Lawsuits over MMORPG in-game crime

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/07/2027252&tid=123&tid=10 - Slashdot
http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2005/1114/062.html -Source

"If you steal the tools from my garage, or if you steal my Sword of the Dragon Slayer and sell it on Ebay for $2,500, it's still theft," says Gregory Boyd, a onetime gamer who advises companies like Electronic Arts and Sony at law firm Kenyon & Kenyon in New York.

Wow. Just wow. If these lawsuits start actually being considered serious, that would be the most pathetic thing ever.

Also, there are no grounds which allow these cases to be argued. In the game world, there are virtual rules and if they are disobeyed it can only affect your ingame character (ie you're banned). however you can not legally be charged in the real world unless what you did was something illegal such as hacking in which case it was you, not the character performing the action anyway. I cant believe this is even a possibility.

Wow! Thanks for that link, I'm sure nobody on this forum ever reads Slashdot at all.

Wacky's threads are awesome. In the way that makes me wan't to drink more vodka or wine.

AgentSpork said:
I'm sure nobody on this forum ever reads Slashdot at all.

What? I usually don't unless somebody posts about something there over here.

Idunno, if the stuff in the game has actual monetary value (as in can be sold on ebay) then it's pretty much theft, isn't it?

But I suppose the line is kinda blurry because the assets in these games were never meant to be traded for real money...strange times. :P

but its the games rules, whether there is money or not. When you enter a game you are in another set of laws and if in the game (like most games) you can steal, kill, fight, etc then you can no longer be held accountable for anything done in it. Likewise if you DO do something against the game rules you cannot be judged in a real court because what you did was not a real thing and applies only ingame.

Also, TIMELINES arent cute/funny/relevant 99% of the time they are used. So instead of upping your postcount and being an idiot just leave the thread until you have something relevant to say. Also, so what if it was on slashdot? I posted it to discuss here. When someone posts a news story do you think they just wrote and researched the story themselves?
I guess these guys are also guilty of linking news articles for discussion:
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34562
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34481
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34344

WHAT THE FUCK?!? YOU KILLED MY CHARACTER I SPENT YEARS LEVELING HIM UP IM TAKING YOU T OCOURT ON CHARGES OF

MURDER

Soon the Koreans will be suing about lost battle cruisers...

Didn't anyone ever tell these people it's only a game?

You forget the game is also their life.

honestly i dont know why ebay allows it, i wouldn't not worth the risk.

its just a game, sorry if you wasted 200 hours getting that sowrd, but in the end its a fucking game. issues like that are best left to server admins and such. the courts should ignore and toss these people out on their asses.

woah wait he got 2500$ in real money?

selling useless bytes of data for money.. go him

I don't know what to think here. I'll leave this up to the courts to decide; I think they've got this pretty well covered.

If you pay real money for game money (ie The Sims online) and it's stolen through a flaw or exploit in the game, then the game developers should be liable for whatever you paid.

And if someone figures out a way to "dupe" money on The Sims online game, could they be charged with counterfeiting?


Sidenote: 5-year anniversary of my first level 50 hardcore character on Diablo II. (Almost the 4 year 6 month anniversary of me quitting the game forever.)

You know, games differ from the real world in one major respect: in a game, rules can be enforced through programming. If stealing is a crime in the game, then why is it allowed in the first place? Why do the developers purposely include a feature which, at the very least, is liable to get you a ban if you do it. If one player is allowed to take an object from another player, without using a flaw/exploit, then it would seem to me that the developers are saying it's okay to do that. Whatever.

AndrewB said:
If you pay real money for game money (ie The Sims online) and it's stolen through a flaw or exploit in the game, then the game developers should be liable for whatever you paid.

For most games the EULA includes a very strict no-warranties disclaimer for such occurrences; for that to be disputed there would have to exist some sort of virtual information industry to claim the opposite, demanding that videogames be made with such trade in mind, and that the producers (either directly or through an "Internet security" company) become responsible for the security of such information. And I gather that would make online play into an exploitable bingo/lottery type industry.

Even ISPs have such disclaimers, and unless they are specialized for business users, say "if you do business through our Internet and lose money, go fuck yourself" often implying that commercial use of the service is inappropriate.

geekmarine said:

You know, games differ from the real world in one major respect: in a game, rules can be enforced through programming. If stealing is a crime in the game, then why is it allowed in the first place? Why do the developers purposely include a feature which, at the very least, is liable to get you a ban if you do it. If one player is allowed to take an object from another player, without using a flaw/exploit, then it would seem to me that the developers are saying it's okay to do that. Whatever.

exaclty. and also, andrewb unless the flaw or exploit gets you real money, the programmers have to fix the bug and sort it out. courts dont have time to waste on this kind of stuff, and its NOT real, its a game. if the courts start listening to these gamers petty little ingame arguments it will be a sad day indeed. Imagine this being argued in a court of law (note: law != noob arguments)

insertwackynamehere said:

exaclty. and also, andrewb unless the flaw or exploit gets you real money, the programmers have to fix the bug and sort it out. courts dont have time to waste on this kind of stuff, and its NOT real, its a game.

How can you call it "not real" if real money is paid to the developers? Remember, I'm NOT talking about the Diablo II type underground-item-selling markets.

Also, saying that a game is not real is akin to saying Microsoft Office is not real, and that email isn't real, etc. Bytes may lack substance, but they don't lack reality.

