Fraudlent Legallinden sploders NON payment

welcome to my ignore list, population... you.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed that poker is singled out as it is a high profile form of "gambling" even though it requires skill which would normally exclude it if it weren't specifically named.

Oh dear. Well, eighty years later, Joyce still has his detractors, I suppose.

Has Joyce ever stopped having detractors and will he ever will? Will any author? Will I ever stop filling a post with questions?

Well, the "skill" that Poker requires is the very definition of what I consider gambling to be. It is what I call "wagering skill". Success at Poker is dependent to some extent on the luck of the deal, but moreso how one wagers in light of one's hand. It is a subterfuge skill, aka "the Art of Bluffing", but the main point is that it still is a gamble because even if you are the absolute best skilled Poker player, your cards can still cause you to lose the hand.

All this talk of poker brings up memories of evenings at Myth Island playing poker... You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

On to Stoppard, eh?

Drat. Statement. Your point.

I have a friend who puts up a free sploder (you dont have to pay anything to play) in his club once in a while. He PUTS MONEY into it...his own lindens. The nanosecond it goes up, avatars (half of whom appear to be bots) start appearing, and within minutes the region is full with people hanging outside in the air just outside the region, hoping to get in.

These avs appear, it costs them nothing to play, he puts money into it (and when he does it is subtracted from his account just like any other time you pay out lindens) and people click click click to get their free lindens.

What happens when you fill a sim? LAG. and sometimes the lag causes the money to pay out slowly or even disappear into the abyss (although I think that is rare). I got money from his sploder once more than 3 hours after he took it down.

What boggles my mind is how people can go in hopes of getting something for nothing, bringing alts etc., and instead of being grateful for a chance to get more money than they could get camping for a week, they whine and cry when LAG or the $$ system causes their winnings to come late, or even not at all.

Sploder groups exist who spread the word to their members when a good sploder is up, and because of how quickly avs appear its pretty obvious that there are people out there with tracking systems. They go from place to place to get their free lindens with never a thank you but many a tearful accusation when something goes wrong. Fraud? How can it be fraud if it costs you nothing?

I realize that he uses the sploder as a means of bringing traffic in from time to time, and so the thousands of $L he puts in there are to him well spent...right up until the teardrops start.

Sorry if this was long but I have seen it happen time and again and it pretty much pisses me off

Here we go again. Short form of Linden rules:

You pay into the pot.
Random Element. (in the case of Poker: card shuffle)
Someone Collects.

It's *gambling.* Skill *doesn't matter*, it's the inclusion of a *random element.*

Chess would be pure skill, so wouldn't count as gambling.
Scrabble for money would be gambling -- letter heap is random.

when you gamble, there is no guarantee of return on your money. easy solution: don't gamble.

The names Have been changed to protect the TOS ....no one is innocent.

As you can see it is a total game of skill..... for a default configuration you have to be able to count to 5.... Wait Though! What If Someone sneakily resets the sploder everytime..... is that not just roulette? Oh my it could be a game of chance after all!!!!!!!!!!!!! The real test of this would require quite some patience to monitor the cycles and the payouts, which I am guessing is the sploder owners preference nobody watches long enough the winners are happy and hey money for nothing.

Sploder Configuration Card:
================
You aren't going to need this much!

This sploder is identical to the sploders that were originally in sl except it is totally legal because it pays out on a continuous 5-cycle method instead of a random payout like the old ones did. Therefore it is based on skill of identifying the cycles and trying to pay in at the right time.

Cycle:
-------------------
Just for your information the cycle is as follows:

First game-- the max prize goes to the 3rd entrant.

Second game--the max prize goes to the first entrant.

Third game--the max prize goes to the last entrant.

Fourth game--the max prize goes to the 5th entrant

Fifth game--the max prize goes to the second to last player

*****After the cycle finishes it will start all over again. It will pay up to 9 people if that many are entered.

Important note: The sploder will only follow the cycle as long as it is not reset. DO NOT reset the sploder unless you have to because if reset the cycle will start over from the beginning.

