Robbery – MMO Fallout

It’s a new year and that means new second chances. Back over the winter holidays, Fallout 76 suffered a rather embarrassing exploit which allowed players to steal items from another person’s inventory effectively initiating a forced trade. It appears that Bethesda is finally making good on its promise of compensation.

This time around players are reporting that their inventories of lost items have been replaced along with a promised stipend of atoms. Bethesda’s remedy appears to be to clone a version of the player’s character from before the theft with the offer of a free service to transfer items from the cloned character to the non-cloned, presumably further progressed original character.

Source: Polygon via MassivelyOP

Stealing from other players and duplicating money in a video game can lead to harsh consequences. Suspension of your account, loss of time invested in the game, and being removed from your guild are just a few of them. Stealing from other people and counterfeiting money in real life, however, can lead to jail time, a criminal record, loss of current and potential future jobs, and the embarrassment of everyone knowing you counterfeited money and robbed a person at gunpoint for RuneScape gold.

According to the New York Post, Bajwa faces up to fifteen years in prison for second degree robbery (no comment on the counterfeit money) in a RuneScape cash sale gone sour. Even though Jagex explicitly prohibits the sale of in-game cash, Bajwa attempted to purchase a large sum of gold with what turned out to be counterfeit cash. When the seller realized that the money was fake, Bajwa pulled a pellet gun manufactured to look like a real gun, and forced the seller to transfer the gold at gunpoint. Bajwa was later arrested at his home in Massachusetts.

Of course, the regular news media is already blaming this on video game addiction, no surprise there. Although RuneScape is no stranger to armed robberies.

(Source: New York Post)