Racketeering, Cartels, Collusion and Extortion: Exploring the Language of Player-Organized Criminality in MMORPGs

This paper examines how players of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, principally EVE Online and World of Warcraft (with particular attention to World of Warcraft Classic), describe their own and others' activities using the vocabulary of organized crime, including racketeering, cartels, collusion, and extortion. Drawing on blogs, official and unofficial forums, and Reddit discussions, the study asks what this language reveals about play in these games and about players' expectations of them. It situates the analysis within Game Studies literature on antagonistic play, including cheating, grief play, and treacherous play, as well as earlier debates on MMORPG regulation.

The central finding is that players reach for mafia terminology most readily when they are dissatisfied with another group's conduct and feel they have little recourse against it. The evocation of a shadowy organization monopolizing money, resources, or space gives shape to these frustrations while drawing on filmic and literary representations of organized crime. Victims of such activities tend to be explicit in their accusations and frequently express surprise that these practices are permitted in games. Player "mafiosi" respond to context: in World of Warcraft Classic, where inter-faction collusion violates the Terms of Service, participants may simply avoid discussing their own play, whereas in EVE Online, where such activities are largely within acceptable bounds, players speak more openly, though often with humor or euphemism.

The study also finds that player commentary offers mechanical insight into how these communities function, as participants debate whether a given group constitutes a genuine cartel or merely a set of players whose behavior they dislike. The analysis concludes that player regulation remains an unresolved problem and that players continue to transplant successful out-of-game models of organization into virtual spaces, sometimes at the expense of other participants.