> The other players may have consented to the possibility that their in-game stuff might be stolen by other characters, but the fact that bots were excluded by the rules of the game indicates they did *not* consent to their stuff being stolen by bots.
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> Presumably their characters would have had a fighting chance of either preventing, defending against or avenging theft by another player-character, which is what makes it a game. *That* is what they consented to.

Quite, and you've pointed out where I went wrong.

It's an as-yet largely unexplored area that the law and the game worlds will have to mould themselves into. He stole the goods, which is legal, but he did so in an illegal way. For that reason, the theft was every bit as below board as if the guy had hacked into the system and done it from there. The poker example is a good one. If someone cheats me out of my gambled money, the overall effect is the same - I risked, they won - but no one could argue that their win was right.

Actually, casinos do a good job of being a physical example of a typical MMO style world. Inside, your money itself is no good and instead you have to deal with colourful plastic GP which is worthless outside. If someone does something inside the casino which goes against its rules, they've taken my chips in the "bad" way.

Gambling laws may end up extending to MMOs, as they are similar fields. A more unusual prospect is the transaction-free game style where you can't trade real cash for items in-game, but still might give someone a couple of notes out-of-world to persuade them to hand over an item. In this situation items have no actual determined value. If someone illegally stole my Hat of Shouting +3 which I *could* have sold to someone on an auction site, what then?