Configuration:
---------------
Give the object permission to take money from your account. The sploder will not work until this is done.

TEXT
----------------
The text writing above the sploder lists the total amount in the pot, the number of players required to start and the minimum payment amount reuired. This text color can be changed just by simply touching the sploder. A menu will come up and you can change the text.

Configure the Sploder script by editing the object's description. When first rezzed the script will set this to the defaults of:

Defaults:
40% max prize payout to whichever person hit the correct cycle. At least 5 people are required to play a game as the game has a 5-cycle method.
100 seconds timer (from the required number of people being reached to the payout)
10% take for the house
Minimum payment of L$10 to play

These are stored in the description as the string "40:5:100:10:10"
To change any of the settings just edit the object and change the description

NB: Changes may take a few seconds to be processed

Operation
-----------
The script starts running a game immediately it has permission to take money and will continue to do so until you tell it to stop.
Commands are issued on channel /371:
/371 Sploder List This
Lists the players (if any) in the current game and how much they have paid
/371 Sploder List All
Lists the players (if any) in the current and previous games and how much they have paid
/371 Sploder Refund This
Repays the players (if any) in the current game however much they have paid and switches off
/371 Sploder Refund All
Repays the players (if any) in the current and previous games however much they have paid and switches off

NB: Using /371 Sploder Refund This to switch off the Sploder ensure that any players who have already paid in to the current game do not lose out.

When the Sploder is switched off you must touch it to restart. It will remember the players and payments from the last game

Maybe someone has posted this and I missed it. Anyway, as I understand it the key to making a "sploder" legal in SL, is by not having to pay anything, in order to enter.

"Legal Sploders" are indeed gambling.

While there may be questions of semantics over whether players are wagering or not, the biggest wager of all is made by the venue operator: They're gambling whether an inevitably disgruntled player will file an Abuse Report, and whether Linden will decide to follow up with it.

Based on how popular they are, I'd guess that the odds of any filed abuse report amounting to any disciplinary action are in the venue operator's favor

Lessee.....

Other people's monies :: Check!

Kitty ears :: Check!

Jailbait outfit :: Check!

Collar :: Check!

Ohmygawd! I'm in trouble... (=_=)y

It's a matter of who clicks the ball fastest, and is paid out in order of fastest to slowest. In observing the sploder, the ball moved in the same arc at pretty much the same time interval. It's a reflex test. I doubt that it's illegal.

Whether it is actionably illegal or not is only up for the Lindens to decide. All I am saying is that it /should/ be, under the definitions of the policy, because it still amounts to gambling. There are many variables outside of the user's control which amount to nothing more than a random selection. Several forms of lag and latency are chief among them. The fact that any particular player can influence their odds /some/ doesn't make it any less gambling than a game like Poker, where a player can influence the outcome of the "luck of the deal" hand via bluffing/betting strategy or wagering skill.

I disagree with your normative statement because if the sploder is built so that the ball is rezzed in a consistent manner traveling at the same speed over the same arc, the element of chance is gone - success relies on your speed of reflexes. It's like any other timed game - if you do it faster, you win, and it doesn't make it gambling per se. There is no randomness created by the game itself to influence the outcome.

In theory, if it was reality, where someone could reach out and touch a ball, then yes, maybe. However, inside a virtual world, there are conditions which add significant elements of unpredictability:

1) When the ball rezes (or otherwise signifies it is time to click): latency of presentation notification. Each time, people's viewers will be notified at different times based on network conditions which vary from moment to moment. One time, you may get the fastest notification; the next, you will get the slowest.
2) Rendering lag, latency of presentation: It will take different people's systems different amounts of time each time for the notification to be presented.
3) Selection lag, latency of "clicking": Same as 2, different people's systems will process the attempts to click the object at different speeds.
4) Selection notification lag, latency of selection notification: Same as 1, varying network conditions will result in the click notification arriving at different times.
5) Sim lag, sim processing conditions: The sim itself may delay processing of any particular event for various reasons, not the least of which is its present load.

