Teen Arrested for Stealing Virtual Furniture

I don’t know what kind of monster would dare steal furniture from the insanely popular MMO Habbo Hotel, but one such individual has been arrested for doing so.

The BBC reports that a 17 year-old about 2,840 GBP (roughly $5,800) worth of furniture from the game, which houses a player base of around six million people. Police were contacted by the owners of Habbo Hotel, who proceeded to question five 15 year-olds about the matter.

A spokesman for Habbo Hotel owner Sulake said:

“The accused lured victims into handing over their Habbo passwords by creating fake Habbo websites.

“In Habbo, as in many other virtual worlds, scamming for other people’s personal information such as user names has been problematic for quite a while.

“We have had much of this scamming going on in many countries but this is the first case where the police have taken legal action.”

“It is a theft because the furniture is paid for with real money. But the only way to be a thief in Habbo is to get people’s usernames and passwords and then log in and take the furniture.

“We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo. People might then try and log in and get their details stolen.”

It’s an interesting point, as the MMO market in Asia in particular revolves around microtransactions to sustain themselves, rather that subscription fees. I guess the lesson to be learned here is simple: don’t mess with Habbo Hotel.