Well people using stolen cards and whatnot to pay for fees on MMO's is easier to track then it seems, provided the MMO developer puts in the proper tracking tools. I know FFXI can track what credit cards were used on a account and others can to. A simple verify program where you have to call up your bank or go to it and verify that you are such and such and yes, you are going to be playing (gamename) would handle the bulk of charges that way. Using stolen cards to pay for RMTed money is a whole other bucket of fish and more of a issue for the goldfarmers and their various 'front' store sides as when they get defrauded, no one will give a shit.

Stolen characters in MMO's are a 50-50 thing. On the users end, it's important to have a proper browser with the proper script and ad blockers, a up to date anti virus and just the basic human smarts to not be all over the net downloading shit that you shouldn't be and keep your eyes peeled if the MMO site your visiting makes your script blocker scream a red alert.

On the provider's end, taking the time to build a good back end system so stolen characters can be locked and unusable right away, not based on a 9-5 call center model and changing passwords and credit cards numbers linked with the passwords to be a harder task then it normally is. The factor is here money and time. As goldfarmers get more skilled in stealing accounts, current and future MMO providers will have to staff more people and hammer out more measures to deal with it, all of which costs money and if you add up monthly costs to staff a 24 call center for locking and returning characters along with a anti RMT task force for banning and unleashing various ligation against them, you start to see a dent in those profits, which most of them will never even think of doing, usually till their profits slide enough from loss of players and by then, it's too late.

Right now it's not easy, if even 40% of people understood the dangers of surfing the net with a browser with nothing to deal with all of the crap that's floating in frames and failing to have up to date versions of Flash, RealPlayer and the ilk, it would hit RMT's account stealing hard. And by the time enough folks catch on to this, RMT's will evolve and find a new way to steal accounts, all leading to the point where carefully english trained people are creating guilds to draw people in, then using the typical guild homepage and forums to harvest the accounts of dozens if not more people at a time, then vanishing.

Foxstar Sixtail

lolwat?

So all those scammers in MMO's are dirty thieves or something? It's a game, lol, thats all I gotsta say on this.

Suda51

well if i am understanding this right, its talking about credit card fraud and what not to be used in mmo's and that in mmo's they have their own virtual "currency" and we can apply that to the real world. other than that i dont understand lol

EVIL_V2

@vig0r: other than the obvious fact that copyrighted things have value,and that they dont want to lost money so they try and keep themselves from getting robbed.

vig0r

im going to assume that no one else has commented because no one has any idea wtf that article is trying to get across?

vig0r

In regards to in-game economies, I think this is actually a pretty important subject to me as a gamer. I'm one of those players who is always trying to be an in-game entrepreneur. In every MMO I have ever played (only a couple, really) I have always logged more time with characters that craft something, be it potions or devices or whatever-the-hell, and spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out how to make in-game money from it. My character are always poorer than hobos, so clearly I'm not very good at it, but I keep trying.

Anyone who is a crafter in a game has experienced, or at least been made aware of, fraud in some way and it's kind of amazing to see the effect it can have on the entire economy. When you have another player who really would like to have a weapon crafted for them, but are scared to hand over the materials to you because they're afraid you'll steal that mat they spent 20 raid runs trying to get, and you spend a half-hour trying to convince them you're not a crook you start to realize how important anti-fraud measures in a game are. It effects us all.

That's why it amazes me that some of the real-world measures aren't used in games more. Reputation systems, for example. How long has Ebay had this? That right there would be pretty fucking nice to have. Of course, that would depend on the games having better systems for recognizing what a "transaction" is so that players can rate a crafter/seller on it.

And why does somebody have to risk actually giving me materials to craft anything? I should be able to open a crafting window, let the other guy put items and money in the queues, show him/her what I'm about to make so they can agree with it, all with the possibility of canceling without risk to anybody. Why is that so fucking hard to do?

These are examples of things that could be easily done in a virtual environment to make economies stronger. The kind of things we only wish we could have in real life. And that's the point in a game, right?

Sawboss

Currency is the replacement of bartering of our ancestors. Over the past few years, virtual world became another battleground since tangible currency has another form of funnel and the crimes associated with it. It will never stabilize in the virtual world unless every single transaction was set in stone. There is no world economy 101 in the virtual world, even the studies of EVE is quite baffling and a huge waste of time.

PsycheE

@Jusoon: But the fact that because things have value in these games because of things like RMT mean people need to step back and realize, its just a game.

Suda51

@Suda51:

I think what the article is saying is that "its just a game" doesnt really cut it when there is a real world value associated with the content being stolen. If you steal game time, or an item in a game, that has a real fixed value in the world, then its just like you stole that much money out of someone's pocket.

Jusoon

Either people give out their mmo account passwords, or they have viruses/trojan's on their pc and someone is stealing their mmo accounts.

I thought we figured out a long long time (like eq/UO time) that people will pay real money for in game stuff.

Imagine if blizzard released a free version of wow, where you could buy all your stuff from blizzard. They would keep the paid servers, but also have free ones with paid items/gold.

sereal

Maybe now that a CEO of a company that knows about exactly this matter has said it, people will stop saying these things have no value?

Naahhhhh.

Mister Adequate

@Suda51: That could be applied to anything. Telling people to just "step back" doesn't work, nor should it. Nobody can dictate the value of X to anyone else. X is worth however much the individual thinks it is worth, whether X is an experimental warplane, a loaf of bread, or a drop from Illidan.

