Sony Bans Sale of Virtual Items from Everquest

Snaller writes "Everquest is an online roleplaying game where you have to work for long hours online to get your hands on the magical items... unless you buy them. Buy them in game using game currency, or on Ebay where players have been spending real dollars on buying virtual items. After you pay, you meet the seller in game and, hopefully, you get the item you payed for. But no longer, Sony has decreed that selling your virtual items is no longer allowed - try it and you may find yourself banned from the game. " As a somewhat related side note, obnoxious GMs are roaming the worlds and forcing people to change their nicks to crappy D&Dish names. Really ticked off friends of mine who spent months building up charachters only to have their identities forcibly stripped from them. Of course since EQ constantly crashed for me so I gave up and returned to hoping Diablo 2 runs under wine and is released before my first heart attack. But I find it interesting that virtual property is being regulated: trade restrictions between virtual worlds and the real one.

Comments

Sony Had Good Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Dagmar d'Surreal here...

What Sony did was rather apropos, although the way they did it may seem rather implausible to a lot of people. The trading of in-game items for cash was causing a serious problem on some of the servers where once a group of players had established high-level characters, they would simply camp (i.e., hog) the area or monster where a rare item dropped around-the-clock taking each and every one of the rare items and forcing anyone who wanted one to pay them money just to get it. Not only did this spoil the (granted, it's not much of one) illusion of a fantasy-world environment, it was pissing a lot of players off. It was rumored that for a short time on one server, multiple guilds had banded together to create a near-complete embargo of certain areas, where the sale of items took place over an 800 line.

There was also the problem of people selling characters (which involved selling the entire account) on E-Bay, only to wait until a couple of weeks had passed, and then calling customer support, verifying the information which would almost invariably still be associated with the selling player, and taking the account BACK. Since Verant has no way of verifying who owns an account beyond what information was used to create the account, this was causing MASSIVE headaches for their customer support people, because when someone pays a few thousand dollars for a high-level character, they tend to not take "We're sorry there's nothing more we can do" for an answer.

Now when foolish players get screwed, Verant is no longer in a position of having to attempt to sort out the impossible. They can finally say "You knew it was against the rules, you're on your own, chum." This isn't something they can actively go out and police, but at least it eliminates the huge headaches that underhanded "entreprenuers" were causing for them and the people playing the game.

The long and the short of it is that this is not some petty manouever by Sony to keep people from making a profit on the game without Sony getting any.

Re:Sony Had Good Reason

[Dredd13]

The trading of in-game items for cash was causing a serious problem on some of the servers where once a group of players had established high-level characters, they would simply camp (i.e., hog) the area or monster where a rare item dropped around-the-clock taking each and every one of the rare items and forcing anyone who wanted one to pay them money just to get it.

Then EQ's code should have better randomization. Or, more appropriately it sounds like, some CONCEPT of randomization. That's just stupid coding. In the 'real' world, orc's aren't born in the same spot every day with the same rare item. Randomize it, and that problem goes away, WITHOUT breaking valid uses of Virtual Real Estate.

There was also the problem of people selling characters (which involved selling the entire account) on E-Bay, only to wait until a couple of weeks had passed, and then calling customer support, verifying the information which would almost invariably still be associated with the selling player, and taking the account BACK. Since Verant has no way of verifying who owns an account beyond what information was used to create the account, this was causing MASSIVE headaches for their customer support people, because when someone pays a few thousand dollars for a high-level character, they tend to not take "We're sorry there's nothing more we can do" for an answer.

So what you're saying is that because some luser couldn't figure out how to get something in writing about the transfer of the account, it is now up to EQ to solve the problem? Nope. Let the affected user prosecute the seller for fraud using whatever documentation he has. That's what its all about.

Re:Property rights.

[Lemmy Caution]

That begs some big questions:

Is the 'property' of EQ ever your property, or does it belong to Sony? Do you actually have any rights to it that they don't explicitly give to you? Is the 'you' that 'owns' those objects the same as the you that is playing the game? If your character dies, you may lose those objects - just what rights do you have in that case?

More questions: what is the legal status of contracts made between two characters on EQ? Are they binding between the players? Are marriages? What civil rights do you have? Can Sony arbitrarily triple or quadruple the costs of a subscription? If you didn't pay, what rights would you have to your virtual property?

well...there is always Ultima

[einstein]

sigh. there goes my dreams of growing up, making a multiplayer computer game that has items that have actual cash value. From there I would establish trading and allow people to buy things for real currency. Then, I would go into the game, give myself millions in game currency, then sell it for real world money, then retire to a non extradition treaty country. it's s simple dream, really.

Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat

[Dredd13]

Everyone should read The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat.

