US police refuse to investigate MMO theft

By Oli Welsh Published 4 February, 2008

Nicked FFXI items worth nearly USD 4000.

Friday's edition of Minnesotan local rag, the Pioneer Press, carried this heart-rending report of one massive multiplayer's quest for justice.

20-year-old Final Fantasy XI player Geoff Luurs had his account broken into. All the items and currency collected by his character Sots (a "tiny magician", according to the paper) over four years of play were looted. He suspected a fellow player, but local police declined his request to look into it.

Luurs says the items were worth 75 million Gil, which according to current exchange rates, is about USD 3800 in real money (that's GBP 1924 in even more real money). He argued that 'Ayri' - the player he suspected of the theft, and a former friend - could easily sell them through a site like ige.com.

But despite grey markets in the sale of high-level characters, currency and items being common with popular MMOs, police claimed that game points were "devoid of monetary value", therefore no theft had taken place.

Associate professor of law Joshua Fairfield disagrees. "What happened here is somebody stole almost USD 4000 and got away cold," he said. "This is just a matter of zeros. The first time IBM loses USD 10 million, we're going to see some police action. The argument that a magic sword isn't real, that doesn't make sense to me. You can ask the question, why would somebody buy that? But you can't say it's not worth real money."

Theft of virtual items is already a crime in MMO-mad South Korea, but at present, no legislation exists in the US or EU to help Luurs and others in similar boats. With the increasing popularity of these games worldwide, it's surely only a matter of time.

However, the suggestion is that Luurs gave 'Ayri' his account details, in which case he probably violated the terms and conditions of his account. Also, you could argue he got what was coming to him. Is it a burglary when you hand the robber your house keys?

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (37) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • quantumsheep #1 4 years ago

    Poor sod.

    Though stupid sod at the same time.

    Bless.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #2 4 years ago

    Without going too much into details about this case I find this explanation a bit worrying:

    police claimed that game points were "devoid of monetary value", therefore no theft had taken place.

    So it's only a theft when the police redeems something to be of material value?

    Of course it's a grey area regarding MMO items and some people might not care (I don't think I do either that much to be honest) the explanation of why the police aren't doing anything seems strange.

  • Dante_Cubit #3 4 years ago

    I think he should hire virtual Bergerac...

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=jLL6ng9Q5J4

  • estoo #4 4 years ago

    Is it burglary when you hand the robber your house keys.....

    Dunno about burglary, how would you define it?

    It would definitely be theft... You can't keep all your possesions under lock and key.

    I've heard of kids being charged with 'stealing' their parent cars, I assume they didn't have to crack a safe to get at the keys.

  • toythatkills #5 4 years ago

    According to the T+Cs of almost every MMORPG you're not allowed to sell gold/items, are you? That's why the police have rightly said it has no monetary value. Value on the black market is irrelevent.

  • Machiavel #6 4 years ago

    Interestingly, black market prices in the 'real' world tend to be a lot less than legal prices. But in the virtual world, they're higher. Hmm.

  • monkie_king #7 4 years ago

    '(a "tiny magician", according to the paper)'

    Paul Daniels?

  • zuljin #8 4 years ago

    @toythatkills
    "According to the T+Cs of almost every MMORPG you're not allowed to sell gold/items, are you? That's why the police have rightly said it has no monetary value. Value on the black market is irrelevent."

    Small analogy. I'm not technically allowed to sell my kidneys (I don't think so anyway), but I think the police would take it pretty seriously if I woke up in a bath of ice with one of them missing.

  • Darkedge #9 4 years ago

    "I've heard of kids being charged with 'stealing' their parent cars, I assume they didn't have to crack a safe to get at the keys."

    Thats taking without permission, effectively just below stealing - but that actually relies on them returning the car or it being able to be returned. If they take the keys without permission and sell the car thats still theft to the eyes of the law if you wished to prosecute but I suspect the insurance company won't care.

