Gold sellers hold account hostage
by Adam Holisky 
Mar 8th 2008 at 11:00AM
We all deal with them. Their annoying spam, their flooding of the general channels. Those gold sellers deserve the kiss of death. Wouldn't it be nice if their industry just went and slept with the fishes?In a tactic that even Don Corleone himself would be angry at, gold sellers have sunken to a new low. John M. wrote in to tell us the tale of a fellow guild mate who fell under the gaze of a gold seller who took his account hostage, demanding payment from his guild. Sit back, open up a new window with this Godfather music, and read on after the break.
I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse.
As John tells us, the guild was gathering around for another regular and fun day of game play. Things were going fine until all of the sudden one of their guild mates logged on and started acting weird. This was the first sign something was wrong. The second was when the people playing the guild mate's account started demanding gold in return for returning the character to the owner.
The gold sellers effectively held the account hostage until the guild ponnied up the ransom. John doesn't tell us if they complied, so we'll all have to guess. What is interesting here is the tactics employed by the gold spammers. If they are actually doing this, then they have gotten quite desperate in their attempts to get easy and quick gold.
One has to wonder about the legality of this all. If they are stealing property and holding it over a person's head, this is obviously crossing a line that they haven't crossed before. One could imagine a rather interesting law suit out of actions like this (mind you, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV).
Blizzard has been doing all they can to track and punish gold sellers and those that support their industry. While it takes them a long time to restore characters and items, they do eventually follow through. With that in mind, if this were to ever happen to you or your guild mates, the appropriate course of action would probably be to simply report the incident to the GM and let them deal with it. The last thing any of us needs are these people thinking that this method would be successful.
Has this happened to you? Any horror stories of hacked guild mates accounts being logged on by a gold seller?
Filed under: Virtual selves, News items, Economy, Making money, Rumors
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Moketronics Mar 8th 2008 11:06AM
That is SO messed up... but what can blizz do about it?
Especially lame as in a situation like this the person taking the account hostage can delete the professions and generally blizz won't restore them... if you've got a special tailoring set, that means you have to re-level tailoring 1-350ish to EVEN WEAR the items blizz restores to you.
alex Mar 8th 2008 12:33PM
im in law school.
this IS theft, in the legal sense.
actual criminal charges could be filed.
i
Thander Mar 8th 2008 1:20PM
@2
It is theft, but Blizzard owns everything in game. They would have to follow through and file a lawsuit in every case. On top of that, they are dealing with people in foreign countries. It's too much trouble for what it's worth.
arcady0 Mar 8th 2008 3:53PM
Not sure why I don't have reply buttons to all of the posts, but this is in reply to Thander who wrote:
"It is theft, but Blizzard owns everything in game. They would have to follow through and file a lawsuit in every case. "
Criminal charges are not brought by individuals in the US. Blizzard or a person who's account was hacked would bring notice to the police, who would decide whether or not to investigate. If they did investigate and found evidence of a crime, they would bring it to their District Attorney who would then decide whether or not to charge a case, and against whom.
Assuming that what you have here involves hacking into people's accounts to gain access to the information therein, and the property therein, digital or otherwise - you would have some form of theft or burglary.
Burglary is unlawfully entering a place to commit a crime - so the act of entering into an account illegally itself might be this, though that would depend on the individual statute in the area, and whether or not a special statute had been created since the rise of the online age to cover computer hacking.
Taking of toons, holding digital property hostage, and so on, are all forms of fraud, blackmail, theft, and so on - depending on the particulars. Even possibly identity theft.
Once someone notifies the police of a specific incident, it is out of Blizzard's hands. Blizzard could even try to prevent prosecution, an unwise move, but would have no say in the matter.
That is different from civil suits. Criminal law is enforced by the state, civil by the citizen.
Sean Riley Mar 9th 2008 8:50PM
@4
Not necessarily. Follow the legal logic through.
Blizzard own all the materials in game. Just because you earned a Tier6 armor set, or 9000g in game, it remains Blizzard's virtual property.
Bastard scum goldstealer comes in and takes your account. They steal all your gold and send it to one of their toons.
Blizzard still own all the gold. They did when you had access to it, they do when the thieves have access to it, they do when the people they sell it to have it. They have not lost it at any point. You never owned it. Ergo, it cannot be stolen from you.
