I think it is funny that the YC crowd points to "naughty" when it benefits them and says things like "Am I supposed to feel sorry for someone that got caught exploiting online games?" when it doesn't.

When someone will take apart a game for fun, for better or for worse and often both, it is intrinsic. We praise capncrunch and damn this guy?

I'm sorry you lost your parents Scott. Congratulations on your child and marriage. YC is a mixed bag but I feel home here too.

There are a lot of ways to hack the world. I'm not sure if you've picked inconsistent/risky ones because of personality type/thrill or because it is where you landed. If its where you landed, move toward the center.

Sounds like you've got the basic small business skills to sell many things and you don't require permission or motivation to do so.

Consider hacking on your life instead of the games. What do you know that's inefficient where you are and could be interesting?

I hear heavy equipment auctions are big and profitable in rural areas and I know from experience it is a space software hasn't touched.

Pick a product or set of products (wave energy harvesting equipment?) and niche it via PPC. See what the market is like for them on eBay.

Go with the black hat and get picked up by a security consulting firm. I've rarely seen them be degree choosy with people who have the chops.

Don't make the mistake of thinking the only interesting things are on the fringes.

Lastly, ignore the rest of the noise of this thread. Keep your head up. Stay interested. Stay playful.

As the father of a three year old and an English BA holder in his second year professionally programming, I can relate.

As someone who inputs on hiring, I would recommend that you become a serial project completer rather than just a starter. I don't get the impression of follow through, which is unfortunately what the unfinished degree also communicates. The only way to combat this is to choose smaller chunks (don't start with solving energy) and see them through to decisive conclusion.

What is something you can build in six months that does not require government funding and also teaches you something for that bigger project?

Great story. Many parallels to the performance marketing and affiliate worlds, where mostly young people stumble into great opportunities, usually exploiting loopholes or underserved markets such as this, and suddenly start printing a thousand dollars a day in profit. The vast majority of them know, deep down, that it can't last, but somehow still end up getting lulled into a feeling of complacency. That's the feeling I got from your post too. You are definitely not alone in your experience, and you already learned the most important lesson, which is you don't need anyone's permission to start a project and see if it works. If you're ever in a similar situation again, take the money day by day and remind yourself that at some point the ATM machine is going to shut down. Of the dozen or so liquid USD millionaire affiliates I knew in my 20s, I'd say half are bankrupt or close to it today.

Thanks for sharing your story Scott; I've lurked on HN far longer and never had the courage to stick my neck out like you have today. I hope this leads to something amazing for you and your family!

It's interesting to read the story of someone else who has profited from the exploitation of video games.

I did so from a more human perspective, I sold gold either bought from other player characters or harvested using automation in popular MMOs.

I would have never thought of it as a business. My income was steady for 5 + years, and not a day went by where I didn't consider the possibility of the game company wiping out all of my 'assets' in entirety, leaving me penniless had I not saved, and worst -- jobless.

Fun times. Thanks for writing this, although I think that "I would've been a great employee at..." is too speculative. It's so hard to say without actually doing it, it's not just your own skills/actions that you have to worry about in business.

As a former (in reality, and in some ways still internally) farmboy from Montana, I applaud the resourcefulness that 'scobar is displaying.

Google may be a tough choice, as they do seem to favor PhDs.

But you ('scobar) have a lot of talent and initiative and a very marketable skill set.

How does someone get 100k in debt from undergrad? Is that a thing? I know folks with graduate and professional degrees from not-very-cheap institutions who aren't at the 100k mark. That's med school level.

I too haven't graduated from college, and I have had no trouble finding work because of it. AOL wouldn't look at my resumé, and I assume other large companies won't either, but there are a ton of startups and other shops that will beg you to work for them if you demonstrate a clear ability to excel in their environment. This is probably the most non-graduate friendly career industry out there.

Your first step should be to get a job, and QA sounds like a great place for you. You'd be surprised how easy it is to move out of QA and into dev if you can demonstrate aptitude for development tasks. Many people got their foot in the door this way, including myself.

Anyway, I bet this was cathartic to write, but I dunno what I was supposed to take from this. Selling illicit goods is a high-risk endeavor?

Get out of Montana. Seems you already feel you should. Top people in top cities will laugh at the idea of a degree being everything as much as you do, probably more.

I can't believe this has been up for 4 hours and I'm the first person to suggest this.

> "I know you're full of shit because I have connections in the elite crowd of the game hacking community. These are the two most popular games right now. My connections tell me it's impossible to duplicate items in either game, but you claim to have a dupe method for both. Don't waste my time by contacting me again."

For some reason reading this quote really bothered me. Probably be it reinforces the theme that hacking is some magical art that can grant nuclear access codes to some random 13 year old slamming away on a keyboard, and this site owner bought into that and praises this "elite hacking community".

> I just wished there were some way (beyond a traditional resume) that I could express how I truly would've been a great employee at Google[x].

