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Is stealing and scamming considered a normal, expected and acceptable behavior in MMOGs?
casmoga
Member Posts: 29
I am having a real hard time (now 10+ days) trying to get any kind of assistance from MindArk Support after having dropped 100M Mind Essence (worth $1500 USD) on the ground by mistake when I wanted to drop 100 Mind Essence (worth $0.0015 USD). The 100M stack disappeared or was picked up by someone else almost immediately, but nobody wanted to admit taking it and some Players were claiming that dropped items sometimes disappear ("MindArk" takes them).
I have already filed an official Police report, but from what the Policeman said, chances of me ever seeing my virtual items or the money I put in that game are next to zero, because there were no "movable objects" involved (it is all "virtual"). And now I am writing here to find out if anyone else has lost valuable item(s) in a MMOG because of flaws in game UI and the company hosting the game being unwilling to cooperate.
Thanks to everyone in advance. Any kind of feedback is highly appreciated.
Comments
I don't think that the heavy dependence on RMT in Entropia is considered normal, expected, or acceptable in most games.
Should the company do something about it? Probably, but it might not be that simple, and it depends on the nature of the game. I'm not adequately familiar with Entropia to say what they ought to do.
Is the person who took your stuff in the wrong? Morally, sure. In a violation of the terms of service agreement? It depends on what it says for that particular game.
Should the police do something? What can they do? They don't have access to game servers, any more than you do. As for lawyers, good luck getting a lawyer to take a case for less than $1500.
Your survey does not include the answer I would have picked:
Stealing and scamming are normal and expected behavior for THE INTERNET.
The (perceived) anonymity almost encourages people to steal, cheat, lie, and scam because they think they will get away with it. I think the people who normally wouldn't do it in real life won't do it on the internet, but if someone does it on they internet, they are the type of person who would do it in real life if they thought they would get away with it.
Normal? Maybe.
Expected? Yes, you shouldn't trust people.
Acceptable? No, not by any means.
Plus, as in the case with Linden Labs and MindArk style virtual economy type games. They ARE going to try to rip you off, this is why they made their games in the first place. And seriously, blowing $1500 on Entropia is just plain stupid in the first place, you've got to always expect for SOMETHING to happen. You should already know not to trust that kind of thing with large sums of money.
If the game allows for objects dropped on the ground to be picked up by other players then it is a case of just suck it up and be more careful next time. Someone else has profited from your mistake (not theirs), that is about all this amount to. You placed the items on the ground, where they obviously become available to be picked up by other players, so you haven't been scammed or had anything stolen from you. The stack was there to be taken by anyone who was nearby. And someone did.
Trying to pass the blame for your mistake to someone else is poor form.
The Moral of this story is:
Don't play scams cleverly disguised as games.
PEBKAC
People make mistakes, accidents happen, we deal with them and learn from them. You didn't get scammed, robbed, ripped off, or anyother thing of the sort.
You screwed up, you dropped the wrong stack of the wrong item. Regardless of where it went after that, it left under your control with no corrupting outside influences. As much as it sucks, you lose out on this one. It's like driving with your window down after you've cashed your paycheck and your throwing out old papers as you clean out your wallet to make room, and you accidentally throw a grand out the window of your car on the freeway.
Oh ya, you "could" stop, but have fun with the concept of running around an active street trying to grab every scattered bill, not get smeared, and not have your own car get demolished.
Or you just do what adults do, facepalm, eat the loss, pick up a fifth of whiskey, and drink yourself unconscious as soon as you get home.
Lets Push Things Forward
I knew I would live to design games at age 7, issue 5 of Nintendo Power.
Support games with subs when you believe in their potential, even in spite of their flaws.
Hmm, if you have that much to lose in a video game you are either addicted or well off. Either way maybe this will be a reason to step back and look at what is going on.
I can't say I've ever got a non RMT to give back an item due to a game error let alone my own error. Chalk it up as a loss and carry on.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
As one of the world's privileged I must add a few thoughts on this.
I once left a box of chicken flavored MacNuggets on a table once. I turned to speak with my consort, and as I turned around I was shocked to find nothing but a pile of napkins left in their stead!
It's not thievery when you make the mistake. It would be nice and admirable for the citizens of the Kingdom out there to go 'oh man I picked this up, was just joking here you go'.