Real money is considered so because it's valued in relation to the services or property it is put in contrast to; game money could be accounted in the same way if playing games were considered an activity that can be capitalized. In this case, like I mentioned above, if it were backed by an industry that claims that, let's say, the points you make playing the game have a commercial entity, and you play either in an economically speculative way, or as a professional.

In that sense, game points or money is real only in the game, under the way we deal with online games nowadays, but isn't going to be considered capital, except perhaps by individuals who make that claim, like in these legal cases.

In my opinion this is like getting pickpocketed in a library. You can't sue the library because some unaffilated person stole your wallet.

Dr. Zin said:
You can't sue the library because some unaffilated person stole your wallet.

Yet in the cases decribed in the Forbes article it's more like the filching victim, or the library, trying to sue the pickpocket; not the victim blaming the library.

From the article:
Kiblinger says he has repeatedly gotten threatening letters from the Entertainment Software Association suggesting he is selling goods he doesn't own. The trade group declined to comment, but Kiblinger asserts his customers have as much right to their imaginary castles as the company that created them does.

They may have a "right" for that junk, but that doesn't invalidate that the EULAs that you agree to when you acquire computer games usually note you can't profit from the game content or its direct use.

Ralphis said:

WHAT THE FUCK?!? YOU KILLED MY CHARACTER I SPENT YEARS LEVELING HIM UP IM TAKING YOU T OCOURT ON CHARGES OF

MURDER

If they're gunna go with the theft call they should go all the way.I want goddamned MMORPG Jay Walking laws.

while bytes may be substantial, they are aquired in a gameworld unrelated to reality. If their value is able to be translated into real world reality then so be it, but in a game which is programmed to allow fighting, stealing and killing, you are therefore defining rules. if someone kills someone in a game, could they be tried for manslaughter? no. likewise, if stealing is implemented in a game that means its allowed. there are no legal grounds, period. stealing in the game world IS LEGAL and therefore what they choose to do with the items later is legal.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha (etc. etc. two hundred times)

Wow. That Cloudsong thing is amazing. I've heard of people getting pissed, but DAMN.

DC

as dorky as it sounds, i can why in same cases stealing in MMO games could be considered theft.

for me the defining points are:

Did they steal the item/whatever by methods not intended by the game. ie, did they hack a persons account in order to steal it, ect.

Do they generate profit from the taking. as in, are they selling your dumb item on ebay, ect.

and to answer anybody who is thinking of asking, no i am not a big MMO player... i just play Guild Wars when i'm bored.

I have a hard time making the idea of property in a game having actual monetary value stick in my head. You pay the same money whether you have the item or not. The only thing you've lost is the time involved in acquiring the item. In selling the item on eBay, or any other auction site, they haven't defrauded you of any actual money. I'm sure someone could try to make "time is money" work in a court, but I think people would be passing out popcorn for that one.

If there's been a hack, then the person is responsible to the damages incurred on the servers of the game, like Blizzard, in the case of WoW. If Blizzard felt generous, it would be nice for them to give the player back an item, but I can't see how any monetary compensation would be justifiable.

DC

I hope these cases are laughed right out of court, this is getting stupid. Next there will lawsuits against the developers of these games from people who want their lives back.

Doom-Child said:

In selling the item on eBay, or any other auction site, they haven't defrauded you of any actual money.

perhaps the case could be made that you stood to make that money if you had wanted to sell the item.

time may not be money, games are supposed to fill free time, but think of other things in real life you might get free but for the time spent in aquiring them... such as intellectual properties.

i'm not a liar or anything, just playing devils advocate.

Well, even if you were going to sell it on eBay, they didn't actually steal money, because it was still in potentia.

I'm not going to get into intellectual property stuff on that. That's offtopic, and I have no idea to witness another holy war.

DC

insertwackynamehere said:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/07/2027252&tid=123&tid=10 - Slashdot
http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2005/1114/062.html -Source



Wow. Just wow. If these lawsuits start actually being considered serious, that would be the most pathetic thing ever.

Also, there are no grounds which allow these cases to be argued. In the game world, there are virtual rules and if they are disobeyed it can only affect your ingame character (ie you're banned). however you can not legally be charged in the real world unless what you did was something illegal such as hacking in which case it was you, not the character performing the action anyway. I cant believe this is even a possibility.

This dude sounds like a major moronicus lameicus. :rolleyes:

Ralphis said:

WHAT THE FUCK?!? YOU KILLED MY CHARACTER I SPENT YEARS LEVELING HIM UP IM TAKING YOU T OCOURT ON CHARGES OF

MURDER

Eek.

caco_killer said:

Didn't anyone ever tell these people it's only a game?

Apparently not. I know for a fact that these games DO draw people in, and it'a hard to let go sometimes.....but other than that, nah.

insertwackynamehere said:

while bytes may be substantial, they are aquired in a gameworld unrelated to reality. If their value is able to be translated into real world reality then so be it, but in a game which is programmed to allow fighting, stealing and killing, you are therefore defining rules. if someone kills someone in a game, could they be tried for manslaughter? no. likewise, if stealing is implemented in a game that means its allowed. there are no legal grounds, period. stealing in the game world IS LEGAL and therefore what they choose to do with the items later is legal.

Agreed. :cool: