My neighbor’s son had his game character stolen about ten years ago;the son had MANY hours and about $700 in REAL money invested in the character.I think he tried to have the games operators or whatever they are called reverse the theft. Don’t know how that turned out. Probably not good.
Several years ago, my husband’s game account was hacked, with all of his game items sold, the gold stolen, and the characters deleted. He got everything back, but it took a few days.
I happened to log in while the hacking was taking place, and put in a ticket right away. My husband was able to talk to someone using my account, and got the process started to restore his account.