[Online Gaming] - Scammers paradise

Eve Online is a MMO set in space. Every player controlls his own avatar and is able to buy different ships, everything from small shuttles to enormous planetsized starships, join a corporation, which is the term for player made teams, engineer, manufactor or collect raw materials for new products, or hunt spacepirates alternatively becoming one themselves. The game has probably one of the largest areas in the MMO-genre, spanning over a whole galaxy including countless starsystems. The space is indeed needed though, since all players reside on the on the same server or shard. Eve now holds the record for number of concurrent online players with over 30.000 individuals at the same time. The game is almost solely controlled by the players and the company behind the game, CCP, seldom interfers the gameplay. Borders between factions constantly moves between factions and war between corporations is fought daily. Optimizing of traderoutes have made entire starsystems obsolete, all by the hands of players and the player controlled economic system. This truely makes Eve a social experiment of enormous magnitude. Since CCP don’t meddle in players business, everything can happen, and happens. But when has the freedom become too great? Can it ever become too great? An example where a LOT of people really got mad at CCP for NOT meddling was the following.

In early 2006 a avatar named Cally announced the opening of the first intergalactical bank in Eve. The bank named Eve Intergalactic Bank promised favourable rates and a plenty of tied-in services like checking balances online, trading stocks and serious newsletters. The bank slowly grew and large investors chose to deposit their corporations saved up money in it. Months passed and rumours began spreading that the bank was a scam. At about that time in late august, Cally (or the player behind Cally) decided enough was enough and cleared the bank containing 700 billion ISK (the currency in Eve). The value in real money has been estimated around 180.000 U.S. dollars. Needless to say, a lot of people who were affected complained to CCP but they just shrugged. Nothing in the EULA said anything about this kind of scam and it was acording to them, perfectly legal.

CCP has during the game’s whole life encouraged this type of inventive scams and trickery in the game. It can be argued that it adds a new layer to the game but how far can you take it? In this example a lot of peoples paid for gaming time, collecting resources was stolen. Half a years work generating $180.000. When should you start proctecting people from this? When the bounty exceeds 1 million dollars? When someone takes his own or someone elses life? Virtually none of these MMOGs have any laws or regulations against these sorts of scams and their absence is clear in the EULA. Yet people are equally surprised each time something like this happens. In this example noones actual living is stolen but some people play these games allmost like a second job, investing several hours a day in the world. For these people, this scam was allmost as hard a blow as if actual money were stolen. Should these people be protected? Ofcourse individual games and cases must be judged seperatly but in this case I don’t think so. In the end it is still a game, and at that one that thrives on the possibilities of creating your own gaming experience. With rules against these sort of possibilities the game would be a lot less appealing. Different gaming companies act differently in these issues. While CCP is extremely liberal, Blizzard – creater of World of Warcraft, is equally harsh with their rules. Had this occured in WoW, I am completely convinced that Blizzard would have acted by banning the scammers account. Who is right?