PNot a week goes by without the announcement of a new cyberattack accompanied by a ransom demand. Online fraudulent activities are also on the rise. A question arises: how to get rid of the dirty money thus amassed? Some criminal organizations multiply the purchases and resales of cryptocurrencies until the source of their income disappears. But these organizations – we know less – also go, and more and more, through video game platforms to launder their loot.
More than half of the resources of the video game industry today come, in fact, from micro-purchases made by players on the platforms. One acquires a super-sword that will increase the powers of his avatar, another, a colored cape that will distinguish him from other characters, a third, a key that will allow him to open a chest containing a possible gift…
Hard to imagine, but these purchases of virtual accessories and gadgets bring video game manufacturers some 100 billion dollars (about 90.50 billion euros) per year, not counting the exchanges that take place on market places. unofficial also attracting millions of players and brewing, each year, tens of billions more.
How many go under the radar
However, on these markets, discretion is essential and intervenes whoever wants. Public investigations carried out in the United States against a game producer have, somewhat by chance, resulted in demonstrating that the majority of supposed players who frequent the platform buy gadgets to resell them in the moment, often for less , on multiple occasions. In fact, the investigation showed that they were in no way avid gamblers but delinquents in the process of conscientiously laundering funds.
When an individual purchases, for example, an invisibility cloak for their avatar, the transaction is not recorded. If he puts it on the ground to resell it, then buys back weapons which he in turn gets rid of immediately, it’s not easy to spot his maneuvers. A judgment rendered in 2023 following a “class action” [« recours en nom collectif »] showed that a gaming platform for children and teenagers allowed an individual with 300 accounts to quickly launder some $300,000.
A more emblematic case, in 2012, involved a fighting game. Pseudo-gamers were spotted because they bought keys and earphones systematically above their market value to resell them immediately at very low prices. More than 3 million dollars had been laundered in this way. In South Korea, in 2017, a network of digital launderers ended up being dismantled following a series of transactions of virtual objects for an amount of 38 million dollars!
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