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Comment by Kevin_S | Hacker News Reader

RS was the perfect game for me and dramatically changed my life. Started when I was 12, played for YEARS slowly getting better.

Discovered staking and scamming at the duel arena. Invented a new scam and made bils. Made a sizeable chunk over a couple years (enough to pay all my bills in college and a LOT of beer money). Got into botting with some friends, made a little money doing that too.

My experience with RS led me to an interest in economics, and I'm now an accounting PhD student about to graduate. My bro got into coding bots, and is now an SWE doing high level work.

I love the game to pieces, and it isn't because I made money playing.

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> Discovered staking and scamming at the duel arena. Invented a new scam and made bils. Made a sizeable chunk over a couple years (enough to pay all my bills in college and a LOT of beer money)

Do you feel any remorse or regret about scamming people out of thousands of dollars? I am a bit surprised that you are bragging about this sort of unethical\illegal behavior on an account directly tied to your real world identity.

Scamming in games is part of the game. Eve, Runescape, Path of Exile, Ultima Online, etc. These all add friction to trade and uncertainty to in game interactions and allow people to attempt to carve out a scammer career in the game. If it is allowed by the rules of the game then it is part of the game. A part of which players ought to be wary.

In Ultima and Eve various groups kept/keep tabs on the scammers and criminals. In Path of Exile, there is a group called The Forbidden Trove that helps the community reduce the risk of being scammed, along with providing dedicated high-reliability traders to get extra income by showing their reliable non-scammy behavior over a long period of time. These are all interesting interactions and systems that developers could totally short circuit with other design choices, but have chosen not to.

On the other hand, being scammed definitely sucks.

RuneScape was so famous for player scams it's a miracle anyone was willing to open the trading window at all.

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