Sadly, as much as you pithy the blame elsewhere. The King rules this one a case where casmoga sees his finger pointing to cast blame, and ignores the 4 fingers that are pointing right back at him from his own hand.
the mistake was yours. you need to be more careful. do you think a cop would help you if you put a sack of cash down on the floor of a subway station, and then turned your back?
its not like someone hacked your account even. you gave it to whoever took it, based on mechanics you understood and consented to. you could've just as easily picked it up, since you had the most notice that it was there at all.
im sorry your lesson was such a costly one, but i dont even think its fair to call this theft.
none of your choices were accurate. this is your fault and you need to accept it instead of trying to other people pay for your error.
Wait, you spent $1500 USD on virtual items in a game??? Really????? Sorry, I can't believe you spent that kind of money in a cash shop to start with let alone weren't careful enough to only drop 100 instead of 100M of them. Seriously, if I was a legal rep looking at your case I would say the fault lies entirely with you in the action of 'dropping' the item in the first place. Not in if someone picked up the item in a public place and didnt return it. You forfeited the right to the item the minute you tossed it on the ground. Especially if the game mechanics allow for any player to pick up any item which has been tossed on the ground, and this mechanic is understood by you in advance.
So no, you dont have an option for the correct answer in your poll. You lost the item out of fault of your own, not in the theft of an item which was placed in the open, in a public place, where others could easily pick it up LEGALLY. The fault was in you dropping it in the first place, not in who picked it up. This is not a scam or theft at all, now if someone around you tricked you into dropping them all on the ground, or used a game trade exploit to get the items from you then we could look at a scam situation, but that isnt what happened here is it.
This should be handled by the games support.
Better games actually warn you when you are about to make similar mistake. Eq2 always asks if you are sure when it is really expensive stuff.
That the guy who took the stuff is a thief is a hard case, he found something on the ground and picked it up.
It was of course partly your fault but it is an easy mistake and the should really add a "Are you really sure you want to do this" If you drop stuff that is worth more than 5 bucks or so. Handle it with the game support, there isn't a chance that a real court would touch this case.
Did I say that you are either a lot richer than me or spend too much ingame money? That is almost the money I spent on my entire computer and it is pretty kick ass.
Good luck with it, I think that after some whining the customer support should restore your stuff. After all we all know that otherwise you probably quit and you will buy more stuff later if you get it back. Bad idea to upset a great customer over a silly mistake.
While Mindark is a bastard he will not be punished, I don't see how that would happen.
In case of EU kind of game and this thing, it's should be issue with police, as stupid as it is...
Real life analogy might be you dropping an cell-phone or wallet and someone picking it up, it's theirs right?
On other hand in games like EVE scams are ok, what do you expect, 20% yearly profit, serious?
if YOU throw away $1000 and someone else picked it up. it's NOT stealing, or scamming, it's YOU being STUPID:D take some responsibility for YOUR actions:D this is the internet, not some kindergarden where you learn how to recognize common sense....
It was your fault for making that kind of mistake, especially when there were lots and lots of people standing around. You just have to use common sense and find a secure or safe location to be doing these kinds of things.
You've done the same thing many people have done in the past (me included) and many games out there now, made sure these kinds of things dont happen again. For example having shared bank slots so you can transfer stuff to your other characters. Or like in EQ 1, they wont let you drop money anymore. It used to be a common thing when it was the only solution to transfer things between characters. Or like in UO, you can drop your stuff inside your house or put them in containers to be safe. There's also item drop confirmation pop up windows when you're trying to perform this kind of action too (at least in EQ1 there is)
When it happened to me, I was angry and mad at myself for doing something like this. I couldn't stop people from taking things I dropped in the game. So to make myself feel better I started hiding at certain places where people would do the same thing, and I took their stuff. Haven't you heard the phrase "finders keepers and losers weepers?" I mean its technically not your items anymore once you dropped it on the ground. If it was no one woulda been able to take it anyway.
Learn from your mistakes and move on thats the only thing you can do.
Of course the cop would help him. It's still theft and if the cop can identify the thief, he will arrest him, throw him in jail and recover your money.
The problem in RL is actually identifying the thief and proving he took the money. In the virtual world the inverse is true. Finding out who took the items should be easy with proper logging. Determing whether an actual crime occured is the tricky part since laws on virtual property are really not existent for things like that.
[mod edit]
how is it theft? its not against the law (or any rules of any game ive ever played) to pick up things you found in a video game. the recoverer of the item in this case did absolutely nothing wrong. they may not even know someone didnt mean to drop it. sometimes people do crazy stuff in games, maybe they thought someone was quitting, who knows. they certainly didnt cross any line.
this is like some newb trading an item for pennies that they couldve sold on ebay for 1500. its not the buyers fault that this guy didnt understand the mechanics of his game. it WOULD be theft if the devs STOLE it from the finders account. that's real money, and he found it fair and sqaure as per the rule set provided by the gaming company.