Well, actually, there is -- the only thing that can express that would be making progress on the problem...

If you're ready for a big dose of realism (and at the risk of fueling some dangerous fires), one can dig deeper into the trust disconnect that fuels acqui-hires here:

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/vc-istan-7-s...

There is no malice in my post but the author really needs to think about the world from other peoples perspectives.

> I'm not a fan of your previous methods of making money. Not because I see things in binary or I have a strong desire to follow rules, but because I enjoy the sport of it. When using an exploit, you detract from that sport, whether doing it from the supplier side or whether you play the role of the kid walking about kicking over others sand castles, you are talking a stance that you don't give a toss about the victims and they're pretty well justified in feeling the same way about you.

> If you want someone to give you money for a research grant or another type of funding, or even just a job, you're going to have to give them a reason to believe in you. Your life story may make them feel sad for you but it's not going to land you a well paying job.

> The fact you've built a 'successful business' on a house of cards and either forgot to save or never made enough money to justify it in the first place is not something that reflects amazingly well on you.

> If you want to be employed by someone else, you'll need to build a reputation. You can do that by taking an entry level job and working your way up, or by getting a degree and then taking an entry level job and working your way up. Unless you're doing some pretty prolific and utilised works, you're not gonna skip those entry level jobs.

> You come across as a bit lazy or too cocky, always looking for the quick fix or to skip to the end. Fact is, a lot of people know enough to build things, few know enough to build things well. There's a lot of knowledge that is supposed to be passed down during those junior roles that you want to bypass.

Still, like I said there's no malice here. I wish you all the best and I figure if you really have that much drive, you'll land on your feet eventually. But don't get caught in the trap that you're too good for QA work, you'll find most of your peers eat some dirt climbing the ladder, degree or no.

Don't you know how to code?

(I'm not in the video game or affiliate marketing scene, but I'd assume hacking games & building websites requires some technical ability.)

If you can code, it should be trivial to find a job of some sort regardless of your education.

One of the games in question is without doubt World of Warcraft, correct?

I am jealous of your energy.

One tip for quick and one time easy money, in similar vein to exploiting dupe bugs (especially when it comes to people dismissing it as impossible :) - sport betting odds arbitrage. Made ~35% in one month. At the end of it, I was banned almost everywhere, which is why it's an one time affair (unless you start to use fake identities - I didn't).

Scott-- Sorry to hear about the bad times. Don't quit, and don't let no discourage you!

That whole googlex thing and sending handwritten letters and more directly to Teller is a little creepy and verging on stalkerish.

I read the whole post, and it's just left me with a strong sense of unease. A gut-feeling that strongly reminds me of self-stories I've heard from certain people in real life, among them a next-cubicle coworker who was eventually institutionalized.

> When he finally responded, I was so excited that I sent him a long story (like this one) explaining my life, and gave him a link to a website with some of my ideas. After receiving no response, I realized how selfish I was to think he had time to read all of that.

> I still had hope though, so I narrated all of it and sent him .mp3 files so he could listen to it while he was jogging or something.

Putting your autobiography on tape for a prospective employer after already sending a text version... well, I think it's a sign.

In all seriousness, I believe the author could see big personal benefits from some kind of professional counseling about this stuff, as opposed to throwing it all out on the internet.

Hey get on www.instaedu.com

You can learn 20$ an hour teaching computer science in your part time.

You can easily make more than 60$ a day.

I was expecting some kind of payoff at the end, but nope. Just a whole lot of money lost and little to show for it.

Confidence is important but so is doubt. Not all ideas are good, and just believing in an idea isn't enough to make it a success. And the "safe" corporate jobs can be just as fulfilling in their own way.

Exploiting games for profit is not something to be proud of. It seems like you have some of the necessary skills to run a business, but you need to find a product that is not based on theft.

You call it adversity. I call it karma.

Your business was based on ruining games for ordinary players by exploiting bugs (in violation of your contract with the game operator) to duplicate items for sale for real-world currency. This messes up the game economy and it messes up the game balance.

Hey, it's great that you're trying to find a place for yourself in the world. Unfortunately, you seem to have a malfunctioning moral compass, and you give off a sociopath space-cadet vibe. Making money exploiting in video games and tricking weak-minded people into buying worthless shit is not a path to anything good. Stop trying to bullshit your way through life and if you're lucky you might just be OK.

Am I supposed to feel sorry for someone that got caught exploiting online games?

Its sad, but people are idiots. A degree is only about existing knowledge and keeping the status quo, not about "innovation".

Create a phony degree, someone who doesn't check backgrounds will hire you, and then your life will improve.

It does not come off as credible to me without any actual details. The largest online games I can think of do not even have a market for items or do not even have servers/shards. Also why wouldn't you try to sell a dupe exploit to a gold seller like IGE. I know they buy them (and other exploits).