WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Can virtual conversations that go with virtual reality games turn into something more? FactFinder spoke with a grandmother who’s sounding an alarm about experiences with the popular games involving her 11-year-old grandson and a stranger who wasn’t who they claimed to be.
The technology Kim Warne’s grandson used is a popular gaming headset, Oculus, a popular gaming headset used in Meta’s virtual Metaverse. When Warne’s grandson wanted one, she went along with it, but what she didn’t know was that anyone from anywhere could talk to him through the game.
The virtual reality headset, powered through Facebook, lets players go into “the Metaverse.”
“It has games preloaded, you know, like the Donkey Kong that we used to play,” Warne said.
She knew players could talk to each other inside the Metaverse but she didn’t realize the extent.
“You can actually send messages through the Oculus, to their email, to their phone, through Facebook, and then they have everything they need to know about you,” Warne said.
Kim said her grandson thought he was chatting with a 9-year-old girl in the Metaverse.
“The next thing I know, she’s on his phone and then sending pictures of herself and her animals and her bedroom and things like that, and of course, he sends a picture back,” Warne said.
Her grandson even talked on the phone with the girl he’d met through the game. But it wasn’t as it seemed, she discovered.
“The voice is a disguised voice. It’s not a little girl anymore,” she said.
Now feeling uneasy about the situation, Warne made her grandson block the person pretending to be a young girl and erased their information. But it didn’t stop.
“Somehow that person, through Oculus, contacts him again and has him download a secret website,” Warne said.
That “secret website” is called Discord, presented as “the easiest way to talk over voice, video, and text” where you can “talk, chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.”
“I said, ‘Why did you do Discord?’ Warne recalled. “And he says because she said to download this so no one would know he was talking to her.”
Warne said she knew this was no normal game-time chat.
“It made me so sick to my stomach because I knew this was a predator. I knew it,” she said.
The grandmother shared her story in hopes of raising awareness for other parents and guardians. There are several gaming platforms where players communicate with each other and it’s not limited to virtual reality games.
“If it’s happening to him, it’s happening to other people,” she said of her grandson and his experience.
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Maria Malik is your guide to the immersive world of Virtual Reality (VR). With a passion for VR technology, she explores the latest VR headsets, applications, and experiences, providing readers with in-depth reviews, industry insights, and a glimpse into the future of virtual experiences.
