A man is arrested in Japan on suspicion of using software bots to beat up and rob game characters before selling their virtual possessions for real cash.

[Thoughts]
This is somewhat a scary thought. It is something that is coming closer to reality very quickly, and that is the fact that virtual crimes are starting to be treated as real-world crimes. Technically this crime committed in Japan only violates the Terms and Service and really shouldn't warrant an arrest, but permanent removal from the game service.

Having you account closed has been the usual action taken by game companies, when you violate the ToS...unless the violator causes damage as a result of his/her actions, then legal action would be taken.

With more and more people killing and profiting off of virtual crimes we would see a new movement of charging individuals being charged with real world crimes, for crimes committed online.

There actually might come a time where there might be actual virtual police forces patroling online games. So all those Knights you see walking Stormwind could be at some point actual patrolmen/adminsistrators. The Asian countries have always been more strict when it came to game legislation, but with the recent Hot Coffee incident, don't be surprised if we start seeing major changes in our games.


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