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North Korea employing MMO hackers to fund government

Jef Reahard — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST

Filed under: Lineage, Business models, Culture, MMO industry, News items

What's a dictator to do when his third-world economy is wheezing along on its last legs? Hack some video games, of course! According to a report in the New York Times, North Korea's Kim Jong-il unleashed an army of young computer crackers on popular South Korean online gaming portals to find ways to make quick cash.

South Korean authorities claim that a squad of approximately 30 hackers operated from a base in China and were given the mission of breaching online gaming servers (including those of the immensely popular Lineage) to set up bot factories and automated farming collectives. The digital booty was then sold to gamers for a reported $6 million over two years.

Chung Kil-hwan, a senior officer at South Korea's International Crime Investigation Unit, says that the hacker group "reports to a shadowy Communist Party agency called Office 39, which gathers foreign hard currency for Mr. Kim through drug trafficking, counterfeiting, arms sales, and other illicit activities."

North Korea employing MMO hackers to fund government originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BBC suggests gold farming may bolster poorer economies

Jef Reahard — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, MMO industry, News items

Who says gold farmers are devilspawn and deserving of a fate worse than death? Well, a lot of MMO gamers say that, but a news blurb on the BBC's website suggests that some virtual currency farmers may have a higher purpose after all.

Citing a report at InfoDev.org, the BBC posits that gold farmers are simply filling a role in the global supply and demand economy. "Western players who have limited time for gaming are buying game cash, gear and high level characters from people in China and Vietnam that are paid to play as a job," the article states.

The BBC also notes that the most recent global virtual sales estimates put the total market worth in the neighborhood of $3 billion. Approximately 30% of that is generated by legit players, 50% comes from bot farms, and the remaining 20% is pilfered from compromised accounts. Whether or not you tremble in anger at the thought of MMO gold farming or dismiss it as a modern-day reality, it seems as if it's here to stay, and according to the BBC, it might even provide economic aid to poor nations. "The virtual economy can have a significant impact on local economies despite its modest size," according to the article.

BBC suggests gold farming may bolster poorer economies originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Square-Enix cracks down on gardeners, sends out bans

Seraphina Brennan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Culture, News items, PvE, Consoles

If you've got a green thumb, you probably now have a sore thumb thanks to the Square-Enix banhammer. Gardeners across Final Fantasy XI have been complaining on fan forums that they've recently lost their accounts, only now tying the cause of their bans to their gardening activities.

Community site Pet Food Alpha has reported that Square-Enix is specifically targeting players who own more than one character for the explicit reason of gardening. Any level character can garden -- even right from the start of the game -- but no character can have more than 10 flowerpots at a time in their house. This has sparked players to purchase more character slots to simply expand their gardening enterprises, a common practice that has been done by players for over six years.

Players are unclear if these bans have been handed our by individuals on the RMT Task Force, or if they bans were created by one of Square-Enix's new automated tools. We'll keep our eyes on this story and update as new information comes in.

Square-Enix cracks down on gardeners, sends out bans originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SOE hires crime fighting gnomes to fend off credit card worms

Brooke Pilley — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: EverQuest, EverQuest II, Pirates of the Burning Sea, PlanetSide, Interviews, The Agency, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard, Free Realms, Legends of Norrath, DC Universe Online

Online credit card fraud is big business and even MMORPGs aren't safe from it's far reach. We recently had a chance to sit down with Executive Director of Global Customer Service, Brad Wilcox, and discuss how SOE is dealing with gold selling and power-leveling services for their games. They are taking this war so seriously that they have put all transactional business under keen gnomish scrutiny.

Can you tell us how this fraud prevention task force came to be?

Brad Wilcox: Since the inception of EQ1, we always had components of a fraud prevention team. These were game masters and individuals tasked with looking at the game economy and making sure that people weren't exploiting. Since September 2007, we started to see a big increase in fraudulent activity in regards to stolen credit cards. That is when it was decided to put a few more resources specifically related to the fraud that was happening with accounts and subs being created with these stolen credit cards. That's when we formed what we call the NUGIT team, which stands for Norrathian Underground Gnome Investigation Team. As you can tell by the name, our employees enjoy having as much fun on the back end as we do on the front end of these games

Continue reading SOE hires crime fighting gnomes to fend off credit card worms

SOE hires crime fighting gnomes to fend off credit card worms originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CoX: Player ingenuity identifies bizarre drops bug

Adrian Bott — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:30:00 EST

Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Bugs, Economy, Exploits, Game mechanics, Patches, Maps

Farming often gets a bad rap in City of Heroes, but sometimes it does the game a major favor. For example, a player working the same map with the same enemies over and over is in a perfect position to notice when random events - the dropping of loot, for example - aren't as random as they should be.

This was exactly the situation that a forum regular called KeepDistance encountered. Every time they ran a particular map, they would get exactly the same number of salvage and recipe drops, distributed exactly the same way. That's not supposed to happen.

