“THIS IS OUR final offer. Are you ready to sign the contract?”
The man I spoke to said nothing, his eyes glued to the majestic view. Hawkish silhouettes of dozens of spaceships were set against the background of a white-green planet. They surrounded the flagship, an enormous destroyer rigged with an asteroid cannon. I knew that the entire universe of COSMOS had no more than ten such colossi.
“We’re counting on your word,” the man said slowly. “After all, this is a huge amount.”
“As soon as you sign the contract, all of it will become the property of your alliance.”
The in-game wallet blinked, indicating a new payment. The number of digits was awe-inspiring—I had never seen such a sum on my account. It was the biggest deal of my life.
Keeping my glee at bay, I confirmed the transaction and nodded at the buyer.
I had just sold an entire space fleet. Too bad it hadn’t been mine.
I was only a middleman in the deal. Not quite officially, though—the real owner of the ships was convinced that I represented the buyer, while the buyer thought I acted on the behalf of the seller. A little bit of cunning, psychology, and social engineering, and I got a tidy sum in my pocket.
Actually, that was my profession. I was a trader of in-game items.
“When can we collect the ships?”
“Very soon. In a few minutes,” I replied with a smile.
There was only one thing left to do—transfer the money, minus my fee, to the real seller. Cheating them wasn’t part of my plan; the sum was too big. I was bound to get into a lot of trouble if I decided to appropriate it. It was better to settle for the fee.
I found the account number of the real owner of the fleet, entered the numbers, and activated the transaction.
Transaction denied. Please contact the administrators to learn more.
The next moment, I received a red message spanning the entire screen.
Your account has been blocked on suspicion of fraud.
* * *
Cat: So that’s how the story goes. I can’t log in from any of my accounts or create a new one.
Humorist U: You got banned…permanently—both by your ID and hardware. Congrats! Try sending an email to the admins begging them to unblock you.
Cat: I did. The answer’s the same…blah, blah, blah, RMT, get lost. I still have tons of money on my accounts. I’ll be torn apart.
Humorist U:Agreed. NOT fun.
Cat: Yeah, I’m totally screwed.
Humorist U: There’s some of my money there, too.
Cat: What do you suggest?
Humorist U: I dunno; I need to think. See ya.
Irritated, I banged on the keyboard, closing the chat window, then once again switched to COSMOS ONLINE to see a big red notification:
YOU ARE BANNED!
I couldn’t believe my luck. A huge deal had just gone wrong, leaving a vast sum of in-game currency on the blocked account. The seller wouldn’t get their money, the buyer wouldn’t get their ships, and both would see me as a fraud. The COSMOS admins didn’t give a damn; they had just cut me off from the game for good. Twelve accounts that had been a stable source of income for almost five years and, most importantly, a swag of property connected to virtual wallets were no longer available.
So how much had I lost? At least several dozen millions of in-game currency held on the accounts, about as much in items and equipment, plus the cost of the accounts themselves, considering the high-level characters they contained. Tens of thousands of terro in real money and the giant sum for the ships made it astronomical. I felt scared. From the looks of it, I owed money I didn’t have.
It was a resounding defeat. I had invested five years of my life into the game. It seemed to be the winner among the VRMMOs that had swept over the world after the advent of neurointerface—total immersion, a seamless world, and most importantly, an opportunity to deposit and withdraw real money. If you found a way to make money inside the game, you could live comfortably in the real world.
I had always been a hardcore gamer, having studied the world of COSMOS inside and out and attempted numerous ways of earning before finally finding my favorite occupation: trade. Step by step, I gained reputation and made connections, creating my merchant empire. I could find and sell anything—from an in-game resource to an exceedingly rare item—act as a mediator, or help with the delicate issue of cashing out. The monopoly on financial transactions belonged to the administration, but as always, a lot of dealers fed at the trough, immediately resulting in a black market and clandestine gold-sellers. There were always people who didn’t want to wait, wishing to buy low, sell high, and avoid paying the tax. They were our clientele.
My partner and I created COSMOGOLD, an underground Internet portal where anyone could bypass the rules to exchange in-game currency for real money, order an in-game item, or clinch a shady bargain. In all modesty, COSMOGOLD quickly became popular. Nick was in charge of the website, managed the operations, and controlled the marketing, while I used my in-game connections to act as a middleman, maintaining a stable inflow of currency. For a long time, the admins turned a blind eye to our work, and it seemed like we would string them along forever.
Until one day, I got banned, completely and irrevocably, by my hardware ID and retinal imprint read by the VR capsule at logging in. The way into COSMOS was closed for good.
So, where was I? I had fifteen hundred terro left on several card accounts, around a thousand in cash at home, and…
“Alena!” I called my wife, who was watching TV in the bedroom. “Come over here, will you?”
My dark-haired sleeping beauty was wearing a crimson robe that revealed her long legs. Annoyed, she stuck her head out from behind the door.
“What?”
