With a few innocent clicks, Timmy Easter of Gilbert lost all of his Christmas money in a virtual world set in Medieval times.
It's a place where the 11-year-old boy can feel and act much older by fighting enemies and gaining points and power each time he does.
Timmy is high level player in an internet game site called RuneScape. But recently, Timmy learned this virtual world is full of some real life dangers.
A UK court has ruled that the unauthorized stealing of in-game currency can be legally classified as criminal theft.
IGN is a fraudulent clik bait farm pretending to be a news organization.
"that the unauthorized stealing of"
...You know as opposed to the "authorized steal of" personal data sites like IGN take part in.
But yes it is both IGNorant and morally questionable to imply that there is such a thing as authorized stealing.
IGN isn't a "news organization". it's a magazine/content producer that generates revenue on ads and services. We aren't talking about the AP Wire, Reuters, etc. I suggest you adjust your expectations of what you think you are going to get from an industry content creator. this is entertainment, not geopolitics. furthermore, the story you are commenting on is in fact true and thats not IGNs fault. work out those issues. ;)
IGN is a gaming news site just because it covers entertainment doesn't make them a content creator.
Digital currency should be considered as legitimate as actual money. You buy it with real money, and has an equal exchange. So I fully agree with this and anything else that favours the consumer when it comes to digital currency in games.
Runescape gold cant be bought directly with real money, it is only used to buy items in game, not microtransactions, but there is sort of a time value to it
no it has no actual exchange value, because you can only put money into it. The only actual exchange value it gets is through 3rd party gold seller who attach an amount of dollars to it and they're the only ones who get the luxury of actually being able to "exchange". Unless Jaggex is just selling raw gold, then I'm wrong.
Jagex did add a safe form of gold buying a while ago as you can know buy "bonds" with real money that can be exchanged for 14 days of membership or about 15m gold (current price) in the GE.
Jon Bellamy lays out his vision for the long-running British studio, as well as discussing the success of the newly launched Dragonwilds and this year's Pride controversy
Jagex has just dropped the woodcutting and fletching update in RuneScape, providing you with a level cap boost to 110.
idiot
Back in the days of UO people would camp out on your door step and sneak in to your house when you walked in and then rob you blind.
Warcraft has a huge problem with people getting nailed by keyloggers and losing their accounts that way. The funny thing is that a free MMO solved this problem and the most popular MMO in the world hasn't taken the simple solution needed to stop about 80% of account thefts.
Knight Online lets you type in a user name and password, but you use a mouse and an on screen number pad with numbers that appear in random order to put in a pin #. Since you never press any keys there's no way for a keylogger to grab it.
He deserved to get hacked, buying in-game items with real money is against Runescape rules. I love how this article fails to mention that this "innocent" little 11 year old is just as much a criminal as the hacker. If he had actually taken the time to earn the items that he lost like the rest of us, he wouldn't have lost anything of any actual monetary value.