Irrc in WoW(for example) all in-game stuff is property of Blizzard. So it cant be stolen coz its not owned by the player.

You can be charge for hacking into a company computer (or even a home one if it can be proven), in the sense that you are breaking and entering. You can also be arrested for trespassing and going into a house/building you dont belong in even if you have the key. So why cant police pursue a charge for someone entering an account they dont belong in?

The whole idea of seeking legal action against internet and electronic crimes is that they are akin to tanglible crimes. The very fact that this guy's virtual items actually have a USD (and yen) value proves that a crime was actually commited. I would say this is equivalent of $4000 worth of DnD books being stolen and police not caring because it is a game.

However, if this guy does want to see justice, he could probably make a case of the perp unlawfully getting his user ID and password. But he would probably have pay for the investigation himself via a private party.

Hety, the fact that it is "Property" of a player or Blizzard, it can still be stolen.

Now, I don't know if the FFXI T and C's are similar to Blizzard's. But in the case of WoW items, there would indeed have been no theft.

All items in WoW are owned by Blizzard, so even though "stolen" from the player, the items would still be in Blizzard's possession, and no theft would have taken place.

I don't know if the same is the case here, or indeed if the police have thought along the same lines. But as for WoW, the case would have been clear.

Good point by Harqir, because the devs have to make all ingame items their possessions in order to make RMT illegal. So by that logic no theft from the Minnesotan would have taken place. But once the "thief" sells the item for real money, is it then the dev's responsibility to press charges?

In WoW there are GMs who act as police to return the items. Its not the police's problem here, its the company who is not acting on a person loosing their items due to fraud. Selling the items for real life cash on the other hand should be considered fencing and should be punished accordingly.

As far as understand with any MMO... all items belong to the game company.. period, only thing we do is pay to use "rent" the items cuz once we stop paying for them we lose access to them. all the MMOs i play basicly say the same things T's and C's with a few varriations based on that game but they all basicly have the same bit with RTM.

this person who wanted to get the police involved on this needs a "Here's Your Sign" award..... badly

many of the mmo world generals are very well in formed on the subject arround RMT and i have very personal experance of this chapps situation. arround 2 years ago i played Legend of Mir and had played it for over 4 years, had over 5 accounts full to bursting. the staff at mir as many other of these mmorpg bosses condem and say u will be punished u will be banned yarda yarda yarda . but in all reality they do very little to stop and in some cases let it happen under the table because of the very serious crime elements that run such account hacking schemes. and for them it is very big bussiness and very profitable as so many buy items/sell items/gold ,accounts on the day of my account hackings if i was to put it in rmt terms my accounts where worth arround £5000, id spent hours playing grinding and then fell foul to a "friend" who turned out to be a well known confidence trickster who was very active on my server. to cut a long story short he got me to down load an addon that was portraied and set up to look like a genuin Mir site. I did some research before down loading it and it was or appeared to be good and proper so i down loaded it, then there was realm shut down as was always happening on Mir so went to bed and thought nothing of it. I went on line to see if realm was up and yep it had been up for about 15 so logged in to account "error incorrect pass word" mmm and yep u guessed the add on was a trojan and key logger that my pc had not detected and poof my accounts where being wiped at that very second. I had some rl friends rang them got them to logg on and sure enough there i was ingame swopping from char to char the guild terrortirity we had just bought was up for sale and my 5 year gaming life was vanishing befor my eyes. I contacted mir satff ,all in all it took Mir staff 12 weeks to sort the matter of my accounts, actulaly return them to me new pass etc empty as they where i was also not allowed to stop paying for them during for that time!!! they did not frezze the accounts instantly as requested would not return or help in any way other than a lecture about the add on side even though it was not against the rules to have it. But in these 12 weeks i did my own digging and detective work I too contacted a solicitor and the police and got told pritty much the same deal police har har har go away and the solicitor yes there is a case but it will cost u.
We have some computor buff friends and all in all i had the full details of the chapp/group/peeps who where activly hacking on mir , all the details needed for mir staff/police to act all i got told was it is not our responibility or our duty to replace any stolen items. here comes the term "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" lol
Ryan air .com and 2 return tickets to italy plz is exactly what i did told the managing director im comming to get u and off i went. maddness u say but this is when the some of the scary facts came to place. the manager took us to dinner with the entire mir staff and we had a very long lunch talking about lots of issues like the fact that registers arround 30% hacking a day etc. Glimpsing the world that runs the gold farmers/ hackers and farm offices was very scary and its makes tones of cash most of it is probably run by groups similar to Triades, and the Chinese Maffia to the Italian Maffia underworld circles there have even been unconfirmed reports of hits on others croaching on the "Farmers gold fields" and on some of the aisan servers that have there own shops that sell the ingame items gold for real life for the actual game lol...... even though we gave them all the needed stuff to stop this person(s) hacking all they did was ban the account that did the hack and that ip stream. yep all they needed to do was get new ip and re do game!! But it all the do as they have every day attacks on there server systems from big fish trying to steal on very large scales but the internet world of vurtal items is not vastly policed as its very hard to do as it is such a vast world and a single case like mine and this chapps in the U.S would take huge amounts of cash to look in to even though a crime has been committed. so they dont bother Yet again Crime does pay they take a few thousand a day from many people, have many people that buy it from them so it win win for them and yet the gamers get ripped off and no compensation it really sucks. why wont some one take them on and get help /compensation for the many of us who pay to play and get nothing in return??? ( i got a lovely 4 day trip to italy and a free lunch and a whole lot of insite to long to list to a world that is really quite fightening and eye opening and today im much wiser and careful with who i trust and what i do on line)
As to the items belong to the companies yes very true but is it not also ture that you are realy the ones having thses crimes done to you ie some crime boss is making millions from your customers through many different acts of fraud and is it not the companies responsibility to provde propper customer service and support in any case of forgery regarding your virtual items linked to the paied accounts of customers and indeed try to help i,e compensation when there game lively hood is stolen there money realy as they pay to play,For many a total account clear out will mean they dont play anymore quit your games. Can u realy afford to lose that kind of customer bussiness daily as this kind of virtual crime gets bigger and bigger as more and more Crime teams see the easy money made from the serious lack of punishment policing of virtual items??!!!!!

The Police refused to take action not because they understand the terms and conditions of the user agreement, but rather simply they don't take video games or their real world implications seriously.

Imagine the response the guy got at the police station from the 50yo desk jockey cop when he reported his plight. I'm sure he was laughed at and dismissed.

What he's saying is that it can't be stolen from the player since Blizzard "owns" it, therefore the player doesn't have rights to reclaim anything.