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Examples of Virtual Crimes

Virtual crime or in-game crime refers to a virtual criminal act that takes place in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), usually an MMORPG.


In China, Qiu Chengwei was sentenced to life in prison after stabbing and killing fellow The Legend of Mir 3 gamer Zhu Caoyuan. In the game Qiu had lent Zhu a powerful sword (a "dragon sabre"), which Zhu then went on to sell on eBay for 7,200 Yuan (about £473 or $870). With no Chinese laws covering the online dispute, there was nothing the police could do.


The term virtual mugging was coined when some players of Lineage II used bots to defeat other player's characters and take their items. The Japanese Kagawa Prefectural Police arrested a Chinese foreign exchange student on 16 August 2005 following the reports of virtual mugging and the online sale of the stolen items.


It was reported on 14th November 2007 that a Dutch teenager had been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in 3D social-networking website Habbo Hotel. The teenagers involved were accused of creating fake Habbo websites in order to lure users into entering their account details, which would then be used to steal virtual furniture bought with real money totalling €4000.

Security Issues In Online Games

1. Cheating by collusion
Occurs in games where one player is not supposed to know what the other players know, but exchanging of information takes place anyway.

2. Cheating by abusing procedure of policy
Certain games records the wins and losses for each player profile in a statistic database.
Abusing of certain procedures so that the player who has lost a game before, will not have his loss recorded. Therefore, the winner will not have his win recorded.

3. Cheating related to virtual assets
Trading of virtual assets is a very lucrative business.
Trading in MMORPG is therefore abused by certain players who accept the monetary assets for an item.

4. Cheating by compromising passwords
Passwords, inclusive of CD-keys for online games can be vulnerable targets for malicious users.
Upon acquisition, access is granted to crucial game data and authorization, therefore it enables cheats in various ways.

5. Cheating by denying service to peer players
Various techniques like flooding the other players connection which leads to a time out or forcing him to disconnect at the right moment can lead to benefits in computer games.

6. Cheating due to lack of secrecy
Servers and computers communicate with each other with packets of information.
Such packets of information can be intercepted and read, or inserted with different data, which enables cheat.

7. Cheating due to lack of authentication
Related to authentication between server and client.

8. Cheating related to internal misuse
Game operators and system administrators have special and privileged powers over a gaming environment which could be misused in order to cheat.

9. Cheating by social engineering
Various ways of scamming people to gain access to their passwords and CD-keys, for example, by posing as a system administrator.

10. Cheating by modifying game software and data
Traditional way of cheating in online multiplayer games.
Reverse engineering of the gaming software and the creation of special programs that can be used to gain unfair advantages can be done by cheat creators.

11. Cheating by exploiting bug or design flaw
Every game comes with bugs no matter how well coded games are.
Upon exploitation of bug or design flaw, players are able to access parts of maps deemed inaccessible or shoot players undetected.

Responses to Comments

Hello. Welcome back to http://mmorpgrocks.blogspot.com/ =)))

Lets start by discussing our readers' comments.

KF : "mmorpg is consider the most popular type of games especially in singapore.Within my group of friends out of 10 8 of them played mmorpg games, and it is influencing a lot other friends in the process."

Yes, it is indeed true that MMORPG is now very popular worldwide, and in Singapore whereby a very high percentage of household are equipped with PCs and Internet access, the population of MMORPGs gamers are especially high. But the difference in gamers from Singapore compared to North America is that we have a higher % of schooling teenagers playing rather than full-time workers. Most Singaporean play to a variety of MMORPGs but the more popular ones will be MapleStory(Free to Play) & WoW(Monthly Subscription).

steffi : 1) "looks like those who dont have much own time are gamers instead of the home makers or retirees..prob is the stress of nt able to achieve at work or sch lets them sort for the ideal tru the games??"
2)"haha i dont tink the developers (most) would b concern abt the ethical aspects. prob nt their job scope? as long as it gets gd response or many to play can le ba =)"
3)"but i feel some who get hooked at games tend to pick out the violence and competitive nature. but if they're able to differentiate between virtual n real shud be ok? hee"

1) MMORPGs definitely provides a strong sense of achievement to gamers and that can very well be a reason for people to sought out for MMORPGs when they are not doing well in certain parts of their life or career. Achievement in MMORPGs comes in various types, such as leveling up your character, completing quests or killing off strong monsters.

