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

[ellen_denham]

Great article. I forwarded the link to my husband, who recently had his World of Warcraft account hacked. Fortunately, most of his issues got mostly fixed. This is the sort of thing the judicial system better start taking seriously, because people are taking other people's property and making money on it.

The reference to "A Rape in Cyberspace" brought back old memories. I was very active in MUDs at the time that article came out so it all made perfect sense to me.

[zhai]

Glad you liked it. :) Yeah, it is a rising issue -- one of those things that started cropping up a few years ago, but it seems people are only now genuinely starting to take seriously. I don't think just throwing endless customer service at the problem is the answer; it needs a systemic solution, or at least a series of breakwaters.

My MUDding came shortly after that time, so ARIC was already part of the space. Talk about a bizarre incident, though. I also had to expand that section because a lot of people in the MMO space today have never heard of it, which is a bit disorienting because I, too, sort of considered it as a major historical event and part of the collective memory fabric.

[lumi21]

She moderates Gamewatch.org and fights crime on the streets by night.

You know, I'm still waiting for a post detailing those adventures ^_^

That article is rather disturbing. I've not had a security issue remotely on that scale before, but I can only imagine that it would be the death of any motivation I might have to continue playing the game.

Sadly, I have a feeling that, for the company, it's an acceptable casualty. Someone else will always show up to fill in for the disgruntled customer who leaves because his hard work and time investment was nullified by a hacker. The effort and resources required to resolve hacking issues in a timely and customer-friendly manner just aren't worth it.

[zhai]

And I've responded, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you

[maggiedr]

Makes me realize how lucky I've been. At the point in my life where I spent that many hours playing Everquest, I was probably not a target because I had such poor gear--in spite of all the time spent playing. But it would have killed me to have lost my account like that, so abruptly and for such a long time.

For such a long time, companies insisted that you could not possibly get hacked unless you gave out your password to someone else. I guess that's some progress that they're finally acknowledging that it can happen. I don't see how much longer they can continue not taking responsibility. Although I think some fundamental changes need to take place in gaming so that account hacking doesn't pay off in real dollars. I just don't know what those changes are.

[zhai]

Probably you were also playing EQ before this really became a problem. There have been massive incursions into FFXI for a few years, but severe hacking is only recently starting to branch into WoW and the other companies.

Yeah, the companies have a tendency to blame the victim, which reminds me very unpleasantly of earlier approaches to real life rape. Like there is any precaution that can ultimately stop someone from victimizing you if they really want to, and like it's anything but the aggressor's fault.

[maggiedr]

One of my biggest frustrations with gaming, make that particularly mmorpgs, is that the complaint noise is so high, that it drowns out real or valid issues. And I personally knew many people who'd traded off their accounts, then decided they wanted back in the game, and of course, just had to have their precious avatar back. They would call EQ customer service and claim the account had been stolen. People's friends and relatives--in one case, a guy's mother--would steal from each other's accounts or delete stuff because they were pissed over stuff

[jen_aside]

Beautiful article. I got sucked in immediately :D

...and I'm also changing my Neopets password 6_6 but, luckily, Neopets is much more user-friendly in this respect--if my account got hacked, I have the option to self-freeze it [if they haven't already, since they troll for such suspicious activity], then write in to the mods to try to get it back.

I suppose the problem is, in a player's eyes, XYZ Magic Sword is "worth" $5000 because that's the amount of time s/he put into getting it, but to a fancypants lawyer, it's worth $0 because Squeenix can click a button and, poof, there's a new one. In the end, it does come down to, "How well does Squeenix value its players, to find the right balance between helping a genuine victim and thwarting scammers?" [I recognize they have to be a little skeptical, but the failure to notice the changed, invalid CC info got me riled.]

[anguirel]

Virtual good values should probably be determined as most other things are -- by the market value. If some shady auction site can get $5000 for that item, it's worth $5000 dollars without regard to whether SquareEnix can instantly make a new one or not, and should be considered worth $5000 for any prosecution that might occur due to the malicious hacking which occurred.

[zhai]

This is true. Given the sheer amount of crazy wiki fan documentation on these items, establishing 'market value' for a virtual item is substantially easier than establishing market value for another hobby collectible or antique.

[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

[brennye]

This makes me wonder if I should switch my major into law, then go into cyberlaw. Hey, get in on the ground floor and then make the rules yourself, right? :) And I've been assured that law is ridiculously easy to get through. (by a dance major who's now a managing partner at her firm.)

Still, this is scary stuff. I've forwarded the article to my guildmates, as much for a warning as a reference. And it makes you stop and think about all those hours you spend in the system...

re: Beat.. as I read that article, I was remembering watching you play very vividly. and I wonder if I'd be able to manage it at all. But the hand-eye coordination these kids get after they beat the games must be amazing.

[lumi21]

Serious question: is there such a thing as "cyberlaw" yet? Has that field been tested in the law schools? It would make me really, really happy to know that this was being given serious scrutiny from the legal spheres.

[zhai]

Oh god is there ever cyberlaw. Not only is there cyberlaw, I've been literally giving myself a headache today poring through Terra Nova and in particular tracking down the opinions of a high judge in South Korea, Ung-Gi Yoon, on Korea's interpretation of the property status of virtual items. If you want to read the 59 page paper, it's here. I don't agree with him, but it's stuff I need to know about for Settlers.

There's also the whole State of Play book, which is an excellent starting point.

I've been studying this stuff for over a year now, in what copious time I can carve out (insert laugh track here). It's what I've been running roundtables about at these conferences (Ion, etc -- next one is a panel at AGDC). I actually had a guy at Ion assume I was a lawyer. This should be taken more for the fact that even the lawyers don't really know what's going on in this space (it's really, genuinely a new Wild West) any more than we do. But the work is being done. It just has a tendency to shatter your brain.