When someone uses virtual money to pay off real life debts, this someone has got to be one of the lamest persons around.
But hey, in this world, it actually makes sense and is actually a tribute to how accepted virtual economies are. But still, don’t go stealing anything that is not yours – virtual or not.
A fellow in Toronto took away the money cache from the virtual bank of EVE Online and exchanged it for real cash with the black market. Can you say virtual bank heist?
EVE Online is one of the more popular names in the realm of commercial and free virtual worlds and attracts about 30,000 subscribers. That seems a small amount in comparison to World of Warcraft and Second Life but think about how each subscriber pays $15 a month and you’ll realize that there is a lot of money circulating around this world.
Okay so here is the nitty gritty of the bad deed:
“Basically this character was one of the people that been running EBank for a while. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and traded it away for real money,” said Ned Coker, of the Icelandic company CCP, which developed the game.
This story makes me remember the incident of a fellow in Britain (outside of a virtual world) who managed a parking stall near a park. People thought the guy was an official parking attendant because he’s been at it for two decades – then he simply ran off with the money probably enough for a retirement fund.
This is what happens when trust cannot go hand in hand with a person who is in charge of too much power.
The person in question is actually the CEO of EBank and he took about 200 billion interstellar credits and converted it into cash. Just imagine that it can be similar with someone who made money from his thought bubbles.
The converted cash was said to be $6,300 Australian dollars which is roughly equivalent to $5,100.
Well, this can be seen as a bending of the rules to challenge the one-sided flow of money in virtual worlds. Users can only convert real cash to credits but not the other way around. So with this crime, the tables are turned.
But still it is not proper to claim something that is really not yours.
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