Confidence and Cruelty DateTime:5/23/2012 10:37:34 AM
This week, Eve Online has seen the biggest in-game 'legal' scam of any single MMO. The fall of the Eve Investment Bank is a classic pyramid scheme fraud playing out as such scams have done dozens of times in the real world. Investors raved about the returns, but were actually just being paid off with the cash invested by newer waves of investors. The apparent loss for the scammed gamers (and gain for the perpetrator) is 700 billion isk, which comes to around $180,000 of real cash at current Ebay virtual currency prices. You can buy cheap wow gold here !
The more interesting issue, however, is one that I've touched on elsewhere: the implications this has for the concept of cruelty in a game environment. For the most part it is very difficult for players to be genuinely, and justifiably, cruel in a video game, at least where real people are concerned. Eve is one of the few games that allows vindictive activities to take place, and it does so by having a complex market that allows significant transactions between players. (It also makes combat expensive and dangerous, with large losses incurred by the players, but that's a side issue.) Not that 'Dentara Rast,' the player-character behind the scam, could actually transfer that amount of money, of course. Not only do developer's CCP make things hard for currency sellers, but it's also a matter of supply and demand: is there really that much money out there in players' pockets? Buy cheap wow gold here ,we have cheap wow gold for sale !
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