2) It may be true for most game developers, player subscriptions and revenue are the main priorities. But due to the harmful effects such as Game Addiction, it might take a toll on the human population in the long run and cause this entire society to have a change in behavior. So should responsibilities be imposed on game developers in taking care of their gamers to ensure that they can stay healthy and continue playing the games at the same time.

3) Yes, "differentiating between virtual and real" is very important in a child's growing process.
Several studies have shown that violent video games can desensitize children to violence or induce hostile or aggressive actions. Below are 2 real life scenarios.

Grand Theft Auto III (RPG)
Dustin Lynch, aged 15, allegedly played this game extensively to prepare to beat Jo Lynn Mishne to death, according towitnesses. He then stole her car, for no reason, as is often done in game.
Stepbrothers William and JoshuaBuckner were arrested for a rampage they patterned after the game,shooting at highway vehicles, killing one person, and wounding another.

World Of Warcraft (MMORPG)
A thirteen year-old Chinese boy from China jumped to his death on year 2004 after playing for WoW 36 hours straight. He left a suicide note stating that he wishes to join the heroes of the game he worshipped.

Why Play MMORPG? PART II

Firstly, can you think of some reasons why people play video games? It can be as simple as just a hobby or a pastime. Moving on to experiencing a story, challenging yourself through puzzles and scenarios, escaping to a world out of reality and doing things in a virtual world which are impossible in our world.

What about MMORPGs? People play MMORPGs looking for more than just these reasons. MMORPGs can be described as a very large platform for virtual social interaction with added graphics and games into it. And as it is a (people among people) game instead of the usual (people among Artificial Intelligence) game, it becomes very competitive as players fight to be the best in the game. It also allows the players to make friends and work with each other in completing game objectives whereby they become be part of an ongoing story of the game(as there is no ending to MMORPGs unlike normal RPGs).
A virtual world also allow players to express themselves in ways they may not feel comfortable doing in real life because of their appearance, gender, sexuality, age, or other factors.

From these simple reasons of playing MMORPGs such as for the fun of it, getting to know friends or for the competitiveness, comes consequences such as Game Addiction, Cyber Harassment and Virtual Civil Disobedience within the game. And exactly how much are the Game Developers responsible for such behavior.


Game Addiction <- click to see Article

Addiction refers to the condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something. Which refers to the crave for games which results in excessive hours of gaming in the case of Game Addiction. Addiction can happen in anything, such as Drugs, Smoking, Alcohol, Gambling and even Gaming.

Addiction in Drugs, Smoking & Alcohol is caused by Inhaling/Consuming products which contains substances such as nicotine with stimulant effects on the electrical activity of the brain. When a person consumes such stuffs and reaches a significant quantity or over a period of time, the brain will crave for more when the effects of the substances are gone.

But Addiction in Gambling and Gaming are casued by the emotional beliefs in people. A player who is addicted to gambling loses a lot of money, and they believe that it is more important for them to continue playing because of all the investment that they’ve already made. And in MMORPGs, many people believe that every hour that they spend in these games helps to build their sense of worth and with everything that matters to them within that game. And by playing that extra hour, they are less likely to stop playing because of the sunk cost. Here is a video regarding Game Addiction in a MMORPGs, World of Warcraft.

When gamers become so immersed in MMORPGs, it becomes an alternate reality which can be potentially harmful to the gamers. As it is the competiveness most gamers look out for in MMORPGs, the desire to attain power and sense of being the most powerful in MMORPGs can lead to Mental Abuse in MMORPGs. Mental Abuse in MMORPGs can occur just by criticizing other gamers of their poor playing skills, or arguement can just emerge among gamers whether friends or not, through communication in the game itself. Some of these cases, if serious enough, can be identified as Cyber Harassment which is one of the Cybercrime offence.

