[glurgh]

On rescanning the thread, you probably right about the first bit.

And we are definitely reacting to each others' notions of how bothered one ought to be by his behaviour.

'Broken moral compass' may be a little harsh but I think you are perhaps swayed too far by the display of resourcefulness and the 'virtualness' and triviality of the setting. I'd see it differently if he were a 14 year old kid, figuring out how the world works. But he's an adult (with a spouse and a mortgage) who more or less tried to extort the developers of the mmorpg into giving him a job. This seems like sufficient information to conclude that he has rather poor ethical judgement or at least, a great deal of ethical obliviousness.

It reminds me a bit of a part of 'Reflections on Trusting Trust' that is rarely cited or recalled - open it up when you have a chance and re-read the last three paragraphs of the last section 'Moral'.