[3][5][6][7] In scientific research, it is defined as “a three-dimensional online environment in which users represented by avatars interact with each other in virtual spaces decoupled from the real physical world”.
[15] In 2005, in the game The Sims Online, a 17-year-old boy going by the in-game name "Evangeline" was discovered to have built a cyber-brothel, where customers would pay sim-money for minutes of cybersex.
"[20] A month later on Horizon Worlds, metaverse researcher and psychotherapist Nina Jane Patel reported that her avatar was gang-raped within 60 seconds of joining the platform.
[21] Elena Martellozzo, an associate professor of criminology at Middlesex University says that such abuse may be the result of disinhibition due to the lack of face-to-face interaction that is exacerbated on the metaverse.
In virtual sweatshops, workers in the developing world — typically China, although there have been reports of this type of activity in Eastern European countries — earn real-world wages for long days spent monotonously performing in-game tasks.
[25] Instances typically involve farming of resources or currency, which has given rise to the epithet Chinese Adena Farmer, because of its first reported widespread use in Lineage II.
In 2002, a company called Blacksnow Interactive, a game currency exchange, admitted to using workers in a "virtual sweatshop" in Tijuana, Mexico to farm money and items from Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot.
[26] In November 2007, it was reported that a Dutch teenager had been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from "rooms" in 3D social-networking website Habbo Hotel.
[27] The teenagers involved were accused of creating fake Habbo websites in order to lure users into entering their account details, which would then be used to steal virtual furniture bought with real money totaling €4000.
[28] In China, Qiu Chengwei was sentenced to life in prison in 2005 after stabbing and killing fellow The Legend of Mir 3 gamer Zhu Caoyuan.
[30] The Kagawa prefectural police arrested a Chinese foreign exchange student on Aug. 16 following the reports of virtual mugging and online sales of the stolen items.
[30] In Sweden a man threatened the families of 26 underage girls if they did not perform sexual acts online — he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and made to pay $131,590 in damages.