We all know, Facebook gaming Gaint Zinga sells virtual poker chips to Facebook users.
And as these chips cost gamers money, hence they can be treated as real products. Or aren’t they?
Interestingly, this is the question which is being debated in a British court where a hacker, charged with hacking into Zynga, and then transferring 400 billion virtual poker chips (worth about $12 million) to his account and proceeded to sell them on the black market; is being tried.
The defendants of the hacker are putting a plea that the court should look whether their client’s act of hacking actually constituted theft, since virtual poker chips are, well, virtual; and Zynga can just create as many as it wants. To this the court answered by saying that, yes, virtual goods can be treated like property and adding chips to your account amounts to theft.
I agree with the court’s reasoning, as even though Zynga can make as many chips as it wants; but 4 billion chips taken away will introduce that much surplus chips to Zynga network, if it plans to make up for the vacancy; as both the hacker and the company will be introducing 4 billion chips each to the network. If Zynga decides not to do so, then although the chips will be reintroduced by hacker, but Zynga will not be benefiting from them. So it amounts to theft.
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