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| Hackers are undermining one of Second Life's biggest virtual economies. |
Hackers are stealing Second Life's player-made lootboxes and selling them for profit
By Steven Messner
Second Life is a virtual world stereotypically thought
to be steeped in cyber sex, but beyond that thin layer of prurience is a thriving community of artists creating everything from lavish Beverly Hills-style
mansions to the eyeliner your avatar wears. Its economy is a staggering $500
million USD machine of virtual ecommerce, with many players making a real-world
living by creating, marketing, and selling digital products. But those same
creators are locked in a long battle against groups of cheaters who, using a
series of exploits, are stealing their products and selling them for profit on Second Life's Marketplace. It's potentially costing Second
Life's virtual artists tens of thousands of real dollars and highlights the
nightmare of defending your intellectual property on the internet.
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| How exploits are undermining one of Second Life's biggest virtual economies. |
Second Life is unique in the MMO genre for many
reasons. It's not so much a game as it is a social space that players can
customize however they like. Called 'sims,' these sandboxes are spaces that
players fill with all manner of player-designed objects. Unlike other MMOs,
however, these objects aren't created using some in-game crafting system, but
built with software like 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, and a lot more. Some players
build mansions and throw elegant parties while others own retail stores that
sell their hand-crafted apparel. And, yes, some just want to have cybersex.
Second Life's creators were on
track to take home $60 million USD collectively in 2017.
But it's also unique in that, unlike most MMOs,
players can exchange Second Life's in game currency (called Lindens) for US dollars. Peter Gray,
who was Linden Lab's senior director of global communication before leaving
early this year, told me via email that Second Life's creators were on track to
take home $60 million USD collectively in 2017. It's what's led many players to
turn Second Life into a full-time job. But for two years now, those same
creators have also had to deal with the frustrating rise of 'dupers' or copybotters —players who illegally duplicate their items for
profit using exploits.
"It's very much a big deal," Oobleck
Allagash tells me. He's the owner of PocketGacha an innovative HUD-based storefront that works with
several designer brands in Second Life to sell their products. Since launching
in August PocketGacha PocketGacha has made "more than tens of millions
of Linden" in sales from "tens of thousands" of customers. While
many creators in Second Life were vaguely aware that duping was an issue,
Allagash became a unifying voice in the community because PocketGacha's backend
system allowed him to track sold inventory across multiple brands and see how
widespread the issue was becoming. It's how he became aware that the
Marketplace was frequently featuring items for sale at seemingly infinite
quantities and exorbitantly low prices—both telltale signs that they had been
duplicated.
Allagash tells me that, in Second Life, one of the
most popular ways to shop is through games of 'gacha' or, as its traditionally
known in Japan, 'gashapon." "It's a game where you have a machine that you
play, paying typically about 50 Linden [$0.25 USD] for each go, and you are
given either a common item or, if you're lucky, you'll eventually get a rare
item which is typically more robust in its design," Allagash explains.
"It can be a vehicle or a house, for example." Some gachas might
award or make up articles of clothing in a complete outfit, while others, like the popular Kunst
brand, offer meticulously crafted
themed decor.
On the surface there's little
difference between gachas and the controversial loot boxes that are appearing
in many games like Star Wars Battlefront 2, but there's several key
distinctions. For one, these items have tangible value. Each play is always
rewarded with an item, and any you win can be resold on Second Life's
Marketplace for Lindens and then converted into US dollars. Secondly, the
proceeds of these items goes to their respective creators, not Linden Lab
(though it does collect a small transaction fee for items sold on the
Marketplace). And for those who hate the gambling aspect of gacha games and
loot boxes, many creators also offer a buyout price to purchase the set in
full.
"It develops sort of a
trading atmosphere where people will trade for commons and rares,"
Allagash explains. "There's a whole cottage industry that has developed in
Second Life of people reselling a lot of these items that they get."
In Second Life, some items are
'copy' items, which can be copied and pasted multiple times inside of a sim.
Most gacha items are different. Called 'transfers,' they can only be placed in
a simulation once, and if you sell it, it's gone from you inventory. Like
Magic: The Gathering, it's a market valued by the scarcity of sought-after rare
products, and Second Life's dupers are undermining the whole thing.
"Some bad guys have figured out how to duplicate as many of these
transfer items as they want," Allagash says. "You can duplicate
thousands of them, and they have real value on the reseller market." While
the exact exploit is a closely guarded secret, the general idea is that these
dupers strategically "crash" a sim, which somehow allows them to
create infinite duplicates of an item. Dupers can even duplicate in-game gift
cards for various player-owned stores, letting them buy anything for free.
Buyer beware
According to several players I spoke with, it's been a problem for years
that Linden Lab only acknowledged in November after mounting pressure from the
creator community. "Recently, we closed an exploit that fraudulent gacha
re-sellers had used," the company said in an update posted on November 2. "Our
governance team can now catch them when they attempt the cheating method that
we have already fixed."
Second Life's creators hoped it
would be an end to duping. Inevitably, it wasn't. I spoke with one creator who
requested to remain anonymous. Their brand is one of the more popular in Second
Life and it's become a full-time job that earns them a healthy income. Days
after launching a new product line after Linden Lab allegedly shut the exploit
down, they found a suspicious listing on the Marketplace offering the entire product
line in one bulk package for almost 1300 Lindens less than the competition.
I don't even like to imagine [the
damage to my business] most of the time.
Second Life's Marketplace doesn't let customers see
metrics like units sold, so this creator and Allagash had to get creative. The
maximum amount of quantity that can be purchased at one time is ten, so they
began buying up stock to see how much this alleged duper had. It was an
impossible amount. During my interview with Allagash, he demonstrated this by
sharing his screen with me via Skype. I watched as he purchased almost 40 full
sets of this creator's product line from the alleged duper. He then showed me
PocketGacha's backend tracking system, which operates similarly to any retail
store, to show how unlikely it was that one person could have potentially over
a hundred copies of this particular item when only several hundred had been
given away through the gacha game.
Making matters worse, this
alleged duper was the most popular listing for these particular items on the
Marketplace, effectively tanking their value. "The damage is huge,"
the anonymous creator tells me. "I'm the one paying for the subscriptions
for the programs to create my products, I'm paying for marketing, I'm paying
for the cost of running the sims—everything to keep my business going. Then
there's the emotional and time investment into the work. The amount of time it
takes to make a gacha release, for example, can lead to 16-hour days. I don't
even like to imagine [the damage to my business] most of the time. Over a day
or two it might just be a hundred dollars maybe, but over years…"
One thing that isn't clear is what these dupers hope
to gain, but Allagash and the creator I spoke to both insist it has to be
real-world money. "They're clearly not just doing this to be able to have
fun in Second Life. They're making significant money," Allagash tells me.
Because Second Life's virtual economy is susceptible to money laundering,
Linden Lab has a strict process for withdrawing US dollars. Allagash says that if it's
possible these dupers have found ways to undermine the game, it's plausible
they might have found loopholes in withdrawing their money too.
Creators aren't the only ones finding it hard to
compete with dupers, either. As Allagash tells me, Second Life has a massive
economy of professional resellers. These players gamble on gachas and then sell
the items they receive to ultimately turn a profit themselves. It can be a very
lucrative business, according to one reseller—until dupers get involved, that
is. "When [dupers] steal designs to sell I no longer invest in a set,
depriving the creator of money,"Sushnik Samoas, a reseller, tells me. "The expected return on a
copied set plummets. Others may not be quite as scientific as I am, but surely
realize they are bleeding money and also stop playing a set giving the thief
free reign on the copied virtual goods."
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