Virtual reality
A 23 year old from Avon & Somerset has discovered that online crime doesn't pay, even if you virtually get away with it.
UK police arrested the man last week for stealing virtual characters and pixelated possessions from other players of the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) RuneScape.
RuneScape, developed by Jagex Games Studio, the UK's largest independent games developer and publisher, is a fantasy based browser game recognised by the Guinness World Records as the world's most popular free MMORPG.
Indeed, it's so popular that players lock themselves in their bedrooms for days in order to slay monsters, collect gold, wave wands at each other and band up to go questing. Certainly beats hanging around the corner shop bumming cigarettes from passersby, anyway.
But just like in the real world, if you're too lazy to actually put in the hours and the hard slog slaying beasts to earn your virtual gold, you can always get ahead with a little help from some real world moolah to kit out your avatar with the latest double bladed axe or extra spikey flail.
But with real cash floating about comes cyber-crime, and in this particular case, a phishing scheme which duped unsuspecting players into giving up their usernames and passwords, leading to a plundering of virtual property.
Jagex's CEO, Mark Gerhard, lamented that account theft and the use of phishing websites had become "a problem facing the entire online games industry," but insisted his firm maintained a "specialist team to combat any law breaking within our games." Only problem is, they're probably orcs.
To supplement Jagex's own team of specialist quest coppers, real bobbies from the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) have also stepped in to lend a hand.