“Can you send me the bills?”
“Bills?” She came closer, yawning. “Which exactly?”
“Credit, utility, our subscriptions, everything.”
“All of them? Why?” she asked me, surprised.
“I want to establish our budget.”
My calculations were simple, and they sent shivers down my spine. Mortgage, credit payments for the capsule, utility bills, smart house subscription, wireless Internet access, and other small expenses totaled more than three thousand terro a month. Over the recent years, COSMOS had been making enough money for me to believe that it would always be like that.
I had no safety net, and the money I had wasn’t enough to bay the existing bills. I had only a month to fix the situation. The laws of the Confederacy were cruel to non-paying citizens, and if I didn’t find some money, I could start having problems resulting in a trial, foreclosure, and loss of social status, plus a blackmark on my credit history that would never let me get credit. I didn’t like those prospects.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I shook my head, dismissing the dark thoughts. I still had COSMOGOLD, our online portal with lots of linked accounts and property in various games. My partner—strong as ever—and I were sharing the profits, and it had been a while since I took my share.
I needed to sleep on it. The next day, I would ask Nick to transfer the money I was due and discuss the situation while we were at it. Maybe we could figure something out. Worst-case scenario; that amount would last me two or three months until everything hopefully worked out.
As I closed the annoying windows of COSMOS ONLINE with the BANNED sign—a real eyesore!—I misclicked and opened an obnoxious colorful 3D advertisement. “THE SPHERE OF WORLDS AWAITS THOSE WHO ARE WORTHY,” the glossy banner said. Just like in any other fantasy game, there were pictures of a voluptuous female elf wearing an armored bikini and a ruthless-looking overly muscular orc holding an axe—just the usual. I sighed, closed the window, and headed to bed.
* * *
I checked my email first thing the next morning. Unfortunately, all my requests to the COSMOS support team, submitted from various email accounts as well as on behalf of my banned characters, received a standard write-off response: You have been banned for violating the developer’s terms of service. Paragraph... blah, blah. RMT!
I was worse off than I had thought the day before. I wasn’t the only one affected. Apparently, the administration had long since cast its net, looking for shady traders of in-game currency. A lot of accounts got blocked, and anyone directly or indirectly connected to RMT was caught in the crossfire.
The official section of the COSMOS website featured the result of the ongoing operation ANTI-RMT:
* About a thousand accounts directly associated with RMT permanently banned…
* From one to three trillion frozen on RMT wallets…
* Tens of thousands of RMT transactions canceled…
The forums were a mess. Threads were popping up all over: WHERE’S MY MONEY??!?!?!; WTF> MY WALLET HAS NEGATIVE THREE BILLION CREDITS???; MONEY GONE FROM MY ACCOUNT; I’VE BEEN BANNED, HELP!; and so on and so forth. Feeling uneasy, I opened the browser and went to our online store. It was unavailable, as if the servers were down.
The nagging icon of the Courier, an instant messenger, appeared on my screen. Someone was requesting a conversation. Unknown caller, hmm… I put on my headphones and clicked the speaker icon.
I recognized the calm voice of my latest client, the alliance leader who hadn’t received the ships. He was inside the game; in the background, I could hear a woman’s voice belonging to a COSMOS starship AI.
“So, you recognize me,” he said, correctly guessing the reason for my silence. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said slowly. “I was banned. I’m trying to figure out a solution.”
“See, we’ve already found out that you’re not the owner of the ships,” the voice said softly. “You’ve tricked us. A deal’s out of the question. We want our money back.”
“It’s impossible. It’s on a blocked account.”
“Cat, that’s your problem.” The voice was scarily measured. “We’ll accept an equivalent amount in real money.”
“It’s impossible. Listen, it’s an emergency, everyone got—”
“It’s you who should listen, Cat!” he said, interrupting me. “I think you misunderstand something. It’s not my money. It belongs to our alliance, to lots of people. You need to give it back.”
“Contact the COSMOS administration to return it,” I said slowly.
“It’s you we made a deal with.” The voice chuckled. “So, you don’t want to do this the easy way…”
Not seeing a point in further conversation, I cut the call off. My contact apparently wanted to talk more, as the incoming call icon blinked again. I had to block the bothersome number. Where had he gotten my contact information, anyway? I could understand his anger—the scope of the deal was enormous; it was a painful blow to a thousand-player alliance—an astronomical sum. But what could I do? Only offer my sympathy. I had nothing to compensate their losses with.
Putting aside those unpleasant reflections, I dove into the depths of the web, studying the official forums. The extent and the fallout from the wave of bans were disastrous. Everyone who had sold or exchanged in-game currency bypassing the administration or used third-party applications, bots, macros, or scripts was blocked forever without any possibility of unblocking. The buyers had the purchased sums deleted from their accounts, often resulting in a negative number.
I silently applauded the COSMOS security team. They had put a lot of effort into studying the logs and tracing the chain of accounts and transactions that crafty traders like Nick and I had used to close our deals, covering our tracks. It didn’t help.
