Getting Mugged In a Computer Game?

That's right. A man has been arrested in Japan for computer game crime. He was using bots to beat up player characters, take their stuff and then sell on the computer game black market in the computer game called Lineage II. Computer games are meant for entertainment, period. People sometimes get a bit further into them than they should. GTA brings that to mind. People have picked up items in these digitized games and turned around and sold them for real money thousands of dollars in some cases. Since there is a perceived value and people have paid money for it, it can be stolen and that's just what happened here. It doesn't matter that all this is being done on something that will be obsolete in a year or so. Heck EverQuest set up a network on its own to be able to buy and sell stuff for real money. A number of nave players were beaten and robbed in-game and had their virtual objects stolen by bots. The items were then fenced on an auction website in Japan. The bot deal made the situation impossible for the player to win. Some stories went on to discuss this as another form of cyber crime and