# No Silk Road for Online Gamers!: Using Social Network Analysis to Unveil Black Markets in Online Games

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.06368 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.06368/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jan 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [PU GNN: Chargeback Fraud Detection in P2E MMORPGs via Graph Attention Networks with Imbalanced PU Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08604/) (2022)
- [Self-supervised Graph Representation Learning for Black Market Account Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02679/) (2022)
- [Node Embedding for Homophilous Graphs with ARGEW: Augmentation of Random walks by Graph Edge Weights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05957/) (2023)
- [A Framework for Mining Collectively-Behaving Bots in MMORPGs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10461/) (2025)
- [Human-AI Collaborative Bot Detection in MMORPGs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.20578/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Online game involves a very large number of users who are interconnected and interact with each other via the Internet. We studied the characteristics of exchanging virtual goods with real money through processes called "real money trading (RMT)." This exchange might influence online game user behaviors and cause damage to the reputation of game companies. We examined in-game transactions to reveal RMT by constructing a social graph of virtual goods exchanges in an online game and identifying network communities of users. We analyzed approximately 6,000,000 transactions in a popular online game and inferred RMT transactions by comparing the RMT transactions crawled from an out-game market. Our findings are summarized as follows: (1) the size of the RMT market could be approximately estimated; (2) professional RMT providers typically form a specific network structure (either star-shape or chain) in the trading network, which can be used as a clue for tracing RMT transactions; and (3) the observed RMT market has evolved over time into a monopolized market with a small number of large-sized virtual goods providers.