Regulating Malicious Destruction of Online Game Accounts: Legal

Difficulties and Countermeasures

Zihan Liu

The School of International Education and Exchange, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, 100084, China

Keywords: Online Game, Malicious Destruction of Online Game Accounts, Virtual Property.

Abstract: With the vigorous development of the online gaming industry, frequent incidents of Malicious Destruction of

Game Accounts (MDGA) have emerged as a severe issue, infringing upon players' legitimate rights,

disrupting gaming ecosystems, and compromising cybersecurity. These acts, including unauthorized account

hacking, virtual asset theft, and deliberate in-game sabotage, not only cause significant financial and

emotional harm to players but also undermine the fairness and stability of online gaming environments.

Despite the growing prevalence of MDGA, current legal frameworks face substantial regulatory challenges

in defining, prosecuting, and penalizing such conduct due to the ambiguous legal status of virtual property

and jurisdictional complexities in cross-border cases. This paper employs theoretical analysis and case study

methodologies to examine the conceptual boundaries, jurisprudential controversies, and governance

challenges associated with MDGA. By clarifying the legal attributes of virtual property in online games,

improving the legal characterization of MDGA, and establishing a mechanism for assessing the value of

virtual property and evidence collection, this study aims to bridge existing regulatory gaps. Furthermore, it

explores collaborative governance models involving game developers, law enforcement, and policymakers.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the online gaming industry has

burgeoned. According to statistics, the global online

game market size has reached the trillion level, with

hundreds of millions of players taking the plunge.

Game accounts, equipment, etc., as virtual property

carrying the player's time investment, money, and

emotional support, their economic value and

emotional significance are increasingly prominent.

However, along with the prosperity of the industry

comes an increase in Malicious Destruction of Game

Accounts. This behavior mostly stems from

malicious jealousy, emotional disputes, conflicts on

behalf of the practice, or other improper motives,

seriously infringing on the legitimate rights and

interests of players, destabilizing the balance of

gaming ecosystems, thereby negatively affecting the

broader cyberspace environment.

The protection of virtual property in online games

has become a global issue, compelling many

countries to pioneer effective legal institutional

frameworks. In recent years, Chinese scholars have

actively explored the protection of virtual property in

online games, but there are still many gaps and

deficiencies in China's current legal system for the

protection of virtual property in online games. While

the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China

recognizes virtual property as objects of civil rights,

there is a lack of clear provisions on the specific

connotations, attributes of the rights, and ways of

protection. And most of the discussions on the

protection of virtual property originated from the

perspective of civil law, and there are fewer of them

in China's criminal law. Consequently, the legal

regulation of Malicious Destruction of Game

Accounts confronts many challenges, which lead to

great difficulties in the identification and handling of

Malicious Destruction of Game Accounts in judicial

practice and make it difficult to effectively curb the

occurrence of such acts.

This paper aims to analyze the deficiencies of the

existing legal regulation, develop prescriptive

methodologies for the regulation of Malicious

Destruction of Game Accounts (MDGA), and

ultimately put forward the countermeasures on the

properties of virtual property in online games, the

legal recognition of Malicious Destruction of Game

Accounts (MDGA), and the mechanism of assessing

the value of virtual property and obtaining evidence.

174

Liu, Z.

Regulating Malicious Destruction of Online Game Accounts: Legal Difﬁculties and Countermeasures.

DOI: 10.5220/0014299000004859

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science (ICPLSS 2025), pages 174-178

ISBN: 978-989-758-785-6

These proposals seek to protect the legitimate rights

and interests of game players while cultivating a

salutary cyberspace environment.

2 CONCEPT AND TYPOLOGY OF

“MALICIOUS DESTRUCTION

OF GAME ACCOUNTS

(MDGA)”IN ONLINE GAMES

2.1 Concept of Malicious Destruction

of Game Accounts (MDGA)

Malicious Destruction of Game Accounts refers to the

behavior of a perpetrator who destroys or deletes

valuable game equipment, props, or other virtual

property in another person's game account, resulting

in the inability of another person's online game

account to be used normally or the value of the

account being depreciated.

The central feature of Malicious Destruction of

Game Accounts is destructiveness. Unlike hack,

which aims to pursue economic benefits and illegally

possess other people's accounts, Malicious

Destruction of Game Accounts (MDGA) aims at the

direct deletion or obliteration of virtual property in

the account to render game accounts irremediably

valueless. Compared with the use of plug-ins to

illegally obtain game advantages and undermine the

fairness of the game, MDGA deliberately targets the

virtual property in the victimized player's account.

