Posts Tagged MMOs

There have been several sites that have posted about how, according to Symantec claimed that World of Warcraft would be used by the “bad guys” to launder money. I was confused by knowing Blizzard’s stance on Real Money Transactions (RMT, the illegal purchasing of in game currency with real money by a third “unauthorized” party ) and microtransactions (legal exchange of real money for in game items or game currency) I found this a bit odd, so I search for the report and found it. A bit of digging found this:

Many PVWs (persistent virtual world) and MMOGs allow players to conduct real-money transactions (RMTs) in virtual worlds. Players
can use credit cards or other payment methods to purchase virtual credits and then exchange those credits
with players in other countries, where they may be withdrawn back into local currencies. These RMTs give
rise to a de facto international monetary system. There are even exchanges in place for trading (virtual)
currency across virtual worlds or different games.

This is the text imply’s that the maker of the games allows the RMTs but if follow the footnote and read the referred story:

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/14/100255&tid=209

We learn that is third party services (services not allowed under the blizzard TOS and EULA), not the game it’s self. To be honest this type of transaction could occur in almost any online community (I.e. EBay, craigslist) that allows persons to list items for sale.

Symantec is partly correct but the money laundering threat is not really in the game but in the third party RMT sites.

Internet Security Threat Report