    If he gave away the password/details on his account to the bloke who 'took' the items well he's an idiot, if you leave your window open with a sign saying cool things inside and you get robbed you are also an idiot and should expect it to happen. Every MMO has rules and advice to never share an account, never give details away as if you do you will get screwed.

    @Zuljin - thats Assault not theft technically. Can't compare in that manner at all - like suing someone for allowing you to jump off their roof as they had no signs but didn't tell you it would hurt.
    Edited by 1 at 04/02/08 @ 16:42

  • penhalion #10 4 years ago

    I never thought I'd say this but, for once the american police are correct. It's a game! No-one and I mean No-one, asked this guy to devote 4 years to collecting these items and then boasting about it all to his so-called (i.e. probably never met the guy in person) friend.

    If he has said someone had hacked his computer, then that IS a crime. However, the news item seems to suggest he gave the guy his account details. What's the betting he was attempting to cheat in some way.

  • wizbob #11 4 years ago

    This is exactly what happened in the Chinese MMO where some guy had his sword stolen by friend. I suggest that he follow that example and extract a blood debt from Ayri.

  • toythatkills #12 4 years ago

    "Small analogy. I'm not technically allowed to sell my kidneys (I don't think so anyway), but I think the police would take it pretty seriously if I woke up in a bath of ice with one of them missing."

    Not even slightly comparable. Try again.

  • Kenshin001 #13 4 years ago

    "The argument that a magic sword isn't real, that doesn't make sense to me. You can ask the question, why would somebody buy that? But you can't say it's not worth real money."

    Yes you can. It's a virtual magic sword FFS.

  • Skywise #14 4 years ago

    If you give your neighbours your house keys to look after your plants if you are on a vacation, and you come back into your house to find things missing, I hope the law will guarantee me that the police has to investigate that.

    I play a MMORPG too and the in-game items certainly have value to me, even though they might not be worth anything on the legal market. I think everyone must have some real life items (photo's for example) that are worth nothing on the legal market but that still would have a great emotional value to you.

    The law should be there to prevent people becoming unhappy :-)

  • Davemanz #15 4 years ago

    I'm from Minnesota. The Pioneer Press is absolute shit. Then again, so are the local police. The crime rate is insanely low here, I can't see why they wouldn't take the time to track down the guy's IP and prosecute him. They've got literally nothing else to do.

  • penhalion #16 4 years ago

    @Skywise

    The items in a MMO game are not real. If they really wanted to, square could simply replace them for the guy just by reloading some data from an archive save and then ban the guy who took them in the first place.

    The police can track a missing TV or sofa. However it's petty simply for the MMO company to track these accounts themselves. Why should the police waste time dealing with what amounts to two kids squabbling over game data when they can be out catching killers and rapists.

  • Pike #17 4 years ago

    Is it a burglary when you hand the robber your house keys?

    Wow, what an absolutely astoundingly idiotic sentence.

    Of course it is. If you hand a friend the keys to your house with the intent that they should, for instance, water your plants while you are on vacation, and instead they enter and steal your property the theft is still a crime. Is that really not self explanatory? Your insurance company might be un cooperative, but that is irrelevant to the criminal case against the thief.

  • ED209 #18 4 years ago

    "Small analogy. I'm not technically allowed to sell my kidneys (I don't think so anyway), but I think the police would take it pretty seriously if I woke up in a bath of ice with one of them missing."

    "Not even slightly comparable. Try again. "

    I think you'll find it's a perfect analogy, if you replace "kidneys" with wizard sword and "bath of ice" with "ice land of etherea".
    And police with damn po-leece!

  • zuljin #19 4 years ago

    @toythatkills
    Look if the analogy makes your point moot I'm really sorry, otherwise please point out how exactly it is "not comparable". I'm not in the kidney selling business but I'd say the value of one would be more than comparable to $4k.