[mod edit]
It's not theft.
If he was hacked. Yes. If he had his pockets picked, probably not cuz it'd be a game mechanic that he would have signed an EULA to access. "Here I'm going to misplace some zeros, and ooppsss!!!" That's a mistake. Not theft.
Stuff upper lip ol' chap. Better luck next time. You should know better. You win some, you lose some. End of story. Buh-bye, thanks for playing.
Please read what I actually said and not what you thought I said.
I specificly only quoted your RL example as being idiotic. The example you have used of dropping a bag of cash on a subway and having it taken, would be a clear case of theft and the police would treat it as such.
I also specificly said that in a video game that might not be a crime. It would be a case of very badly UI design and should be fixed by customer service.
no, the police would almost immediately discount that you ever had the money in the first place, and balk at the audacity of being so hyperbolically careless. i doubt they would do anything, maybe take your phone number, and then throw it in the trash as soon as you left. maybe they'd follow you around in case you blunder like this often. honestly, you almost deserve to have money be taken, i cant believe anyone else in the world throw it away like this.
maybe i should have said "threw the money in a garbage can, and then turned around, before calling the police" would you have thought that less idiotic? though i wonder if youve ever actually been in a subway station if you dont immediately see the obvious similarity.
Sorry buddy, but while I agree that theft is wrong, there was no theft here. That police officer should have told you that since YOU purposely put it down, then it is YOUR fault and not a crime. That someone else picked it up and walked away with it is simply the tool that is teaching you a lesson here. The game and it's developers haven't done anything wrong either. They could "hold your hand" and put in a "are you sure" button, but they do not have to by any means. I really do hope you learned the real lesson here and are more careful next time.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
At least In EVE online stealing and scamming is a genuine career option. Thank god for games that allow you to be a real villain if you so choose instead of just being part of the race and faction which have the most tattoos and spikey bits.
So yes, I'm in favor of opportunism, stealing and scamming within the limits of normal game mechanics.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Can't be sure here DarkPony, but it seems you haven't read the OP for this. The title of the thread doesn't really do the subject justice since what the original poster was talking about has Real World monetary value and to allow for theft of something like that in a game world place the developers of the game in legal jeopardy. Granted, in this case it was the persons own fault that he gave it up, not the developers, and not a theft, but read it for yourself and you will see what I mean.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
again what theft?
all players have secure inventories to prevent such theft. the OP is not saying someone else reached into his pack. he ADMITS that he wished to put something down in any case. he committed the error when he screwed up the ammount. he wasnt even doing a trade, where his partner could be accused of breaking a verbal contract by capitolizing on a clerical error. he placed the object on the ground, for any and all to pick up.
unless he can produce some rule he and the devs agreed to prior to the act taking place, he cannot accuse anyone of theft, and if he wants a snowballs chance in hell of getting the devs to reverse it or compensate him in someway, he better start behaving more graciously, since all he can possibly get at this point is charity from the devs.
he reached in his wallet to drop a bill of a cliff, pulled out a 50 instead of a 5. its not theft because someone at the bottom of the canyon found a 50.
Well, I think the question in the topic is very clear
Whatever he thinks his loss should be called is his choice. I'd call it his own mistake and think it shouldn't be refunded. The guy that picked it up had a very lucky break, within normal game mechanics.
In EVE online everything which has an ISK tag also has a monetary value as you can change real life money into Pilot License Extensions (gametime) and sell them for ISK.
Recently CCP actually made the plex cards themselves transportable like any other item and there have already been cases of people getting ganked while transporting huge amounts of them. A hundred PLEX's = 100 x a monthly sub value or 100 x around 350 million isk to give you an impression. Part or all of them might even be destroyed in the ship's final explosion.
The bottom line is people are responisble for what they do in the game themselves and I suspect the agreements signed when joining the game probably rule out legal options. At least in EVE this is the case.
Refunding this guy and retrieving the 'picked up items' from the lucky guy would be a precedent for many others leading to all kinds of issues and at least an increase in GM work I reckon.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I am amazed that 31% feel that stealing and scamming is acceptable behavior. Whether virtual or real life items - it is still wrong. Yes, it does happen in MMOGs and there are usually no consequences for doing so...but that does not make it ok. Sad to see the world and humanity reduced to this mentality.
Sorry for your loss OP. Hope you get things straightened out.