Consequently, MDGA exhibits distinctive behavioral

markers and legal attributes.

2.2 Principal Typological Frameworks

of Malicious Destruction of Game

Accounts (MDGA)

Depending on means and motives, Malicious

Destruction of Game Accounts can be categorized

into the following main types:

Technical MDGA refers to individuals or groups

with specialized technical abilities to take advantage

of the security loopholes of the game platform

through hacking techniques, malware, or other means

to compromise accounts and effectuate destruction.

Social MDGA manifests when the perpetrator

uses the trust established between the players through

social interaction, by means of deception, coercion,

and other means to gain account access for

destructive purposes.

Transactional MDGA occurs when players suffer

virtual property losses in the account due to malicious

acts by third-party service providers (e.g., boosters)

during commercial interactions.

3 LEGAL DIFFICULTIES IN

REGULATING MALICIOUS

DESTRUCTION OF GAME

ACCOUNTS (MDGA)

3.1 Controversies Regarding the Legal

Characterization of Virtual

Property

Defining the legal attributes of virtual property is an

important prerequisite for regulating Malicious

Destruction of Game Accounts. Although Article 127

of China's Civil Code expressly incorporates virtual

property in the scope of legal protection, it fails to

provide a specific definition of its legal attributes. In

judicial practice, it is difficult for adjudicators to

directly determine that virtual property belongs to a

certain type of right provided for in existing laws,

resulting in inconsistent standards of legal application

(Zhang Yin, 2024). Consequently, solutions to

traditional issues—including property, contractual,

and tort are difficult to apply in judicial practice. There

is also controversy in international academia that

remains divided on whether proprietary rights should

be conferred upon end-users regarding purchased

virtual items (PALKA, Przemyslaw, 2017).

One doctrinal perspective contends that virtual

property should be characterized as an object of real

rights, possessing the essential attributes of

exclusivity, dispositional control, and economic

value. Professor Mingkai Zhang has emphasized that

virtual property demonstrably exhibits the tripartite

characteristics definitive of legal assets:

controllability, transferability, and valuability (Xiao

Zhike, 2021). An alternative doctrinal position asserts

that virtual property more appropriately constitutes an

incident of obligatory rights, wherein the relationship

between players and gaming service providers is

fundamentally contractual. Virtual assets thereby

manifest as the operative embodiment of such service

agreements (Wang Huaxiu, 2024).

Within criminal law academia, there is ongoing

debate over whether virtual property should be

uniformly defined in civil and criminal law.

Disagreement centers on whether virtual property

constitutes 'property' under criminal law. The

Regulating Malicious Destruction of Online Game Accounts: Legal Difﬁculties and Countermeasures

175

affirmative view defines it as electronically stored

assets with economic value. The opposing view

classifies it as a financial interest distinct from

intangible property recognized in criminal law (Ren

Yuejin, 2021).

3.2 Challenges in Legal

Characterization of Malicious

Destruction of Game Accounts

(MDGA)

If virtual property is deemed 'property' under criminal

law, Malicious Destruction of Game Accounts may

constitute intentional destruction of property under

Article 275 of China's Criminal Code. For instance,

in China v. Chen [2019] for intentional property

destruction, the defendant obtained the victim's game

credentials and extensively damaged in-game assets,

including warships, gems, and similar assets. The

court convicted and sentenced the defendant under

Article 275 of the Criminal Code in August 2019

(Jiang Yunfei, Lu Lu, 2019). However, as no

consensus exists on whether virtual property should

be classified as criminal 'property', the practical

application of this offense faces significant obstacles.

If virtual property is denied proprietary status and

classified as electronic data, MDGA involving

technical deletion or alteration of account data may

satisfy elements of 'Computer Sabotage' under Article

286 of China's Criminal Code. However, the

application remains contentious since this offense

requires material impairment of computer system

functionality—a threshold not met by mere deletion of

virtual assets.

In transactional cases, courts circumvent virtual

property characterization debates by focusing on

contractual breaches by leveling service providers.

Illustratively, in a 2023 Beijing Internet Court ruling

against commercial boosters for malicious account

destruction, the victim discovered premium

characters dismantled and deleted post-service. The

court imposed breach-of-contract liability on the

service operator (Zuo Lin, 2023).

