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No Silk Road for Online Gamers!: Using Social Network Analysis to Unveil Black Markets in Online Games

Authors:

Hyoungshick Kim,

Huy Kang KimAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '18: Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference

Pages 1825 - 1834

https://doi.org/10.1145/3178876.3186177

Published: 10 April 2018 Publication History

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Abstract

Online game involves a very large number of users who are interconnected and interact with each other via the Internet. We studied the characteristics of exchanging virtual goods with real money through the processes called "real money trading (RMT)". This exchange might influence online game user behaviors and cause damage to the reputation of game companies. We examined in-game transactions to reveal RMT by constructing a social graph of virtual goods exchanges in an online game and identifying network communities of users.

We analyzed approximately 6,000,000 transactions in a popular online game and inferred RMT transactions by comparing the RMT transactions crawled from an out-game market. Our findings are summarized as follows: (1) the size of the RMT market could be approximately estimated; (2) professional RMT providers typically form a specific network structure (either star-shape or chain) in the trading network, which can be used as a clue for tracing RMT transactions; and (3) the observed RMT market has evolved over time into a monopolized market with a small number of large-sized virtual goods providers.

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Cited By

Мосечкин И(2024)Системные проблемы уголовно-правовой защиты виртуальных объектовLaw Journal of the Higher School of Economics10.17323/2072-8166.2024.4.185.209(185-209)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.17323/2072-8166.2024.4.185.209
Kim HKim JSon JSong JLee E(2024)A Framework for Mining Collectively-Behaving Bots in MMORPGsPattern Recognition10.1007/978-3-031-78189-6_26(400-419)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78189-6_26
Bourdoucen ANurgalieva LLindqvist J(2023)Privacy Is the Price: Player Views and Technical Evaluation of Data Practices in Online GamesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110647:CHI PLAY(1136-1178)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611064
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Index Terms

No Silk Road for Online Gamers!: Using Social Network Analysis to Unveil Black Markets in Online Games
1. Security and privacy
  1. Software and application security
    1. Domain-specific security and privacy architectures

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cover image ACM Other conferences

WWW '18: Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference

April 2018

2000 pages

ISBN:9781450356398

General Chairs:
Pierre-Antoine Champin
Universitè Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France
,
Fabien Gandon
Inria, Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, I3S, France
,
Lionel Médini
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France
,
Program Chairs:
Mounia Lalmas
Spotify, UK
,
Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis
New York University, USA

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee

Republic and Canton of Geneva, Switzerland

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Published: 10 April 2018

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WWW '18

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WWW '18: The Web Conference 2018

April 23 - 27, 2018

Lyon, France

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WWW '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 170 of 1,155 submissions, 15%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

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Cited By

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https://doi.org/10.17323/2072-8166.2024.4.185.209
Kim HKim JSon JSong JLee E(2024)A Framework for Mining Collectively-Behaving Bots in MMORPGsPattern Recognition10.1007/978-3-031-78189-6_26(400-419)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78189-6_26
Bourdoucen ANurgalieva LLindqvist J(2023)Privacy Is the Price: Player Views and Technical Evaluation of Data Practices in Online GamesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36110647:CHI PLAY(1136-1178)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611064
Choi JPark JKim WPark JSuh YSung M(2023)PU GNN: Chargeback Fraud Detection in P2E MMORPGs via Graph Attention Networks with Imbalanced PU LabelsMachine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases: Applied Data Science and Demo Track10.1007/978-3-031-43427-3_15(243-258)Online publication date: 17-Sep-2023
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Park KLee EKim H(2022)Cashflow Tracing: Detecting Online game bots leveraging financial analysis with Recurrent Neural NetworksExtended Abstracts of the 2022 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3505270.3558329(189-195)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2022
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Li WChu XSu YYao DZhao SWu RZhang STao JDeng HBi J(2022)FingFormer: Contrastive Graph-based Finger Operation Transformer for Unsupervised Mobile Game Bot DetectionProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202210.1145/3485447.3512272(3367-3375)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2022
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Noh YJeong SKim H(2022)Trading Behind-the-Scene: Analysis of Online Gold Farming Network in the Auction House SystemIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2021.309405414:3(423-434)Online publication date: Sep-2022
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Han MKwak BKim H(2022)Cheating and Detection Method in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game: Systematic Literature ReviewIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.317211010(49050-49063)Online publication date: 2022
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Gawron MStrzelecki A(2021)Consumers’ Adoption and Use of E-Currencies in Virtual Markets in the Context of an Online GameJournal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research10.3390/jtaer1605007116:5(1266-1279)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2021
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Rothmeier KPflanzl NHullmann JPreuss M(2021)Prediction of Player Churn and Disengagement Based on User Activity Data of a Freemium Online Strategy GameIEEE Transactions on Games10.1109/TG.2020.299228213:1(78-88)Online publication date: Mar-2021
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