Virtual wars for real money: How the gaming industry became a testing ground and gold mine for cyberfraud

[Professor]

Cyberfraud in the gaming industry: from account theft to the illegal sale of in-game currency (RMT).​

The gaming industry, with its billion-dollar turnover, virtual economies, and millions of emotionally engaged users, has become the perfect environment for the evolution of cyberfraud. This isn't just account theft — it's a complex ecosystem of illegal services, money laundering, and exploitation of gaming systems, where the lines between gaming, business, and crime are blurred.

1. Account Takeover (ATO) - Basic Resource​

Goals: High-value accounts with unique items (skins, collectible cards), high in-game currency, linked payment methods.

• Methods:
  • Credential stuffing: Passing leaked logins/passwords from other services (players often use the same password everywhere).
  • Game-specific phishing: Fake emails/sites claiming to be "from support" or about "winning the lottery" in a game, asking you to "verify your account."
  • Stealers: Malware disguised as cheats, mods, or "free" game giveaways. They steal session cookies, logins, passwords, and even two-factor authentication codes.
  • Social engineering: Hacking through answers to secret questions ("first pet's nickname") that the player may have revealed on social media.
• Monetization: Selling your account on the black market, "stripping" (transferring all valuable items to your account), using linked cards to purchase in-game currency.

2. Illegal Real-Money Trading (RMT) – The Core of the Shadow Economy​

Selling in-game valuables (gold, items, resources, characters) for real money, circumventing the game and platform rules. This is the basis of "cyberslavery" and money laundering.

• How the chain works:
  1. Extraction of valuables:
     • Botting: Thousands of computers are rented or infected, where bots play 24/7, farm resources, and perform routine actions.
     • Cyberslavery (Gold Farming): Low-paid workers (often in Southeast Asian countries) work in sweatshop conditions to manually farm resources in games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Lost Ark.
     • Duping: Exploiting vulnerabilities in game code to duplicate items or currency.
  2. Cashing out and selling:
     • There are entire RMT websites and stores (often legal in their jurisdictions) that act as intermediaries.
     • Trading through Steam/CS:GO marketplaces for "Steam balance", which is then converted into real money through third parties (with a loss of 20-40%).
     • Direct sales through darknet forums and Telegram channels.
• Risks for the player-purchaser: The account may be banned by the developer for participating in RMT. The purchase may be made with a stolen card, which will result in a ban and investigation. Items may be confiscated as being obtained dishonestly.

3. Fraud with in-game stores and payments​

• Carding on gaming platforms (Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, App Store): Purchasing games and in-game currency with stolen cards. The goods are quickly transferred to "clean" accounts for resale or cashing out.
• Chargeback Fraud: A player purchases in-game currency, receives it, and then reverses the payment through their bank, keeping both the money and the currency. Platforms try to combat this by banning accounts, but it's a money-losing business.
• Phishing "help" from a friend: In multiplayer games, the scammer writes, "Give me your rare item temporarily, I'll copy it (duplicate it) and give you back double the amount." After handing over the item, the scammer disappears.

4. Skimming and scams in eSports/streaming​

• Stream donation scams: Using stolen cards to donate to streamers to "stand out" and then canceling the payment. Or phishing links in stream chat "to a prize draw."
• Match-fixing in esports: Players/teams deliberately lose matches by placing large bets on bookmakers. This has reached the level of organized crime.
• Selling "boosts" and "leveling up" (Boosting): Not exactly a scam, but a gray market. Players pay to increase rank or complete content, disrupting the game ecosystem. Boosting accounts are often hacked or cheated, leading to bans.

5. Money Laundering through Gaming Assets​

Games with open trading (like CS:GO, Dota 2 with their item marketplace ) have become an ideal tool.

1. Placement stage: The criminal uses dirty money (for example, from a crypto wallet) to purchase cheap in-game items (skins) through fake accounts.
2. Layering: Performs multiple trades between one's own accounts, artificially inflating the price of a particular item.
3. Integration stage: An expensive item is sold through the legitimate Steam marketplace or to a third party. The resulting balance is "clean" Steam, which can be spent on games or converted into real money at a loss through intermediaries.

Valve and the authorities are fighting this by introducing restrictions on trading, but the system remains vulnerable.

Fight and Defense: A Two-Way War​

• From the developers/publishers (Blizzard, Valve, Riot Games):
  • Anti-bot systems (Warden, VAC, Easy Anti-Cheat).
  • Strict ban policy for RMT and cheating.
  • Implementation of hardware 2FA (for example, via an app).
  • Tracking abnormal trading patterns (sharp price increases, mass transfers).
• From the players' side:
  • Use unique passwords and 2FA.
  • Never use cheats or enter data on third-party websites.
  • Not participating in RMT supports the criminal ecosystem.
  • Beware of "too good" offers in chat.

Conclusion: Games as a model for the future of cybercrime​

The gaming industry has become a pilot zone for developing fraudulent schemes that will later migrate to the "big" world:

• Virtual economies have surpassed the economies of small countries in complexity.
• Digital assets (NFTs, skins) have real value, but their legal status is unclear.
• The emotional involvement of players makes them easy prey for phishing and social engineering.

Fraud in games isn't just a child's play. It's a fully-fledged sector of the shadow economy, with a value chain, specialization, and an international division of labor. Combating it is no longer simply a question of in-game fairness, but part of the fight against money laundering, cyberslavery, and organized cybercrime. In the near future, regulators (like FinCEN) may begin applying the same AML/KYC rules to large-scale gaming transactions as they do to banks, ultimately blurring the line between the gaming world and the real financial system.