See the hitch? Blizzard are, very sensibly, arguing they own everything in game, which stops you legally selling it. But it also means theft is legally impossible.
Now, here, however, they are suspending the access of someone to the account. That, I suspect, can easily be defined as criminal.
Markymark Mar 8th 2008 11:08AM
I pray something like this doesn't happen to me or my guildmates. Yea if this story is true then this is a new low lol.
John Mar 8th 2008 11:24AM
I would definitely just report it, for all you know it could be your 'trusted' guildie just trying to fleece the guild for gold.
Neolithic Mar 8th 2008 11:25AM
god help a gold seller should I find myself in a position to cause bodily harm to them. I'd do things that would make the devil himself question his faith...
Tridus Mar 8th 2008 11:48AM
Same, except to gold buyers. They're the ones actually creating this problem.
Sellers only exist because of really really lazy people willing to buy gold. Eliminate them, and the seling goes away.
Nothing bugs me more then people who get all huffy about selling, but don't mind that their buddy down the street bought 2000g. Where do you think that 2000g came from?
vildand Mar 8th 2008 11:27AM
Makes you wonder why they didn't contact both the GMs and the federal authorities because it's clearly illegal.
SBKT Mar 8th 2008 11:31AM
On the server I play in, the Gold Sellers are thinking they're getting smart, managing to get themselves embedded in the walls.
I find it fun to hinder their progress with constant duel invites.
This also may have been similar to what happened to my stepfather who was doing quite well for himself.
johnthorpe Mar 8th 2008 11:33AM
If you think someone's account has been compromised, you should flag a GM. If it's a friend, grab your phone and just call blizzard. These assholes can do a lot of damage in the time it takes to rouse a GM.
Rambull Mar 8th 2008 11:39AM
This sounds like a scam to me. It sounds like someone concocted a crazy scheme to rob his own guild. Wouldn't be the first time.
energyvortex Mar 8th 2008 11:47AM
Moketronics, what can Blizz do about it?
Everything. They are BY FAR helpless.
They've gotten MUCH MUCH better at the turn around time to restoring stolen/hacked items to the righful owners lately. Two fo my friends have been hacked recently, both had their stuff completely refunded in 4 days. Enchanted items were returned without enchants, but with the gold value of the lost enchants instead.
It's pretty easy to look at the logs at the time the theft occured, and then trace the client IP back as far as you can go with it. I'm pretty sure Blizz already knows from which subnets/class range each gold farming/selling company will work from, so...
All it takes is the desire and the will to do something about this problem. They seem to be working on it, albeit slower than we'd like them to...
theRaptor Mar 8th 2008 12:01PM
Right because it isn't trivial to rent chunks of IP's and get new ones when they get banned. The more corrupt ISP's wont even do anything to stop hackers/spammers who are using a shared IP pool and so Blizzard risk cutting large chunks of paying customers off to stop a few baddies.
theRaptor Mar 8th 2008 11:57AM
Who says it was a "gold seller"? Geez they are like the bogey man now days, every bad thing is caused by "gold sellers". Hint: Lots of hacking of accounts is done by teenagers at Internet cafes pre-loading key loggers. Just because someone hacks/extorts for gold does not mean they intend to sell it on.
Hell lots of them don't even keep the gold, because doing so is likely to get their mains banned. They just hack accounts take the gold and shard the purples, and transfer it to a trial account. It is just like guild forum hacks etc, they do it to annoy people and be "teh u83r h4xx0rz", not for personal gain. It is the graffiti/petty vandalism of the Internet, not organised crime.
Matt Mar 8th 2008 1:36PM
like the guy who buys crack, puts it in lil baggies, he was just organizing it right?? o.O you sound alot like a gold buyer, or a gold seller! the point is that they do these things and its wrong, blizzard could be taking it alot harder to them...
RogueJedi86 Mar 8th 2008 6:01PM
One problem with your logic: how does he transfer it to a trial account, when trials accounts can't trade, use the Mail, or the AH?
Ashwin Mar 8th 2008 12:20PM
Blizz should start doing IP bans. while gamers in these countries is gold farmed in play in cyber cafes, from what I know the gold farmers have their own gold farming factories with computers, an IP ban is not hard to do then.
In addition to further hurt them limit the number of trial accounts a single IP can use, no more making 1 million trial accounts to spam trade.
Druid dude Mar 8th 2008 12:52PM
Illegal? In a video game?