Selling currency and services for massively multiplayer games are often viewed as a cottage industry, but it is in fact a half-billion dollar industry that profits off of malware distribution and sweatshop labor. Its also a conflict between the companies behind these games who want to keep a fair playing field, and the people trying to profit from them using techniques such as social engineering, keyloggers and spamming, amongst others. This presentation discusses the recent history of these synthetic economies, how they remain undetected and in operation, and the ways they can affect both virtual and real-world economies.

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