Should I confess? Am I even guilty?

I would just stay silent and play dumb if any evidence comes up

Did you not spoof your IP or anything before doing it ?

Better to own up imho. At least if it's only a game then it's not like you spent real money or anything, and if it's affected the person whose name you used, then any bad effects on their record can be rectified.

From the sounds of it, either:

A - You were in the wrong, he has your name on that log, it's in your interest to confess in the hope of lenience.

B - You weren't in the wrong, he doesn't have your name on that log, if you confess it doesn't matter because you weren't in the wrong.

So there doesn't seem to be downside to confessing here, where as not confessing possibly ends up with you in greater trouble than if you did confess.

Okay, firstly, just look

What is the professor trying to achieve? He's trying to get people to confess, yes?

Why? Is it because he wants to be nice to the culprits by giving them a chance to confess then go easy on them? probably not.
I say, like in college, or highschool, etc. when something like this happens, the authoritative figure says this for one purpose:

They're bluffing.

He might have a few names of people that are likely to be involved, but at the end of the day how can he get 100% proof? and how can he get most of the people involved?

Only if people admit to it.

I agree with tonberry, just stay silent..

Oh and in the future don't do anything like this again lol

I did have that thought to that he could be bluffing. He even said in the email ""

and I thought why do you want information about what happened and people to step forward if you supposedly already have this log telling you everything?

Hey everyone, I'm a first year Economics student.

As part of one of my modules my University runs this online virtual economy game. The login to the game was extremely flawed as all you needed was a uni username and an email both of which was available to everyone so I was curious as to whether it would be possible to get into someone else's account.

Yes in hindsight I can see how incredibly stupid and foolish this was.

But I've always been overly curious and I just wanted to find out if it was possible if I could do it, so on the last day the virtual economy was open I tried and succeeded to get into someone elses account. I just picked a name at random. Think I bought like 4 things maybe and then closed it, as I started to realise it wasn't a good idea to be doing this.

The monday after this happened, the lecturer said there had been cheating, and theft of identities, and that he was going to get to the bottom of it. However whenever speaking about this he always refers to multiple students taking multiple Ids, not just 1 student logging in for 30 seconds, so I'm really not sure if its even me he's talking about, it seems like it was other people on a much larger scale that he's investigating. He even mentioned one time something about collusion going on.

After 3 weeks he finally published the results, and said he'd finally managed to get a log, of all the individuals concerned and was going to take it to the University formal hearing, but said if people come forward and basically confess he will recommend a more lenient punishment and that the punishment can range from a simple deduction in marks to outright expulsion.

So I'm really at a loss for what to do, I don't know if I've committed the offence he is talking about or if he's talking about other people. I don't want to come forward and get the rap for the whole thing, and I'm not even sure if I'm on his list of individuals, I could confess even though I'm in the clear. But at the same time I really don't want to get expelled, that would be the end of my life as far as I'm concerned.

Please help me, advise me, I really don't have anyone to talk about it, and I'm really really scared.

Calm down, tell them what you have told us and apologise greatly

But I'm worried that they are lying about the leniency thing, or that even if he does stay true to his word and they recommend being lenient the panel will still expel me.

I remember at the start of the year in one of those introductory talks, another guy from the Uni was boasting how strict the rules were and told us about a girl who accidentally took her phone into an exam with her, and even though the panel believed her that it was an accident, they still failed her for all exams with no chance of a resit, in effect expelling her as she'd technically "failed" the year and was unable to resit.