The AJ Items Sold 'IRL' Dilemma

 Hey jammers! Popcorn here, and welcome to a new post!

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In this post:

AJ Items Sold 'IRL' Dilemma
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Let's get straight into this post!

Disclaimer: This idea was fully inspired by DoomyPanda! You can access their post here :)

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Alright jammers. Time for a bit of serious post. (Wow, I sound really dramatic and cringe here, ignore that)

After reading DoomyPandas' post, I decided to do some extra research because I thought this was a very important topic that needed a bigger discussion. Here is my jumble of research, opinions, and discoveries ^.^

*Big Disclaimer (please read): If you ever decide to further investigate these kinds of things too, please make sure you're careful. This I wouldn't consider the "black market", but can be very dangerous. It's always a good idea to have a safety browser extension (like Norton) for these kinds of sites and adult/older supervision while on them as well. Don't click on any suspicious extra links/websites/ads that you find on any of these sites. And of course don't buy these items! I can tell you right now without needing proof that 99.9% of these are scams. They'll obtain credit card information, plus real life money with your purchases. If you would like to see some tips on how to stay safe online, you can read my Internet Safety Tips page here. 

Finding the Websites

First, I searched up "selling Animal Jam items" to see what would find and the top 2 websites that popped up were "PlayerUp" and "PlayerAuctions", though PlayerUp was a lot more active with selling Animal Jam Items. Wow, there were a lot. 

As you can see, there are a variety of high-rarity items including Black Longs, Headdresses, Pet Bears, even high-rarity accounts. Yep. Accounts. You can buy someone's account that already has Headdresses, Rare Pets, you name it. Look at how many offers there are. 1,181. 

And look at the prices. As I took a closer look into these kinds of scams, there seems to be 2 different pricing "strategies" here. 

Low Pricing

The cheap strategy is probably the best one. This can attract to younger viewers more thinking 'Whoa, it's that cheap! Yeah!' 3 dollars for a variety of pet bears? Who wouldn't want that! Those are the kinds of things that scammers want you to get into your mind. They want to trick your brain into thinking that deals this good can't be passed up. 

High Pricing 

This person is sure selling a lot of items; a lot of items they probably don't have. The total for this is $200. That's insane. For a game? Yeah, maybe some of the famous jammers do that to grow their account and reputation. But is it really that worth it? If you think about it, a 6 month membership costs 30 dollars. If you keep that membership recurring for 2 years, then in total you will spend about 120 dollars. So a 2 years worth of membership costs less than the price of these items. I mean, if you work hard enough, you could most likely obtain these items in the span of 2 years. So, whether people notice this or not, why do they still purchase these items?

The Big Questions

1. Are these kinds of sales illegal? 

2. Why do people actually purchase these items?

Here are my answers. 

1. This is a tricky one, but it mostly depends on where you live. In section 5 of Animal Jam's Terms of Service, (quoted from text) "This includes attempts to trade Animal Jam virtual items outside of our in-game trading system,..." Basically, exactly what the people on this website are doing. As I dove further into this question, I found so many replies that I decided to at least try to make a condensed statement: You do not personally own the game, rather, you own a right to use the software. The terms and license will specify the ways in which they allow you to use the software, but they typically reserve all other rights. This most likely includes the right to profit from the game/any items from the game. Your selling of in-game items outside is under the games' rights and/or laws. 

Screenshot from section 5 of Animal Jam's Terms of Service

2. Think about it. You're not rare in Animal Jam. At all. And you meet this person in Jamaa saying that you can buy free items for just a couple of bucks. You find a website and see the pricings for a Magenta Headdress. $20?! Wow! That's amazing! 

Maybe you wouldn't fall for this trick now. You've probably heard, or read about it, or you're just older and have a sense of the drastic size these types of scams are. But if you were younger, would you fall for it? I honestly think younger me would. Say you had a membership. You're already spending money towards the game anyways, so what's a few extra bucks going to do? This is the problem these kinds of scams spark. 

It's really like falling for a normal item scam in Animal Jam. You know how scamming works, and you tell yourself over and over that you'll never fall for a scam again. Then comes along that one person, who has a list full of Headdresses and solids. You so desperately want it, and all they're asking for is your only green long! Wow, what a deal! You trade them your long for a necklace, and they're gone. They've disappeared with your rare. Now, thinking about that scenario, why did the jammer feel so tempted? Was it how trust-worthy the scammer sounded? Was it the amount of rares on their list? This is not only in Animal Jam. These scams happen in real life, and can be avoidable if you know how to navigate them. 

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And that, fellow jammers, will wrap up this post! I hope this was at least somewhat interesting; I learned a lot from writing this post and reading these websites (I'm literally never going back there again) Remember: never buy any of the items that you see are being sold for real money. Preferably,  steer clear of these websites, too. 

Thanks for reading and happy jamming!