A Japanese teenager was recently arrested by the Tokyo Police for stealing the virtual equivalent of 36 million yen (roughly $340,000 USD) from Korean MMO publishing giant Nexon, according to a story at Kotaku.
When confronted by authorities, the 16-year-old confessed, saying, "I originally wanted the dress worn by the princess, but I just ended up racking up a bunch of game points."
Full story: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/japanese-teen-s.html
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7 comments:
This kind of activity is fascinating to me, as is the response to it. Thanks for posting this piece!
The whole idea of virtual money and paying actual money for virtual products is just crazy to me. It's pretty cool--like the new fronteer, just difficult to comprehend. Shouldn't she have been arrested by virtual police? :)
It is incredible to me that games such as these can generate real world currency. In this sense, money is truly mystical. I have heard of people gaming for a living by selling items and currency of a game for real world cash. That is both scary and fascinating to me. I believe currency backed by faith alone is justified through these examples. There need not be a basis for the value of currencies as long as there is demand for it. The demand itself facilitates value.
The length to which he went for video game accessories is mind boggling, I suppose that in his "culture" this would be more valuable than money since it deals with a part of his life that he must be very much into. Money sure is interesting in the sense that it can be virtual and real and still account for similar consequences if stolen.
It's really intriguing to see how some people are so wrapped into their virtual life. My brother also plays virtual games and although he doesn't go to the level as this person those, I sometimes can't believe how much money that he has spent on that one game. Even in a virtual world, money plays a crucial role in the society.
My little sister joined a little online community where they play games and exchange "gold" for accessories and limited edition "collectibles" for their avatar. Apparently the more gold you accumulate, the more items you can buy, which in turns gains you popularity because everyone else knows you by what you bought. And apparently, you can even buy gift cards with actually money from say Target, for this website (Gaia online) and trade it in for virtual money to buy virtual things. Hence, I find this type of news very interesting because it is obvious that this sort of media is very appealing to the younger audience of today. Hopefully this particular teenager in this case isn't charged too harshly, because what he stole, wasn't "real" in my opinion.
I'm surprised that he was able to get a employee's login info. From the way this story is described, it's not necessarily the boy stealing money, but rather the company losing profit potential. The boy might not have stolen real goods, but he definitely is not innocent. Knowingly bypassing the virtual purchasing system (albeit somewhat agreeable given the laughable concept of spending real money on virtual possessions) should have some punishment attached because there was definitely a possibility of him profiting from the sale of his account to another gamer.
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