A New Approach To Criminal Law Regulation Of Online Game Plug-in Crimes

Up to now,online games has now formed a very significant gaming industry,with hundreds of millions of game players participating.However,the online game plug-in industry that accompanies online games poses a serious threat to the healthy development of online games.The research in this article helps to remedy the shortcomings of criminal law in regulating online game plug-in crimes,solve many problems arising from the use of charges in judicial practice,deepen people’s understanding of the spatial nature of the network,and promote legal protection of virtual spaces such as the Internet and the metauniverse.From a technical perspective,an online game plug-in refers to a program that modifies data in the memory of an online game client or data packets used for communication between the client and the server to expand game functionality and modify game content.Classified by behavior types,online game plug-in crimes can be divided into four types: production,sales,provision,and use of plug-ins.Online game plug-in crimes have serious social harmfulness,and in the context of the deep integration of online game space and real space,and the development of virtual societies such as the meta universe in social morphology,it is necessary for criminal law to regulate online game plug-in crimes.However,the existing criminal constitution in criminal law cannot be applied to online game plug-in crimes.In practice,courts can only apply the crimes of illegal business operation,copyright infringement,and computer related crimes,resulting in many problems such as improper expansion of the criminal circle,inaccurate evaluation of legal interest infringement,imbalance between crime and punishment,incomplete evaluation of behavior,and falling into the "technical trap".The problem in judicial practice stems from the absence of legislation,which can only be solved by adding the crime of illegal production,sales,and provision of online game plug-ins and the crime of illegal use of online game plug-ins.The protected legal interest of the new crime is the legal interest of public order in online games.On the basis of a correct understanding of the legal benefits of new crimes,we can define online game plugins as a combination of form and substance,that is,online game plugins refer to unauthorized scripts or procedures that are connected to online game programs and disrupt the public order of online games in a manner that violates game rules.The objective behavior of the new crime is manifested in the illegal production,sale,provision,and use of online game plug-ins.The criminal subjects of the new crime include natural persons and units.The subjective aspect of the crime is intentional,and the production,sales,and use behavior also requires the purpose of profit.The establishment of new crimes will make up for the lack of legislation on online game plug-in crimes in the criminal law,solve the problems existing in judicial practice,and effectively promote the development of the concept of network crime governance.