Cybercrime - Cyber Harassment
Basically, Cybercrime can be seperated into 3 major categories which are against; 1) persons 2) property 3) government and in this case, we are talking about Cybercrime against persons.

It is very easy to commit a crime against a person online, most commonly by harassment. The use of Cyberspace makes it easy for people to commit such crime as people can do so without showing their true identity and think that they do not have to take responsibilities for their actions. Though easy to commit, yet highly potentially harmful because such a crime to humanity can hardly be amplified. This is one Cybercrime which threatens to undermine the growth of the younger generation as also leave irreparable scars and injury on the younger generation, if not controlled.


So in this entry regarding Game Addiction and Cybercrime, how responsible are Game Developers in controlling these from happening within MMORPGs and what do you think should be done by the society to help reduce such negative aspects of gaming. Please post your comments in the tag board. And we'll post up What We Think in the following entries.

Why Play MMORPG? Who Plays MMORPG?

Firstly, please take a look at this graph by holding down the "shift" button on your keyboard and left clicking it with your mouse. It will show you a few of the top subscribing MMORPGs over the past 10 years.

And from the chart, you can see that the leading MMORPG in subscribers since first quarter of 2005 till now, is the

"World of Warcraft" hitting 10 MILLION subscribers worldwide!

being the most popular MMORPG ever! That is like "TWO AND A HALF TIMES" the population of Singapore!!!!!!!!!! ZOMGZ

Are you one of those which contributes to such high number of MMORPG subscribers? And if you are, WHY do you play MMORPG? In this and the following entries, we'll be sharing with you various reasons why people play MMORPG and then the Ethical issues concerning MMORPG.

Firstly, I would like the readers to understand that the key point I will be addressing here is the Ethical Issue between MMORPG and its players. As MMORPG is a video game, and video games are developed by Game Developers. In this world of IT(Intellectual Technology), Game Developers are considered as "IT professionals" and MMORPG players are considered to be the "IT Users". So how are the Game Developers supposed to develop an environment that will encourage ethical behavior of users playing their MMORPG?

Many studies of MMORPG have been done many interested parties, and this article here by a Stanford professor covers on the MMORPG subject which includes a survey he had done with 30,000 users of MMORPG over a span of 3 years to explore user demographics of North America.

It shows that the average gamer age is about 25 with a range between age 11-68.
50% of MMORPG players are working,
22% are full-time students,
12% are working and/or going to school part-time,
10% are unemployed,
3% are home-makers,
while 1% are retired.
Ratio of Male : Female is 9:1.
And also an average of 22 hours usage per week, which shows very high appeal.

From this data, we can conclude that MMORPG does not just represent as a pastime for teenagers but targeting at a even larger community now. So let's move on to why people play MMORPG?

MMORPG Background

What is MMORPG? And how did MMORPG came about? MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (one out of the many genres of Video game) whereby a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. It was back as early as 1947 where basic games were transformed into Video games by making use of interactive electronic devices in displaying the games in different formats. And in this new century where technology increasingly advances, the demand of Video games has come to seek interest in many game developers and since the 1990’s; Video games have evolved into many genres and using mainly 4 different platforms. These 4 platforms are “Arcade game”, “Handheld” gaming device, “Console game” and “PC game”. PC was used as the main platform for MMORPG a few years back as it was the only one with internet capabilities but with the overwhelming MMORPG subscribers on earth, game console developers such as Sony Computer Entertainment and Mircrosoft started building Internet capabilities on its Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), the world's oldest multi-user roleplaying game

Islands of Kesmai. One of the first successful MMORPG.

both sources taken from http://weikyttmmorpg.blogspot.com/2007/05/history-of-mmorpg.html