Continue reading CoX: Player ingenuity identifies bizarre drops bug

CoX: Player ingenuity identifies bizarre drops bug originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 22 May 2008 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CoX: The right to farm?

Adrian Bott — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, PvP, PvE, Opinion

City of Heroes Issue 9, Breakthrough, might also have been titled the Agricultural Revolution.

Sure, we'd had power leveling before, and plenty of it. But until the Invention System came along we didn't really have full-on farming as such. Some players reared healthy stocks of Hatched Krakens down in the sewers or tilled the soil for Freaks on the Dreck map, but back then we knew little of the ways of the farmer.

Then came Issue 9 with its Rare Drops and later Issue 11 with its Even Rarer ZomgPurple Drops. The more level 50 enemies you defeat, the more likely you are to grab one of the purples; and that's on top of the guaranteed XP, Prestige or Inf that rolls in. Now, of course, farming is ubiquitous.

Continue reading CoX: The right to farm?

CoX: The right to farm? originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 03 May 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lawyers representing gold farmers threaten Lum the Mad

Michael Zenke — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:30:00 EST

Filed under: Business models, Culture, Economy, MMO industry, New titles, Opinion, Legal

Late last month Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings put up a post on his well-known MMOG blog site about an ongoing legal battle. It involves former IGE (yeah, the gold farmers) CEO Brock Pierce and co-founder of the company Alan Debonneville. Lum's excellent post, which quotes heavily from the lawsuit documents unearthed by the site Virtually Blind, does little more than sum up the case in one location. Not only have we been following the case along with the VB site, but numerous others have as well.

And yet, in a post on the Broken Toys site today, Lum notes that somehow he's the one that has received legal threats from Brock Pierce's legal team. They've basically asked him to take down the post by the close of business today (February 15th). Mr. Jennings, being a practical person and with no interest in going toe-to-toe with lawyers, is planning to do just that. He does get off a nice shot back at them in his response, saying "I welcome your client's renewed dedication to legal documentation and remind him that there are several outstanding end user licensing agreements attached to games I have assisted in operating in the past, regarding the explicitly forbidden trade of virtual items and characters in said games that he and his company have performed and expedited, that would benefit from his and his company's attention."

Of course, their harshly worded note has prompted responses from other MMOGbloggers, such as these posts from Ryan Shwayder and Matt Mihaly. Perhaps Pierce's team should have considered the impact before they asked Lum to take down his post about the lawsuit. This one, over here on his site. His post concerning Brock Pierce and Alan Debonneville. This post right here.

Lawyers representing gold farmers threaten Lum the Mad originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A snapshot of today's gold-selling/power-leveling market

Michael Zenke — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XI, MapleStory, Business models, Economy, Exploits, Game mechanics, RuneScape, Academic

GameSetWatch, the alt.blog on CMP's Gamasutra network of sites, has up a discussion with a gold-farming boss. "Mr. Smith" is one of the owners of a gold-selling site, and submitted an article looking at the current state of the virtual currency market - from his perspective.

Smith makes two interesting points in his discussion: that power-leveling is now the 'growth industry' for RMT services, and that the newest workforce in the marketplace is ... wait for it ... North Korea.

The cost of these power-leveling services has also dipped considerably as new players enter the marketplace. Competitive pressure has dropped the price from about $6/level to more like $2.50/level in World of Warcraft. All 70 levels now averages about $250, down from a high of almost $500.

A snapshot of today's gold-selling/power-leveling market originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Grind: Gold farming in your favorite game

Elizabeth Harper — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Economy, MMO industry, The Daily Grind

Though not every game developer discusses it, pretty much any game with a currency has an issue with people farming for funds and reselling them for real world cash. What we're asking you for this morning's Daily Grind is how farmers impact your game play experience. Are they a daily hassle? Do you have to fight them for the best farming spots? Have they caused massive inflation in your game's economy? Are they constantly spamming you with messages? Or are they completely inconspicuous? Let us know the game you're playing and how gold farmers have changed -- or not changed -- the way you play.

The Daily Grind: Gold farming in your favorite game originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FFXI "Special Task Force" takes on cheaters

Chris Chester — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:05:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Economy, Exploits

Square Enix proves once again that they are willing to bring the hurt on people who use hacks or exploits to gain an unfair advantage over other players or destabilize the economy of Final Fantasy XI. In a Special Task Force Report, they break down the approximately 8000 bans and suspensions that they've doled out since this time last month.

Among the groups most actively targeted are people using illegal fishing bots, Chinese gil farmers, and people abusing the auction house system for use in real money trading schemes. In so doing, Square plucked a staggering 2.3 billion gil from the hands of cheaters and money traders.

It makes you wonder why more companies aren't actively reporting the numbers of exploiters and gold farmers that they're busting every month. It's not like we don't know the practice exists, just tell us what you're going to do to stop it!

FFXI "Special Task Force" takes on cheaters originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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