That’s the gist of what the admins wrote:
* If you break the rules, we’ll seize your money and property.
* Buy real money via the administration, or you’ll get banned.
* Avoid cheating, and you’ll be fine.
In the meantime, my erstwhile partner appeared online. I tried making a few voice calls, but he canceled each of them. Finally, I wrote him via Courier.
Humorist U:Can’t talk right now, stop calling!
Cat: We have to talk. It’s urgent!
Humorist U:Write here…
Cat: Why is COSMOGOLD unavailable?
Humorist U: Have you read the forum? I closed the store temporarily. We don’t need extra attention right now. It’s us who’ll take the fall here, you should understand that.
Cat: What are you suggesting?
Humorist U: Look, it was your scheme the admins exposed. Deal with it yourself.
Cat: We kinda shared the profits though…
Humorist U: Cat, you’ve gotta understand it’s getting really serious. No kidding. Your latest clients have already contacted me. It’s a lot of money. You’ve basically scammed them.
Humorist U: So, here’s the deal. I don’t know you; you don’t know me.
Cat: Transfer my share for the recent months.
Humorist U: Don’t be stupid! What money? I’m trying hard not to lose my own.
Humorist U: Anyway, I gotta go… Was nice working with you.
Humorist U blocked Cat.
I was officially bankrupt. Trying to contain the outrage that was threatening to consume me, I managed to pull myself together and start thinking. What did I know about my partner? I had met him while playing COSMOS ONLINE. Nick lived in Moscow, the former capital of our country. I had seen him twice in real life. A man about ten years my senior, he liked to describe himself as a gamer from the 21st century. He switched to the COSMOS currency after our meeting, previously farming gold, leveling up characters, and selling rare items in other long-forgotten MMORPGs.
I realized I knew nothing about him, other than his messenger contact and his phone number. I didn’t have his full name or his address. We shared no mutual friends. Still, that was ok. I was smart; I would come up with something. Only what? Obviously, there was no point in contacting anyone inside the game. From the looks of it, I really had lost all my money. In my head, I started to formulate vague ways of getting even with Nick. We’ll see about that. Mental note taken.
As I was having breakfast, I continued to consider my options. What am I going to do next? For the past five years, all I had known was making money through COSMOS. I had no other source of income. It’s not like I could do anything else, either, as I had abandoned any attempt to find a real job back when I was a teenager. All I had ever done was trading in the online gaming world. First, it had been War Online and Project Titan, then I switched to COSMOS full-time.
But coming back was impossible. It looked like it was time to find something else. I needed a project that could make me some money.
A few search requests and gaming forums kept bringing me to the newest hit MMO—top one in the ratings, THE SPHERE OF WORLDS. Let’s see what kinda beast it is. Isn’t it the SPHERE that Alex wouldn’t shut up about a few months ago? I opened the website thinking of my old friend.
A BREAKTHROUGH in VRMMO genre!
Multiple distinct worlds!
Unique quests for each player!
NPCs that come alive!
Free PVP! Social interactions and politics! Clan wars for territories!
Epic events involving thousands of players!
Play for multiple races and tribes!
Cash in and cash out using real money!
I shook my head as I read the raving reviews about the game. No matter which way you looked at it, Sphere of Worlds had drawn more than thirty million players across the world over the last year, constantly occupying the top spot. That said, after the 30s and the capital of Russia being transferred to New Tokyo, the superiority of Russian and Japanese developers had become clear.
The game had a trial version, allowing a potential player to check it out. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. But first, I wanted to get some first-hand information. Time to call a friend, seeing as he was already online and available for calls.
“Hey, Alex!”
“Oleg! Hi! Haven’t heard from you in forever. How have you been? Still in Kazan?”
“How’s life in New Tokyo? The stuff they show on the news is totally next level!”
“That’s right!” my friend confirmed, sounding important. “What else did you expect? There’s fourteen million of us already, a real anthill. Mostly the Japanese, of course. But lots of Scandinavians, too.”
“The new center of the world?”
“Looks like it, buddy. How are you doing? Still playing COSMOS?”
“Not really. Listen, so why I’m calling... Remember telling me about that SPHERE game? Are you still playing it?”
“Ever since the release date. It’s been more than two years,” Alex confirmed. “Why? Thinking of checking it out?”
“Maybe… Tell me more.”
“There’s lots to tell, man. It’s a blast!” Alex laughed. “So… I recommend playing asa human. It should be easier for a newbie.”
“That’s what I thought, too.”
“World of birth: choose Dorsa, nation: Eyre. Have you memorized it? It’s important, ’causeI’ll be able to help.”
“Dorsa. Eyre,” I replied obediently.
“When you create your character and finish the training, drop me a line on messenger or in-game. I’ll find you and help you out a bit.”
“How do I find you there?
“My nickname’s AlexOrder.”