A Brazilian streamer was scammed and robbed in the German MMORPG Tibia while live streaming his gameplay. He fell for a clever trick that played on his emotions. The scammer deceived him into believing that the streamer was being accused of misconduct in the official forum of the MMORPG.
This was the situation:
- The Brazilian Moutinho was playing the MMORPG Tibia with his level 523 character.
- He was streaming his gameplay on “livepix.gg,” a Portuguese-language service where content creators can earn money. He had set a donation goal of 1,000 Brazilian Reais, which is about 190 €.
- Suddenly, he received a message.
Scammer pretends to be a guild leader and says: Streamer is in trouble in the forum
This is how the scam worked: The scammer joined the Discord channel the streamer was in and pretended to be one of the leaders of the streamer’s guild by adapting the nickname.
The alleged guild leader then told the streamer that he had behaved incorrectly in Tibia and there was a thread about him in the official Tibia forum. The streamer was said to have harmed someone else in Tibia, causing their death.
Moutinho was encouraged to comment on the accusations in the forum and clear his name.
The alleged guild leader then provided the streamer with a link to the forum thread. However, to see the thread, the player had to log in with their forum account, which simultaneously represents the game account.
The cruel part: The supposed forum link only looked like an official link, but in reality, it led to a duplicate of the forum with all tabs and windows – a pure fake designed to capture the player’s account data.
This was the consequence: The moment the hacker had the streamer’s account data and password, he logged into the streamer’s account and kicked him out of the ongoing game.
Then the scammer deleted all of his characters, preventing the streamer from accessing the account. Quickly, the scammer restored the characters and emptied the streamer’s chars, stealing the best items and the real currency Tibia-Coins.
While the streamer quickly realized something was wrong, by the time he noticed his mistake, he had already been logged out of the account, and it was too late to react.
The Brazilian YouTube channel “Tibia Ferumbrinha,” which reported on the incident, warns: This can happen to anyone, in the game and in real life. What happened to the streamer should serve as a lesson for everyone.
We embed the video about Moutinho’s fate:
Hack plays cleverly with MMORPG players’ emotions
This is what’s behind it: The hacker takes advantage of some peculiarities of Tibia here. Above all, the fact that the forum account corresponds to the game account is a gateway for such hacks.
Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the hack cleverly plays on emotions: The fact that unjustified public accusations
are being made against oneself triggers such a strong emotional reaction that one forgets all caution.
More about the German MMORPG Tibia, which is being developed in Regensburg:
