Chinese gamer Lu Mou recently discovered the hard and painful way how having a dim-witted friend can cost you a lot of money.
A costly mistake
The Independent UK, quoting Chinese tech site Abacus, reported that Lu had spent a whopping 10 million yuan (RM5.4 million) to develop his ‘Justice Online’ character.
'Justice Online', in case you're not familiar, is a popular multiplayer online role-playing game based on Wen Rui'an's novel 'The Four Great Constables'.
Gamers can choose characters from up to six classes, and with that character, they can undergo a variety of missions, such as going to war against other players and even run a business.
Anyway, you can say that Lu has spent a lot of hours (and money) on his character, and we are pretty sure he's proud of his digital companion.
When his friend, one Li Mouscheng, asked if he could borrow Lu's character to perform a task in the video game, Lu graciously agreed.
However, when Li wanted to return the character back to Lu, he accidentally listed Lu's prized possession on the in-game marketplace.
So, instead of giving Li back his prized possession, he sold it to a stranger for 3,888 yuan (RM2,682)!
To court you go
Of course, one could imagine how pissed Lu was when he found out that his friend has sold his character off.In fact, he was so enraged that he dragged his friend to court to settle the problem.
According to court documents sighted by the news portal, Li had told the judge that he accidentally put the character up for sale after he became "dizzy from excessive gaming".In the end, the judge at the Hongya County Court of Sichuan Province ruled that the buyer must return the character to Lu, and Li had to pay 90,000 yuan (RM53,317) in damages to the player who purchased the character.
So guys, the moral of the story is to not lend anything to your friend, because who knows, they might sell it for you.