3.3 Valuation and Evidence Collection

Challenges for Virtual Property in

Online Games

Valuation and evidence collection constitute critical

components in regulating MDGA. For virtual

currency obtained through direct top-ups or items

purchased with such currency, value may be

determined by transaction prices or official game

pricing. However, assessing damage to player-

cultivated assets remains problematic. Since

gameplay generates no market value and MDGA

yields no illicit profits, quantifying losses for time-

invested equipment proves exceptionally challenging

(Zuo Lin, 2023).

The digital and intangible nature of virtual

property within online environments creates

significant evidence collection challenges. Criminals

who gain account access can delete or tamper with

virtual property in the account at will, and all

modifications recorded exclusively by the game

company, which are inaccessible to ordinary players.

This dynamism and uncertainty heighten judicial

requirements for the authenticity and completeness of

evidence in judicial practice, further exacerbating the

difficulty of evidence collection.

4 REGULATORY

COUNTERMEASURES FOR

MALICIOUS DESTRUCTION

OF GAME ACCOUNTS (MDGA)

4.1 Establishing Definitive Legal

Characterization of Virtual

Property in Online Games

From the development of China's civil law on the

determination of the attributes of virtual property, it

can be seen that the legislator's view of virtual

property as an object of property rights has a positive

tendency. Even if virtual property is regarded as data,

its attribute of “property” cannot be denied. First, in

order to obtain game equipment, characters, and other

resources, players need to pay real currency or invest

a lot of time and energy, which reflects the value of

this part of the virtual goods. Second, virtual goods

such as game equipment can provide practical

functionality within virtual environments, which

indicates that it has actual use value. Thirdly, players

are indeed able to dispose of the virtual goods in their

accounts, and even game operators cannot arbitrarily

recover virtual property when players do not violate

the rules of the game. Fourth, some virtual goods have

exchange value, and players can buy, sell, and

transfer these items according to their own wishes

(Jiang Yunfei, Lu Lu, 2019). This reflects the fact that

the substantive congruence between such virtual

items and legally recognized property rights. In

particular, the property rights of virtual property are

being recognized in many foreign legal systems

ICPLSS 2025 - International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science

176

(Susan H. Abramovitch, David L. Cummings, 2007).

Consequently, this part of the virtual property can

become the object of property crime, so as to provide

a legal basis for the criminal regulation of Malicious

Destruction of Game Accounts (MDGA).

Analyzing virtual property's legal attributes

through a criminal law lens, the legal interest theory

provides normative justification for its protection.

From an individual legal interest perspective, virtual

property embodies players' temporal, emotional, and

financial investments, possessing demonstrable

economic value. Assets acquired through equivalent

exchange--virtual equipment, game currency, etc.--

constitute property interests under criminal law.

Regarding supra-individual legal interests, China's

gaming market generated over CNY 300 billion in

2024 with >600 million users, establishing virtual

property as a novel societal public interest in the

digital economy (Game Publishing Committee,

2024).

4.2 Refining Legal Characterization of

Malicious Destruction of Game

Accounts (MDGA)

When MDGA destroys players' virtual property

acquired with fiat or virtual currency, it

unequivocally infringes upon legitimate property

interests. Such damage is legally indistinguishable

from the destruction of tangible assets, establishing

MDGA as property crime. Article 275 of China's

Criminal Code protects precisely the 'ownership of

public and private property' (gong si cai wu suo you

quan). Thus, property-rights-based protection should

be prioritized for such destructive acts.

Simultaneously, the actor's subjective state must

be scrutinized. Most MDGA constitutes intentional

offenses, where perpetrators: (1) knowingly cause

damage to virtual property, (2) with willful

acceptance or active pursuit of harmful consequences.

Such mens rea may be inferred from objective

evidence, including professional capacity (e.g.,

commercial boosters), anomalous operational

patterns (e.g., mass destruction of premium assets),

and post-facto conduct (e.g., taunting via modified

account identifiers).

4.3 Institutionalizing Valuation and

Evidence Collection Mechanisms

for Virtual Property

The persistent challenge in valuing virtual property

lies in assets acquired freely, yet through substantial

time investment, whether accumulating in-game

currency or obtaining resources via repeated

gameplay grinding. Such accessibility must not

negate their inherent worth. A value-linked threshold

for criminal liability should be established,

exemplified by setting the prosecutorial benchmark at

CNY 5,000+ for intentionally destroyed virtual

assets.

