What will you say to someone who gets arrested because his video game character robbed another video game character of his virtual possessions??? Sounds quite strange or hilarious? Or you might think its a joke!! Well, its not!!
A chinese exchange student was arrested by police in Kagawa prefecture of southern Japan, on suspicion of going on a virtual mugging spree by deploying software “bots” to beat up and rob characters in the online game Lineage II, whose virtual possessions were then exchanged for real-world cash, reports New Scientist!! 😯
Several players of Lineage II had their characters mugged & robbed of their virtual valuables which could have included Earrings of Wisdom or the Shields of Nightmare. The stolen virtual valuables were then sold through a Japanese auction website. The thug was a ‘bot’ controlled character & was thus unbeatable.
Now, many game companies employ counter-measures to detect bots or cheats, but this is a cat-n-mouse game, just like the one between virus writers and Microsoft, spammers & anti-spam tool makers, etc.
The question one may ask is why?? Why use a thug ‘bot’ and more importantly, will this arrest start a beginning of any laws to protect our virtual possessions?
Now, some dunderheads may ask about the justification of this arrest, displaying their idiocy publicly by saying:
The thing I don’t get is WTF was he charged with when he was arrested? It seems incredibly stupid to me to arrest someone for what he did in a video game! It’s a game people!!! We don’t see kids being arrested for fragging other players in Halo, or shooting cops in Grand Theft Auto, so why did this man get arrested for stealing something that doesn’t even exist?
🙄
Hell, how idiotic can anyone be?? You read a news story which explains something & still ask what’s the point!! Ridiculous!! 🙄
Now for the benefit of these kinda people, I’ll explain. Virtual Objects like Earring of Wisdom or the Shield of Nightmare in Lineage II can be bought or sold for real-world cash!! So the person who was robbed of them, he might’ve earned them or worse, paid real-world cash for them, and the guy who stole them, he definitely sold them for real-world cash!! Now, I guess these morons won’t be saying this if someone is arrested for stealing their iPod or car and then selling them off!! 🙄