Illegally selling game access rights for profit, young people face 9,000 criminal charges

A 24-year-old man from Poland is facing 9,000 criminal charges for illegally selling access to his game. Currently, the court has issued an administrative fine of up to 34,000 USD (nearly 800 million VND) and is considering an additional 5-year prison sentence for copyright infringement.
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This young man’s idea was to buy the digital version of the game from online stores and then resell the access to many people through several auction sites. However, the majority of online platforms such as Steam there is a limit on the number of users that can access an account at a time, even locking the account if too many users try to log in from different locations so in most cases, The user realizes he has been tricked. In the end, they can’t play the game they paid for and are more unfortunate than having their accounts locked. According to the court’s allegation, this young man applied this fraudulent business form from 2014 to 2018 and leisurely pocketed $260,000 during the process.
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Based on the evidence gathered by the police, the young man faces nearly 9,000 criminal charges and he has confessed to all. All of his assets worth more than $34,000 have been frozen by police to be used for financial fines. Not only that, under the provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, this young man can also be imprisoned for up to 5 years. The court is currently looking to decide whether he really needs to go to jail.

In fact, illegal business like this young man’s story is not uncommon, even openly enticing others to do it through group chats or videos on Youtube. This is also a warning to everyone: never be greedy and buy games on pirated websites, lest you lose your money.​