Imagine if the CEO of the bank that you use was caught stealing billions of dollars from your bank. Imagine further that there is no recourse – once the money was stolen, it is gone. If the money was, in part, yours – well, that is also gone.
In the game Eve Online that scenario just happened. Of course, that is with in-game money, not real money. Right?
Eve Online
Eve Online is a game based around empires and corporations. Players try to gain control not just through war, but through high-finance and corporate control.
If a player or group of players have enough capital it is possible to create a bank. One player, RicDic ran such a bank. It had billions of “kredits” – the in-game currency in Eve – on deposit.
RicDic, in the great Madoff tradition, took off with 200 billion of these kredits. He then took that money and traded it for real-world dollars. It came out to over $6,000 of real-world currency. With this, he put down a deposit on a house, among other things.
So what is his punishment for commiting this in-game crime? Well, if he hadn’t sold the kredits for real-world money, nothing. This kind of move is acceptable in the game. If he had done this in-gam and left it there, than the only punishment he would receive is whatever the other players could do to him in the course of the game.
However, selling the kredits for real-world dollars is against the terms of service. So he was expelled from Eve Online forever.
My very first post for this blog was about virtual theft. How there is a risk that in these games the items or money you gather could be stolen. How there is little or no real-world recourse when that happens. Nor, really, should there be.
After all, these worlds, for all their growth and all of their incredible new ueses are in the end, a game. And this kind of theft? Well, it is all just part of the game.
Ahhh Eve Online, the spreadsheet of MMORPG’s! While I was playing Everquest, one of my guild leaders (of a rather predominate guild) was selling items and in game cash online from their guild bank. His punishment? Nothing more than he stopped logging in once it became widely known.
Each game I have played since has shown the same types of scum willing to take advantage of the fact that many people will trust too easily. In games like Eve, where the game play is not challenging and you can advance simply by dropping 30 bucks on in-game cash, and paying your monthly fee it is set up to be worse, really that is the fault of the designers. Games should be planned to make items/cash less important. Many MUDS that the MMORPGs sprang from never even bothered to save your gear, when you logged off, it dropped to the ground and even if they allowed a “inn room” to save some of it, you could expect the server to be rebooted every few days. You could log in, grab basic equipment in 5-10 minutes then go about adventuring with the innate characteristics of the avatar and the skills of the player being the primary factor. Once companies starting making each player who wanted to be competitive spend days and months acquiring gear they were creating this problem. They seem to think that by forcing players to stay closer to the treadmill to gain their treats they gain people who feel more connected and will continue to be customers. If you are selling crack that is a great technique, but games should be a diversion, not a job.
I agree with you totally. It was the biggest problem I had with Everquest as well. The whole game tended to be a “grind” – either for levels or equipment. Sure, I had some fun doing some team activities, etc – but more often than not, I was just grinding away, trying to gain money and levels and items so I could reach a new zone in the game.
I think of it as a “grass is greener” type of effect: Sure the place I am in now is ok – but man, if I gain just a few more levels, I can go to this new place that sounds great!
Once there – well, now I need to keep working so I can get to a *really* cool place – and so on.
It is why I am not playing now – and why I won’t any time soon. I don’t have that kind of time.