When establishing virtual property evidence

mechanisms, adherence to authenticity, relevance,

and admissibility requirements is imperative. For

authenticity concerns—given virtual property's

susceptibility to alteration and destruction—novel

solutions like blockchain-based evidence

preservation should be deployed. Illustratively,

Hangzhou Internet Court's 2018 landmark ruling in

an internet copyright infringement case pioneered

judicial recognition of blockchain-authenticated

electronic evidence (Lin Lin, 2018). Regarding

relevance, a scientific proof standard system must be

established. Technical methods should logically

connect player actions to damages, such as forensic

analysis of game operation logs. For admissibility,

evidence collection must strictly comply with legal

procedures, particularly concerning collector

qualifications and method legitimacy. User

information cannot be excessively captured in

violation of the principle of minimum necessity, and

forensics cannot be carried out in a way that destroys

the integrity of the data.

It is suggested that the investigators should be

divided into three levels: the technical level, the legal

level, and the value level. At the technical level, the

focus is on testing the integrity and authenticity of the

data; at the legal level, the focus is on the legality of

the investigators; and at the value level, the virtual

property is valued according to professional

standards.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Malicious Destruction of Game Accounts (MDGA)

has seriously violated the legitimate rights and

interests of players and constituted a threat to the

normal order of the game and the security of the

network environment. Although China's Civil Code

recognizes the civil right object status of virtual

property, there are still gaps in its specific

connotation, right attributes, protection mode, and

other key issues, so that there are substantial

difficulties plaguing judicial determinations and the

disposition of MDGA cases in practice. This paper

puts forward some proposals on the basis of analyzing

Regulating Malicious Destruction of Online Game Accounts: Legal Difﬁculties and Countermeasures

177

the difficulties in legal regulation of Malicious

Destruction of Game Accounts (MDGA), aiming to

effectively curb the the vicious development of this

behavior and substantively protect the legitimate

rights and interests of players. It should be noted that

the foregoing legal analysis derives exclusively from

existing legal system and theoretical perspectives,

lacking empirical judicial validation. Furthermore,

while advancing a preliminary framework for virtual

property valuation, how to operate and how to

formulate assessment standards still need to be

improved. With the continuous development of the

gaming industry, the issues related to the protection

of virtual property will grow increasingly complex.

Therefore, it is hoped that lawmakers will continue to

pay attention to the legal attributes of virtual property

and improve the relevant laws and regulations, so that

the virtual property of game players will be duly

protected. Concurrently, gaming platforms should

fulfill proactive custodial obligations by

implementing robust safeguards, providing equitable

and secure gaming environments, and deploying

preventive measures to mitigate MDGA incidents.

REFERENCES

Zhang Yin, (2024). Judicial Protection of Online Virtual

Property: from Practice Exploration to Path

Optimization. Digital Law., (04): 132-146.

PALKA, Przemyslaw, (2017). Virtual property: towards a

general theory. Florence : European University

Institute.

Xiao Zhike, (2021). Virtual Property: Legal Attribute and

Criminal Law Protection. Journal of Shanghai

University(Social Sciences Edition). 11(60).

Wang Huaxiu, (2024). Research on the Legal Attributes of

Network Virtual Property. Social Science Front. (07):

275-280.

Ren Yuejin, (2021). Tong Weihua. Legal Benefit

Clarification of the Theft of Online Virtual Property.

Social Sciences in Xinjiang. (05): 107-118+163.

Jiang Yunfei, Lu Lu, (2019). Open destruction of in-game

assets constitutes intentional destruction of property.

Shanghai Legal Studies. (20): 58-60.

Zuo Lin, (2023). Commercial leveling service operators

held liable for malicious MDGA, court-ordered

compensation exceeding CNY 40,000.

https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=17578763354527415

22#:~:text.

Susan H. Abramovitch, David L. Cummings, (2007).

"Virtual Property, Real Law: The Regulation of

Property in Video Games" 6:2 CJLT.

Game Publishing Committee, (2024). 2024 China Game

Industry Report. China Audio-video and Digital

Publishing Association.

Lin Lin, (2018). Hangzhou Internet Court Pioneers Judicial

Recognition of Blockchain-Based Electronic Evidence.

https://hznews.hangzhou.com.cn/jingji/content/2018-

06/29/content_7027840_0.htm#:~:text

ICPLSS 2025 - International Conference on Politics, Law, and Social Science

178