Most of our regular readers know Axie Infinity as the game that saw a North Korean hacker gang get away with a huge stash of cryptocurrency. There are now even more details coming in about how the perpetrators managed to pull off the heist, and it was all because someone in the game’s team was looking for a new job.
According to insider reports, one of the game’s senior engineers was duped by the hackers into applying for a job that never existed, with the con even going so far as holding multiple rounds of fake interviews with the dev. The engineer was then delivered a job offer PDF document that ended up having spyware attached to it, which in turn allowed the hackers to infiltrate the game’s systems and get away with $620M worth of crypto at the time of the theft, though that currency’s value has dipped significantly along with the rest of the crypto market over the last few months.
In the meantime, Axie developer Sky Mavis has managed to raise $150M in a funding round led by Binance, which will be used as a supplement to the company’s own coffers to reimburse users that were affected by the theft, adding another chapter to the crypto title’s ultimate downfall.
Further reading on crypto in MMOs
Perfect Ten: MMOs that have fallen to the dark side of cryptocurrency
Lawful Neutral: How is an NFT MMO even supposed to work?
Vague Patch Notes: NFTs in gaming are a bad, dumb idea
Vague Patch Notes: Why play-to-earn is a garbage idea
Vague Patch Notes: The metaverse doesn’t exist and isn’t a good idea either
GDC 2022: Control, revenue, scarcity, ethics, and the human challenges of the gaming ‘metaverse’
Vague Patch Notes: No, Little Orbit has not solved the MMO blockchain problem
