An Analysis Of Illegally Acquired Virtual Property In Online Games

Obtaining virtual property of online games illegally refers to obtaining virtual accounts and passwords for online games through information systems,transferring or generating game currency and game equipment in online games against the will of game companies and network users.In the “Peking University Magic Weapon” legal database of judicial cases,full-text retrieval was conducted by using “online games”and “virtual properties”,and samples of judicial judgments were obtained by selecting criminal cases.Upon sorting out these samples,it was discovered that judicial practice in different provinces and periods often involves disputes between crime and non-crime and between this crime and another.Criminal liability for illegal acquisition of virtual property of online games differs based on the contradiction between the property crime theory and the computer crime theory.It is imperative to adequately address the criminal liability of illegal acquisition of virtual property of online games under the new network crime environment.With reference to the “Peking University Magic Weapon” judicial case legal database as the research object,this paper undertook a statistical analysis of the existing cases to examine the current issues concerning the sentencing for this type of offense in Chinese courts,analyzed them,and suggested some possible solutions based on four selected representative cases that were similar in criminal acts,but had different sentencing methods.This paper briefly illustrated the criminal facts and sentencing procedure of “Zhong’s illegal acquisition of ‘Yuanbao’”,“Yu’s and Xu’s illegal acquisition of ‘gold’”,“Zhong’s and Jiang’s illegal acquisition of ‘Xianyu’”and “Li’s and Yang’s illegal acquisition of ‘DNF items’ ”,and extracted the controversial focus of research.The first is the nature of illegally acquiring the virtual property of online games.Considering this behavior only as stealing other people’s property ignores the network game-related data attribute of virtual property,and only accessing other people’s computer data illegally ignores its property aspects.It is essential to consider property and data attributes based on their natural and technical attributes.Therefore,acquiring virtual property of online games illegally is not only stealing other people’s property but also stealing other people’s computer data.The second is the value determination of virtual property in online games.The calculation method of official selling price can only be used by the perpetrator to obtain illegally the virtual properties of online games that the victim purchased directly from the game company.Other methods of calculating the virtual properties of online games also fail to classify them correctly.It is necessary to consider the value subject and formation mode factors and classify the optimal methods for different existing computing standards to determine the amount of virtual property value of online games.The third is the crimes number of illegally acquiring the virtual property of online games.Identifying this kind of behavior as an implicated offenses does not meet the two required acts,and as a joinder of offenses ignores that the act violates two legal interests.It is more reasonable to regard the perpetrator as an imaginative joinder of offenses based on the premise that the illegal acquisition of online game property is only an act but violates several legal interests.