My Name Was Wrongly Used

This forum posting: /108/47/117531/1.html

On post number 3 someone uses my name to defend illegal activities by scammers who are creating slot machine games and giving them away for free to people with code that allows the creators to act like they are playing the games, and win thousands of dollars from the people who are running them.
I was invited to join the scripters of SL guild last week, and thought it was someone who wanted to bring some people together with scripting experience to put minds together and help people out with scripting problems. Little did I know that this "Guild" was created by scammers and hackers, and only invited me in to make thier group look legit. I have left that guild, and will never join another group I have not created myself. I work very hard to keep an honest and trustworthy name for myself and my SL company Virtual Games LLC (VGI), and I will not have people use my name in a way that will lure unsuspecting people into a trap where they will lose money.
VGI does plan to start a Programmers Guild soon, but there are a few more things we need to complete first. I want to assure everyone that neither I nor anyone from the VGI team had anything to do with this shady activity with casino equipment, and assure everyone that VGI casino games and equipment remains the safest in SL. We pride ourselves on honesty, Innovation, and Quality. It is scammers like this that are the reason VGI started making casino games to begin with. To create a line of games that people can trust will not rip them off, will not make the go broke, and has no hidden code in there to rip people off.
I am tired of seeing these hack jobs throwing this crap out there for free or very low prices to lure people into a trap to steal thier money and give casino games a bad name. I will continue to hunt these scammers down and pick them off one by one until the Casino Gaming industry in SL is safe once and for all.

Sorry about the long post, I was a little upset here if you couldn't tell.

Unless part of your plan is luring your chosen victims into Raush without them suspecting anything, I don't think you won't get very fair with that "pick them off" part.

If you want a higher degree of honesty with gambling devices, go open source.

Giving a rube/user the ability to see what's actually going on under the hood of your Yiff themed slot machine boosts his confidence in your device, as he can actually see how he's being cheated, rather than having to resort to blind theorizing

Yiff Themed?

Allow me to educate you, friend!

Wikipedia entry on "yiffing"

I'd provide an SLURL, but I'm not in the mood to get banned today.

I'm confused.... what does yiffing have to do with his slot machines?

Nothing with his slot machines. I was speaking rhetorically.

a lonely fur thought that handle looked tempting?

A mental picture I don't want to think about right now...

In GP's defense the post in question that was offending was
/108/47/117531/1.html#post1120025
NOT the original poster of that thread. Please edit the true OFFENDING article rather than the one that was warning the community.

Open sourcing will not make anything better - in fact it will probably make things worse.

With open source there will be a tonne of free slots out there, a tonne of not so free, and a tonne of expensive - just because they SAY they use the "blah blah open source code" doesnt mean they do ( or do with little mods )

It then becomes even harder for a prospective purchaser to choose which one to trust.

On the very rare occasion that I buy a slot now I only buy from established sellers ( people who have a hell of a lot to lose if they are caught with their fingers in the till )

That is not to say I think the free ones are scams - but they don't have a business to lose if their slots go pear shaped.

Uh, congratulations?

The simple act of paying most of your funds to an alt/main etc before clicking "OK" on any item that requests debit permissions is a fundamental protection mechanism that many people sadly have yet to learn.

We will no doubt be hearing many more "xyz item tookall my lindens" threads

Scamming gambling machines?
W.C. Fields said it best when he said "You can't cheat an honest man."

Angel.

Absolutely incorrect.

If someone can copy a particular slot machine w/ full mod rights on that copy, they can examine it's scripted guts for themselves to determine if that slot is honest.

You should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever (keep repeating that to yourself about twenty more times) purchase a slot machine. If you want one for whatever reason, go find Philip Linden's SM, modify the holy hell out of it, keep the copy permissions on the scripts (/w full mod), and there you go. The vast majority of slot machines in world are just variants of PL's scripts in a different candy coa-...prim shell.

I can see a scripted scam - but - how many casino owners do you know who are also scripters ?

Reading a variety of scripts spread over a bunch of prims is something people who don't script are not going to do.

[edit - addition]

Your argument that one should never buy a slot machine I assume is based on the fact that the slot purchased has the ability to take money from you using an algorithm or method that you are not familiar with.

By extension, this argument should also apply to vendors, pay-for arcade rides, and anything else that requires debit permission.

Following your advice, it would mean that if you want anything that requires a user to pay into it you should either build it yourself, or at least learn to script and demand a full mod script for all debit perm'd purchases.

Not gonna happen.

To extend the argument into RL for a moment -

Do you avoid ATM's because you don't know how they are written ?
Avoid flying because you didn't build the plane ?
Avoid eating at resturaunts because you didn't cook the meal ?

No - you don't - you use a level of trust based on past experiences, public information, and common sense.

That's why in my first post I said I only buy from established games makers -

Yes they could scam me, but common sense and past experiences tell me that unless they are going to scam the whole of SL and walk away with millions, they are better off - financially - producing and selling reliable slots.

Until everybody learns how to do everything ( and finds the time to do it ) people will continue buying things - some of them will have the ability to scam, and some people will get scammed. Which is where common sense, the public forums and experience come into play.

