The power of the multitudes

[zhai]

I have an Escapist feature up this week, "Someone Stole My Magic Sword", with many thanks to Dave Weinstein and, of course, to Michelle, for coming forward and sharing her story. There was a lot to compress here -- my interviews with Michelle alone totaled over 5,000 words -- but hopefully we got the meat of the story across. I know I say it for

Comments

[zhai]

Despite what anguirel is saying, the replication issue is still, to me, where these things get very thorny. On a basic level it's providing a loophole currently where providers can treat hacking as almost a victimless crime in cases where, as happens frequently with Blizzard, the items can just be instantaneously replaced. Blizzard is still tracking down hackers, but there is no regulation currently on that black market activity because -- at least as far as I know -- there are no mechanisms in place currently to trace the exchange paths of specific virtual items.

It is when the company is refusing to make this replacement, as happened with Michelle, that the law can start getting involved. When the player actually loses time and money as a result of this, and the game doesn't take action to redress. What's interesting about THAT is it means that federal regulation is going to enter this environment because of incompetency or unfairness on the part of the game provider. They could prevent themselves from getting sued and regulated if they would proactively improve security, but they aren't going to, or at least not enough of them are going to to prevent the lawsuits.