A 40-year-old South Korean has copied items in the MMORPG AIKA Online and sold them in-game over several years. These are said to have had a total value of approximately 17 million euros. The developer sued the man, who has now been sentenced to prison.
What were the allegations against the defendant? According to the Korean website ThisGame, the player reportedly discovered by chance that a special item can be duplicated during server maintenance.
This item is said to have been copied a total of 2,630 times between December 2017 and May 2019. According to the public prosecutor’s office, the damage caused by this duplication amounts to approximately 23 billion won (about 17 million euros).
The defendant was reportedly offered before the trial to pay compensation of approximately 750,000 euros. However, an out-of-court settlement did not take place.
Sentencing is severe as gaming has established itself as a sports culture
How did the trial turn out? The developer Hanbit went to court and won. The court emphasized that the company itself has the responsibility to maintain the servers properly and to avoid such errors.
However, the gaming industry has now also established itself as a sports culture, and illegal transactions must be prevented and punished as much as possible.
The defendant was therefore sentenced on April 20 to 1 year and 6 months in prison, and he was also given 3 years of probation and 80 hours of community service.
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What kind of game was this anyway? AIKA Online is a Korean MMORPG that was released in 2009 and was playable in the West for a while, but has since been discontinued here.
It offers various classes, quests, and story in an open world, as well as five different nations that battle each other in PvP. PvP thus plays a significant role in this MMORPG.
Do the dupes have consequences for the economy in the game? According to the developer, 96% of the copied items have already been removed. There are said to be no economic problems in the MMORPG.
Dupes in MMORPGs keep occurring, but rarely do severe consequences follow
Are item duplications a problem for us too? Yes, they also occur frequently in the West. Particularly tragic were the dupes recently in New World.
- There, new ways to duplicate items or gold appeared almost weekly.
- The entire trade even had to be disabled repeatedly.
- These many duplications harmed the economy, which according to Twitch streamer shroud was also a reason for the declining player numbers in New World.
However, even in Lost Ark, players became super rich, and even in established games like WoW Classic, there was an item dupe in 2019 (via Ownedcore).
However, in the West, such duplications usually only lead to temporary or permanent account bans. Rarely do developers opt for complete hardware bans. However, such dupes in MMORPGs rarely end up in court.
In Korea, however, stricter measures are taken. There, gaming, and especially e-sports, has become significantly more popular. E-sports is even increasingly becoming a national sport. Huge events with thousands of spectators are not uncommon.
There are even politicians who want to change laws in favor of e-sports players:
Politician wants to change the law so that superstar Faker can continue playing LoL.