    [link url=h ttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/ 22/wirq22.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/22/ixworld.html
    ]http://ww w.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht...[/link]

    And it looks like the Telegraph agrees with me.

  • toythatkills #20 4 years ago

    Sigh.

    If a kidney was 'stolen' it wouldn't be investigated as theft, would it? So the crimes you're comparing are, you might say, not comparable.

    Try again.

  • Skywise #21 4 years ago

    @penhalion: You have a really valid point there, the theft can be easily made undone by the company behind the game. The only thing the police needs to do is to pressure the company to solve it.

    Your last sentence however seems to imply that the police should focus only of the worst crimes which seems like a very bad idea to me. Solving petty crimes deserves attention too imo, although less in comparison of course.

  • convercide #22 4 years ago

    I see no-one has questioned yet the fact he'd managed to play Final Fantasy XI for over four years.

  • wellzy4eva #23 4 years ago

    I knew I'd heard of something like this before [link url=http://w ww.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/06/25
    ]http://ww w.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/0...[/link]

    and that was mid 2004.

    Update: (Although that was currency exchange fraud) [link url=http://uk.gamespot.com/news/2004/06/23/news_6101196.html
    ]http://uk .gamespot.com/news/2004/06/23/n...[/link]

  • MGG #24 4 years ago

    @DarkEdge: "If he gave away the password/details on his account to the bloke who 'took' the items well he's an idiot, if you leave your window open with a sign saying cool things inside and you get robbed you are also an idiot and should expect it to happen. "

    But you SHOULDN'T HAVE TOO. This is whats wrong with society today - it is still theft, no matter how you phrase it. A little more zero tolerance policing to petty things like theft would make a huge difference to society, imo. Now living in a country that has zero tolerance on pretty much every crime (starting with dropping litter and going up from there) and its amazing the difference. Almost zero crime, respect for everyone, zero fear when walking anywhere at night, etc etc. The West should try it some day, its amazing.

  • Velios #25 4 years ago

    In EVE Online I once took a Titan BPO from some Russian dude. This BPO was worth a couple of thousand dollars in real money i guess, but at the end of the day, he himself got this BPO through exploiting game mechanics, so sod him.

    I do occasionally look outside my window for any Russians that might be rustling in the bushes with an AK-47 though lol.

    I must add that I did at no time have access to this guys accounts, that kind of heist is just lame. No, this was a simple case of me refusing to give him back an item that he had handed to me for use.
    Edited by 1 at 05/02/08 @ 09:00

  • felastica #26 4 years ago

    If you did not give permission to remove your possessions but they are taken, this is theft, whether or not you 'gave the keys'.

    As for game items not being worth money, marketers will tell you things are worth exactly what people will pay for them. The fact that these items are 'imaginary' is irrelevant. The entire globe's money markets run largely on imagination.

  • zuljin #27 4 years ago

    @toythatkills
    The point is that you don't know. Kidney theft is pretty much urban legend - so unless we'd get some lawyers in here neither of us would know. If mine was stolen though, I'd be pretty pissed off the culprit was only charged with GBH. I think there'd be a multitude of charges...

  • toythatkills #28 4 years ago

    No, that's not the point at all. What are you talking about now? You're undermining your own argument here, you realise?

    First you tell me that organ theft is the same as the theft of small meaningless fragments of code, and now you're saying you can't tell if it's the same without a lawyer present?

    I'm happy in the knowledge I already have which is no, it's not the same, to suggest otherwise is absurd. If you want to make an analogy in the future please put some thought into it, and if it's clearly erroneous then change it to something else, don't just stick to your guns regardless, you're only wasting everyone's time.

    And to reiterate, no crime has been comitted here unless the guy has actually had his account hacked. And that would be reported to the ISP in the first instance, not the police.

  • khatmandog #29 4 years ago

    theft is theft. if he gave this person his details when they were friends, then hopefully he knows who he is. i do not condone violence under any circumstances, yet i would go pull this fuckers top lip down.
    Edited by 1 at 05/02/08 @ 12:32

  • zuljin #30 4 years ago

    @toythatkills
    "First you tell me that organ theft is the same as the theft of small meaningless fragments of code, and now you're saying you can't tell if it's the same without a lawyer present?"

    Never said it was the same, I said from the start it was an analogy. But now you refer to both as theft? The original reason for posting, was because I had issues with you saying "Value on the black market is irrelevent.", when I don't believe it is.

    The phrase "the point is" in my last post was incorrect English on my part, I meant more that you can't simply assume kidney theft wouldn't be investigated as theft.

  • toythatkills #31 4 years ago

    The value on the black market is irrelevent to how police investigate crime. If an organ was stolen the police would not investigate it just because it had a value on the black market, they'd investigate it because it was assault, attempted murder, whatever. NOT THEFT. How much a kidney is 'worth' is entirely irrelevent.

    This person is trying to have this classed as a crime when the 'items' stolen have no monetary value. The value on the black market has no bearing because it in itself is illegal, or at the least 'illegal' in terms of these items being sold, as it's against the T+Cs.

    Just stop talking now, unless you finally get it.

  • Canyarion #32 4 years ago

    He may have violated the rules, but the comparison with giving a burglar your house keys doesn't make any sense. Yes, it would still be theft. Giving somebody your key isn't telling them to take your stuff. Sure, it's stupid, but it's still theft.

  • toythatkills #33 4 years ago

    It's not theft, because nothing of any value has been stolen. It's like if someone went into your house and starting bottling up all your air and taking it. There has been no theft. At all.

    All you'd be left with if there's no theft would the equivalent of "breaking and entering" but that hasn't happened either because he "gave them the keys."

    The police are right, sorry to disappoint.

  • MGG #34 4 years ago

    @toythatkills: so why is wifi "piggy-backing" illegal? If the person owning the wifi is not paying a per-mb download or has a cap, what are they losing exactly? Isn't this exactly the same?

  • kangarootoo #35 4 years ago

    @Pike

    "Is it a burglary when you hand the robber your house keys?"

    Technically not, as the crime of burglary includes the act of breaking and entering, but it is still theft and you could still be prosecuted as such.

    In this particular case (assuming laws actually existed to protect the player), giving his account access details to a friend would be stupid, but would still not grant that person impunity to steal. If I give one of my bank cards and pin number to someone, it doesn't mean they can freely pinch money from my account without the risk of arrest.


    "So it's only a theft when the police redeems something to be of material value?"

    I think that is a bit of a get out by the cops, as copyright theft is a crime, as is pinching personal property that has no material value. What they are really saying is "a law does not exist that makes this theft".

    Cops don't make new laws, they just enforce existing ones, so they can hardly be blamed in this case.

  • kangarootoo #36 4 years ago

    @MGG

    "so why is wifi "piggy-backing" illegal? If the person owning the wifi is not paying a per-mb download or has a cap, what are they losing exactly? Isn't this exactly the same?"

    Because you are using a service without permission that someone else is paying for. Whether or not the ill effect on the legitimate user is immediately apparent, the principle is enough to amke it illegal. As it happens, bandwidth is a commodity, and the faster your pipe the more you pay. So someone using your BB for free IS costing you money.

    Quite how that unrelated issue crept into this discussion however, I don't know.

  • kangarootoo #37 4 years ago

    "It's not theft, because nothing of any value has been stolen. It's like if someone went into your house and starting bottling up all your air and taking it. There has been no theft. At all."

    Look, all this nonsense is just going in circles made up of bad analogies.

    What defines whether something is illegal or not is whether the act in quesiton is prohibited by law.

    If hoovering up air from someone's house was classed as theft by law, it would be theft, fact.

    If stealing mmo player's widgets was classed as theft by law, it would be theft. Currently in the US, it is not prohibited by law, so its not theft. End of.

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