Gold spammers and hacking

[Merkavar]

Anyone who has played an mmo has certainly seem someone advertising a website to sell gold or other items.

As far as im aware the main ways these people get the gold to sell is by hacking accounts and by farming the gold.

So my question is why isnt hacking gold treated more seriously? a quick google search shows that gold farming is a 3 billion dollar industry. im not sure on what percentages of this 3 billion comes from hacking peoples accounts.

But what is the differnce between hacking an account and stealing a few dollars or a few 100 dollars worth of in game currency and just plain old fruad or stealing credit card numbers?

they are both electronic goods with real world value.

what are your thoughts?

 

[OutcastBOS]

Probably because it's just in-game money, and not really important things, like account hacking.

EDIT:Which was just re-hashing shit you said...and what I was trying to get at was that the gold is used for stuff in-game, and money taken from accounts isn't.

 

[Merkavar]

yeah its ingame money. but thats in game money people worked for and have a value in game and out of game. if it didnt have a value there wouldnt be a 3 billion dollar industry.

thats like saying shares are just pieces of paper
or
bank accounts are just numbers on a screen

 

[LordLundar]

When an account is hacked, it's a breach on a client computer (aka the user) not on the centralized server. As such, from a legal standpoint the company cannot take legal action against them. The user can and the company can assist, but unless it's a direct attack on the company, legally their hands are tied. And that doesn't factor into the issue that most of these gold selling companies are out of reach of civil courts from the game operator's country.

As for the gold selling, it's a violation of the TOS, not a criminal act. The most that the company can do is exercise their power in the game by shutting down the account and either deleting it or turning it over to the original owner.

 

[Stall]

MMO devs DO care. They know that gold farming ruins their games, and try to activity combat it. They try their best, but shutting down such a huge industry isn't an easy task... in a matter of fact, it's a virtually impossible task.

Stopping gold farmers is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much easier said than done.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

Yeah it's a big problem and it's advertised openly, I've noticed it in Wow when I'm in Orgrimmar. It violates Terms of Service and usually with enough reporting the spam clogging up Trade chat goes away, only to come back the next day.

I think one of the reasons it's not taken more seriously is that Blizzard will usually just give back any items or gold lost, seeing as they will have that on record. The farmers might get awak with a few K but Blizzard can't really do much about it as they aren't directly attacking them.

The best think Blizzard could do would to be to sell gold themselves at a more competative rate. It's cheap and I know a lot of people hate the idea of buying gold (myself included) but I understand that some people don't have the time or patience to work the Auction House.

 

[mental_looney]

MMO devs do care but they don't put a real world value on their in game currency like gold sellers do that's the massive difference. The loss from hacking for them is player time and the time spent for support having to fix it. Besides it's a big industry in china not like some mmo companies can shut it all down.

 

[Chibz]

I propose somehow blocking all Chinese IPs. This won't stop ALL the problem, but it will certainly make it a lot more expensive for the companies behind it.

As for legit Chinese players? Yeah. It really does suck to be you, but you know who you should be blaming [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farmers].