The entirity of capitalism is based on this principle as an absolute fundamental.

Mister Adequate

@Suda51:

No it's not "just" a game, they are micro economies that function as well or sometimes better than the real thing. There is even Scientific research going on that studies virtual economies because they are less prone to the problems of the real market

z0phi3l

@MoaM:

...Wait a second.

MoaM

"The Science of Defrauding MMOs"

There's no science, there's just a term:

Pyramid Scheme.

MoaM

The PlayNoEvil website as linked in the post provides probably the most important insight into this issue: "Highlights the average customer lifetime value (ACLV) as a key factor (and why games may choose to ignore fraud as ACLV could average hundreds of dollars, but the cost of a chargeback is $15)." Granted, it says the exact opposite for free-to-play games, which should be expected.

While this might be an issue, fraud is an issue in any business. A lot of businesses look at this as merely a cost of doing business. I don't know that you'll see more done to protect customers unless game developers/hosters see significant customer loss and canceled subscriptions due to fraud. Otherwise, it will likely continued to be considered a cost of doing business and too bad for the customer.

As cynical as this may sound, it is truth: at the heart, they are businesses, and the first rule of business is to make money, not customer service.

Sensai-N

I said this somewhere in my WoW addiction, back when there was the major problems with account security and account hijackings (somewhere around Spring-Summer 07):

Blizzard won't crack down on gold sellers/gold spammers because for every account they hijack, they have two accounts they legitimately pay for to which they funnel the ill-gotten goods and then distribute to people who pay real cash for in game goods.

Look at IGE. They've been around selling WoW Gold almost since the first day WoW went live, and they're still kicking. Financially, Blizzard would lose more recurring revenue by actively shutting down every account that sells, or assists in selling, gold than they would by doing nothing and losing the occasional disgruntled customer who is angry that the in-game economy has gotten jacked.

A year later and it hasn't really changed. Despite adding spam filters and easy to use spam reporting capabilities and despite making gold flow like water in WoW through the use of dailies, gold, item and account sellers are still in full force.

What do you know - the real economy (revenue generated by letting the gold sellers stay paying customers vs. revenue lost by a handful of legitimate players leaving) is greater than the virtual economy!

Captiosus

@Suda51: The article says the opposite of that. Basic economic theory states that if enough people decide something has monetary value, it then has monetary value. While an MMO may just be a game, there's a good reason economics researchers study MMO economies just as they study world economies (that is: economic theory plays out more consistently in an MMO economy because an MMO economy has less random factors to "screw up" the study).

Which isn't to say the game isn't a game. 99% of us experience it just on that level and only on that level, but that isn't what this article is about.

PearceShea

@Suda51: I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you've never played an MMO and worked hours to get gear and then had it all stolen? It's not "just a game" because when you are playing the "game" the characters you see are the embodiment of real people. In a single player game I can understand "just a game" mentality but MMO is totally different. It would be like someone stealing something from you and I say get over it, "its just life".

Exia

i'm no computer expert. i'm just a gamer. a secure system helps me decide what i spend my money on. i wanted to play WoW one time. i played it, didn't like some of its features, but i planned to try the free month, maybe pay for another (had a coworker who's a vet). but a few days later when i tried to log back in my account got suspended for "spamming in game". i realized my account got "hacked" or taken. i couldn't log in to cancel my card. i had to call in and get it cancelled over the phone. only once did i use a webpage to log in, that was when they had me register the account. anyways, i decided to shelf the game. If i can't have a secure way to pay for my games, i don't want to pay at all. i won't spend my money on the chance that someone could take it all away, the money and the fun. i hope they can develop much better security in the future.

islandknight

Quote: "Of particular concern are the RMT resale markets (if it exists), and chargebacks."

Chargebacks are a huge problem because people get the item/service/etc, then cancel the purchase (valid credit card or not). The problem that most people don't see here is that the credit card gateways/processors still *charge* the game company a fee for the transaction/chargeback.

So it is a double whammy. Messing up the in-game economy is only one side of it - the other side is that it is costing the game company real money as well.

soslo

Suda51, it's not just a game. I've been active on a site called IMVU in the past. Basically it's a 3D chat program where anyone can make clothes, furniture, whatever for others to buy. You purchase 'credits' using real money to make your avatar and rooms look "cool", then the person who made the stuff gets credits.
Some folks (myself included) sell those credits for real money, earning a little extra, with some earning more than they would getting a 'real job'.

Now if a credits seller suffers from thieves ordering credits and then having their money taken back, it costs them real money. If you don't realize that, I feel sorry for you.

Rakkoon

Try unsubscribing from a PlayOnline SOE game, it'll be the life of you before you get it done.

dyslogistic

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that game companies and taxation authorities would want to treat virtual goods as having real value, when their EULA specifically requires the customer to agree that the virtual currency has no monetary value.

I can understand the companies' desire to indemnify themselves from debts by making a covenant with their players that it's all "play money"..... but they can't then hold players responsible for real value of defrauded items. I'm assuming of course a specific type of fraud.... one using game glitches or cheats, not credit card fraud or identity theft. Similarly, taxation authorities have no legitimate interest in people's "game wealth" until the point where their virtual goods are transferred to material wealth.

bookishboy