14 DAY TRIAL // Online gaming has become very popular as of late, especially MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role playing game) and to be honest, I think that this just might be the future of gaming, as it is way more fun to battle human intelligence than AI. In any case, whenever something is popular it gets the attention of hackers as well. And with so many people playing online, malicious users can only think of how to take advantage of their numbers and scam a few.
They have three basic tactics to steal user accounts, all revolving around the financial profit, of course. Just go on eBay and look for a World of Warcraft account - you'll find out that you can purchase quite a few online. Of course, all accounts have high level and well equipped characters on them. So that's what the hackers will do - steal your account and then sell it to someone else.
One way they can do this is through social engineering. They will either ask for your password, pretending to be an admin or for them to give you a boost in the game. Some users fall for this, even though when they install the game they are warned that no admin or game master will ever ask for their password. As for the boons - well, some people pay malicious users real money to get in-game boosts. Of course, they would also need to supply the booster with the password. Most of the times they get nothing, and have their accounts stolen.
Then there are vulnerabilities and flaws in the game. You know it - there is no such thing as the perfect program. If a hacker has enough skill he could exploit a certain bug to get access to the game's database and snatch the password directly from there. If you can escape the first method just by being careful, there's nothing you can do about the second one.
Then, there's malware. But you can do something to fight that. Deploy an AV and you won't get infected. If you get a Trojan on your machine, the keylogger type, then a hacker could get access to whatever you type, thus stealing accounts and passwords. So, these are their basic tactics, all you need to do is be cautious and install security software on your machine, and you're pretty much safe. If they hack into the game's database and you lose your account/character you will get it back, after the breach has been fixed, because all these game developers keep copies of accounts on a separate server.