Dont load all of your money into one avatar -
If you are buying something with debit ask around - get others oppinions and experiences,
If you get a freebie, test it on an av with a small balance ( set the max payout and make sure it works )
If you get scammed scream and shout in the forums to let other people know.

Then get a casino machine with source, and give it to a trusted scripter to examine.

IMO, giving debit permission to anything you don't know for sure is safe is a really, really, really bad idea. Currently I see quite stupid scams around. Smarter ones would rip you off slowly, hoping you wouldn't notice that, or wait until hundreds are sold, then get everybody's money at once.

Why not buy it from a trusted scripter in the first place - same difference

Yiffing Slot machines hurt. >.<

I agree with adriana here. Most people here in SL do not know how to script, and even if they had open source code, it would be like looking at chinese writing. they would have no clue what everythingis doing. The reason I started scripting in SL over 2 years ago is because shady content was coming out, and there were few people with trustworthy games out there. So I made my own games for my casino. Now I make and sell casino games to anyone who wants to run a casino and know they are buying thier equipment from a trusted source.
VGI has a very big repuation in SL for innovation, Quality, and honesty in scripting. We have never riped people off, and if for some reason a bug poped up that made purchasers of a VGI game lose money, we reimburse the purchaser for the loss, find the bug, fix it, and update thier game for free. We pride ourselves on customer service, and even though we won't open source our code because we copyrighted it with the US copyright office, people can still trust that VGI games will never scam them, and everything in the game is listed up front in the owners manual, and before sale.
So Adriana is right, If you can't script, buy from a trusted source. Other than VGI, the only other scripter I would buy casino games from is Tony Tigereye. Also new scripters beware, if you have litle experience with scripting, you can quite possibly scam yourself with a buggy algorythm or a simple symbol or == sign mistake. VGI spends a total of 3 weeks of intense testing of its games to weed out any bugs before we release it to the public.

1 week of my personal testing to test features operability
1 week of testing with a VGI manager for player compatibility and operability
1 week of live field testing in all VGI locations where the equipment is used just as it would be in anyone elses casino by hundreds of players.

By the time testing is done, any bug in the system has been weeded out. Of course there are still some that will pop up as annoyances every once in a while, but are fixed, updated, and released to to the purchasers of that item immediately for free. So new scripters beware, when dealing with scripts that work with money, it take a lot of work, and attention to detail, because you can very well accidentally make yourself broke. I know because me and many other scripters have done it at one time.

So thats it, buy from a name you trust that has a lot to lose if they scam you, or make it yourself.

LoL - gee Thanks

I make casino games as well.

( Although they were more of an intellectual exercise than an attempt to take over the world )

I was the one who originally posted this thread and had L$5064 stolen. (it took the scammer 7 spins and about 5 minutes).

I screwed up in the fact that I listed the names as I was unaware that was against TOS. That was my fought for not completely reading the document. The scammer had enough time to post some lies and then the thread was closed.

Yes, I hold myself partly to blame as I knew better than to trust something like this. But I ordered these machines from SLexchange and the scammers did play up the fact they were part of an SL scripting group that wanted to share good scripting with SL.

I have had no negative interaction with the original poster of this thread and only assume his statement is accurate.

The scammers benefited from using him as added deception but I hold no blame or malice towards him.

I am no scripter and the lesson to learn here is that if you can't afford or have time to hire a scripter or buy a trustworthy product, then you need to wait till you can.

I posted my original message to warn others about this because the items are still up on Slexchange and were available through a networked advertising system in SL. To the credit of the advertising owner, he listened to me and pulled all the ads for these scamming slot machines.


I was also made aware that the people who setup the scam had been reported by a very reputable member of SL 3 days before I was scammed. SL found no reason to act and the report was closed without action. I am still waiting to hear about the report I filed.

I did make an attempt at something like this here:

/54/ec/80168/1.html

The idea is, it's an open source money handling script with link messages which can be "plugged in" to any other closed source system. But it won't allow the object to pay out more money than it takes in.

Because it's a plug-in, the user doesn't have to be a scripter: if they don't trust the object they get, they can just rip the possibly-tampered copy of the money handling script out of the object, go back to the reference copy on the forums or wherever, and drop that one in. Since the link messages are clearly specified that should be possible.

Of course, some more security needs to be implemented to stop the close source script just requesting debit itself, but I can think of how to do that.

Also for a gambling machine it would mean the owner would have to "load" the gambling machine by paying money into it but that's accurate to RL gambling machines..

In reply to Brodie ( and Others )

I was initially dubious of the scam scare regarding these machines precisely for the reason that Mr protoypes name was in the same group ( which has now been explained )

I therefore decided to investigate the machines - I took two of the free games and placed them on my land to see if I could find the "bug" I thought was probably being exploited.

Looking back over my visitor logs it appears that a certain fan of games showed up not once, but twice on my lot ( fortunately I had locked the land down for group only access ) so now I side with the theory that they are broadcasting their whereabouts to someone or something.