had been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in 3D social-networking website Habbo Hotel. The teenagers involved were accused of creating fake Habbo websites in order to lure users into entering their account details, which would then be used to steal virtual furniture bought with real money totalling €4000.