Microsoft Accuses Chinese Coin Farmer of Hacking XBox Accounts

Competitive online gaming can be difficult. Particularly games that employ a ‘pay to win’ style economy. Therefore many people are tempted to purchase reduce cost gaming currency so help improve their team, score or performance.

Why do people purchase this currency?

In games such a World of Warcraft or Fifa Ultimate Team, the in-game currency has a significant value. Such a value that incredibly people actually use real money to buy it. The problem is that in-game, earning that currency is generally hard. It takes time and effort. Therefore ‘coin’ farming companies began appearing. These would offer you the opportunity to buy some of the game money for real money.

You wouldn’t think this would be a problem, but Microsoft has accused a Chinese website of hacking x-box accounts to effectively steal this money.

Why would they be hacking X-box accounts?

By hacking the X-box account, it effectively gives them access to your online games. What they will do in this position is log-in to your Fifa account (for example) and steal all of your current currency by trading with proxy accounts. This put simply means that they are stealing your online currency to sell for real money.

Sound unlikely? Well, I can tell you that exactly this has happened to me on two separate occasions.

I am genuinely shocked to hear that this happened to you, how did this travesty occur?

Firstly, thank you for taking an interest in my person online horror stories. While on Fifa I didn’t play it for about 3 months. Upon my return, I had found that my online account had been blocked. Upon a little investigation, I had found that my account had been ‘hacked’ and some toe-rag had effectively used my online account to mine currency. Now, on the plus side, I had one of the greatest win ratios at Fifa Ultimate Team on the planet, on the downside however what was clear was that my EA account had been compromised. A similar instance occurred a few years previous on my World of Warcraft account where I logged in to find all my character naked and penniless. Now fortunately in both instances, I was able to get this fixed with Blizzard’s excellent and EA’s awful customer services.

*Wipes away tear* What is Microsoft doing about this?

Microsoft has taken legal action against one Chinese company it feels it flagrantly and deliberately hacking their users accounts specifically for the use of stealing online currency. This is particularly targeting what they feel is deliberately hacking x-box accounts to achieve this.

If successful, this would represent the first major instance of online currency fraud being tackled. It would also ensure that your gaming accounts could be better protected in the future. This is a step that many victims would welcome.

So next time you think you could do with a little more gaming cash, maybe just take a minute to think about where it comes from.