UK politician calls for in-game thieves to be prosecuted like real criminals

06 Aug 2014 • engadget.com

In some of the most popular multiplayer role-playing games, like World of Warcraft (the NSA’s favorite), in-game characters and items can change hands for substantial amounts of real money. So when a gamer is relieved of valuable loot or accounts by scammers or thieves, should these online opportunists be considered criminals? It’s a question one UK politician wanted to address in Parliament yesterday, as he called for real-world sentences to be handed out for these virtual crimes. The politician, a WoW player himself, requested the UK Justice Minister accelerate legislation to that effect, arguing that gamers are entitled to the same amount of legal protection.

At first I thought this was irrefutable proof politicians are idiots, then I was confused, then pensive, and now I’m just speechless and not sure what I think.

I think there may be an important distinction between “stealing things online” and “stealing things in-game”, especially if stealing is a dynamic of the game in question. If stealing is part of the role-play, then that shouldn’t be a crime. I guess that’s how I first read the title of the post.

However, if we’re talking about hacking and stealing a persons virtual assets, then it does feel like a wrong truly has been committed in the real-world somehow… so I guess the deeper question is whether or not it’s a good thing to start legally defining virtual game items as having real value.

Though really how is a virtual game item “Fiery Sword of Punishment” really all that different form a virtual website item, i.e., “microsoft.com”? They are both just 1s and 0s stored on a computer somewhere.