Numerous reports have come in concerning the recent hacking of Final Fantasy XI player accounts, with the concomitant liquidation of assets, leaving many users without gear and gil. Although complaints to the game admins have been many and passionate, Square-Enix seems to be employing a strategy of claiming that the hacked users are somehow to be found at fault for downloading keylogging software, or somehow allowing their account information to be taken by malicious hackers. There is an interesting theory circulating that the attacks are in response to S-E's crackdown on real money trading (or RMT) activities, which in general drive up inflation of in-game economies. It's been supposed that " ... RMT have decided for Christmas to meet demands for the people who buy the games currency (gil) to hack droves of veteran characters and sell everything of value in an attempt to meet the demand with the least amount of labor as possible", to quote player Sparthos.
Interestingly, many of the hacked account holders place the inception of these attacks as occurring shortly after the release of FFXI's newest expansion, Wings of the Goddess. If there is a connection, it might be possible for there to be some weak code in the expansion that allows a hack of this nature to occur. With S-E's refusal to acknowledge legitimate grievances on the part of the players, however, it's not likely that we'll have this either confirmed or denied. We'll keep an eye on this story and see how it develops.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