All of these factors individually can easily exceed the average human hand-eye coordination response time, and taken in sum together make the entire exercise nothing more than an experiment in lag/latency-induced randomness. I won't even go into the psychological/physical factors related to reaction time randomness.

So, normative or not, there is significant evidence that the players actually have little input as to whether they win or not; it is still well within the "luck of the draw" from the latency deck.

Side note: We studied this effect in a great bit of detail, as we used to use something like it at the Isle of Wyrms years ago. People who wanted to buy limited-edition adult Dragon eggs had to pay their desired egg vendor "first", after Daryth sent an estate message saying "GO!". With 100+ people in the sim, we found that the event was suitably random enough, based on all the factors above, that we decided to replace that system with a lottery. In other words, we chose the less problematic approach with loading down the sims, and lost nothing of the randomness of the event.

While I have no doubt that it made the participants /feel/ that they were affecting the outcome, the cold, hard fact of the matter is that being the absolute fastest clicker was no guarantee that you would get an egg at all.

Heh... (=_=)

/116/88/270748/1.html

(^_^)y

Unless the system is clearly built to exploit it as a random number generation system with large numbers of avs clicking all at once, I don't think even the US authorities would consider potential problems with latency to put something into the realm of "gambling". There are other situations where that might well be the case - say, an SL combat game.

The above system certainly sounds a lot less like gambling than most of the stuff that seems to pass "Linden approval" these days in any case, much of which is pretty obviously gambling. Not that I'm all that concerned on my own account, but if any authority _does_ investigate I'm not convinced they would be impressed, and credit card companies would shrink back from SL at a sniff of that sort of thing.

This all sounds a whole lot like "loot ninja" discussions from MMOGs of old.


I would argue something more simple: just because the pRNG of a gambling device has been replaced with a minimal "skill" component doesn't make it Linden legal.



Not only is the system suitably random in aggregate (see comments above), but it flies in the face of the spirit and implementation of the law: to curb online gambling.

The entire point of a "sploder", in any current implementation, is gambling on a pot of someone else's money.


No amount of talking around the issue will change that basic premise, without deprecating "sploders" for tools that aren't based around gambling. Like money trees, happy hour or sales pricing, and *actual* games of skill.

Hell, this doesn't make it US legal, either. By all means make them legal to the thin rules in the ToS; let the very real lawsuits begin.

To other entities (like credit card companies, for example), the litmus for what is "gambling" is a LOT more stringent. Pretty much, if you pay something in with a /chance/ for getting a larger amount back out, regardless of how said chance is implemented, it is gambling to them, and they may decide to gank you for it.

Anyone remember the old coin-toss hustle? No, not flipping a coin, but the old back-alley game where you toss coins at a wall (or storm drain), and whoever gets the closest to the wall after hitting the wall wins. Those and other circus-type games are still variations on a specific theme of gambling. While, in those cases, skill may give you an edge, that edge is still dubious because the game is designed to minimize the margin for error to such a degree that ANY randomness at all magnifies the risk significantly.

True.

However, it's fairly obvious (in the scope of the facts) that this was written to emulate the random component of a sploder.


Further, a forceful argument can be made that:

1) The marginal "skill" component was created, explicitly, as a suitably random replacement for the Linden pRNG
2) The psychology and other factors of gambling are at play
3) "Sploders" are positioned specifically as a monetary gambling device, from first use to present day


This doesn't even address the place where the ToS leaves off and US law starts.


If it were me, and I owned a club running "sploders" to generate traffic, I'd be more than a little worried about my method of doing business.

How? If the time and movement of the ball is constant, what is random, other than the number of entrants into the pot? It's like a digitized version of skeet shooting and the fastest trigger wins. It's minimal skill, sure, but there is no exploitation of anything random.

~$ diff sploder_before.lsl sploder_after.lsl


Or in English: The source code would easily tell the tale, as the llFrand call will almost assuredly be replaced with the "Linden legal" part, with very few other changes.

Which is a pretty compelling argument for intended use.