Basically, it was a similar system, "back in the day", (although obviously nowhere near as interactive or as advanced). This paper documents some of the lessons they learned about how people interact in a "virtual environment". It will offer some interesting insight on why EQ people just "don't get it", and I recommend if any of them are reading this... hey, YOU .. go read that article.

For example, there was a situation where a normal player got a "DM only" weapon (a weapon that could kill anyone instantly). How they handled that situation was ingenious, inventive, and consistent with the rules they had laid out for "The reality". The EQ people need to understand these things before they go passing edicts like this.

Free speech issues?

[jennis]

I think CmdrTaco's side note actually brings up an interesting issue worth discussion. Is Sony's naming policy fair, or does it unjustly restrict one's freedom of expression?
Take a look at the naming policy as posted in the FAQ on Sony's site.
First off, I don't think most would really argue that having a profanity laced name would be considered inappropriate. However, their naming policy goes well beyond that.
Verant's goal is to keep names within the genre of the game. To quote their opening sentence:

Character names in EverQuest should reflect the genre of the game. Original, high-fantasy names are desired. These guidelines apply both to first names and to surnames, and also to the combination of first name and surname. (For example, Luke and Skywalker are acceptable names, but Luke Skywalker is not.)

Should Verant be mercilessly bashed for wanting to keep the game in as much of a roleplaying spirit as they can by establishing their ability to change people's names (to, as was so succintly put, crappy D&D names)?
And another issue is how well these rules are enforced. Clearly a number of GMs look the other way when it comes to names. Perhaps some of them do not agree with the naming policy and choose not to enforce it. But to the ones that do, does that automatically qualify them as "obnoxious"? After all, aren't they just doing their jobs, as stated by the rules?
And finally, where do you draw the line when it comes to deciding which names are appropriate, and which ones are not? Obviously there is a lot of room for interpretation here.

Make Our Own...

[Izaak]

What we need to do is make our own open source massively multiplayer games that no single corporation has control over. WorldForge seems to have potential... and I'm working on my own such project. Then it could be like Studio54 of old. Get through the door and anything is permitted once you are inside. :-)

Thad

It's bad, yet it's good.

[prizog]

Clearly, it's a form of censorship... or something... It's a corporation messsing with a community... And all that stuff.

BUT:

1. EQ isn't much of a community. Any Roleplaying community that I would want to be a part of would not have people doing the Out-Of-Character and Out-Of-Game stuff that goes on in EQ.

2. Selling game-items on e-bay is destructive to whatever real role-players still use EQ

3. If you view the company as a game master, then the game-master sets the rules. If you view the company as being system administrators for game servers running a game with rules only about how much damage stuff does, well, you're missing the point. A GM's job is to make the game fun for the players.

BTW, if anyone wants to create a real online community, join us at WorldForge (www.worlforge.org). Our servers, when we get them done, will be way beyond anything you've ever seen commercially.

Back in the day...

[Xidus]

Used to be on AOL (yes, AOL, stop looking at me like that) that you had to pay per minute. A text-based game called Federation built up a surprisingly large player base (peaked at around 1000 online at the busiest part of the day -- I think it hit more like 2000 when the link was posted on the Welcome screen to AOL). AOL came out with a feature where you could give someone else an AOL gift certificate -- essentially, a credit to their bill.

Enough background. Federation had to ban the trade of Federation cash (groats) for AOL hours, because people with Fed money were paying people with real money in order to support their habit. Almost the opposite of what's happening here.

There are a handful of text-based games out there that are almost free, but you can pay the administrator to get ahead (experience, game points, etc). Not completely related, but another trade between real and virtual worlds.
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Rationale

[jinschoi]

I have heard that Sony's problem isn't with sale of virtual items for money, but the support headaches it causes. People will buy an EQ item on eBay, send the real money, get gipped, then complain to EverQuest's customer support.

There is also the subsidiary problem of people "farming" creatures who have attractive items to sell for real money.

Karma

[segfault7375]

I'll pay $1/point for some Slashdot karma :o)

segfault@bellatlantic.net

Re:Hold on to your reality

[gilroy]

Quoth the poster:

It [money] only has value because the government says it does.

I'm no libertarian, but even I would argue that money has value only because the citizenry says it does. Money is backed by our faith in the economy. If a people decide the money is worthless, it soon becomes so (post-Communist Russia, anyone? For that matter, Communist Russia itself.) Look at what happened to Confederate currency: Richmond might have decreed that CS$1 had a certain value in gold, but that didn't mean people would trade gold for it.

In fact, even when the world was on the gold standard, money was virtual. It's time for people to clue in to this: Gold has no intrinsic value! Well, OK, it has some, because it can be used for wires and to make pretty things and so on. But these are far less than the value of gold on the specie exchange. Gold is only worth a lot because we all agree it's worth a lot. Gold is only stable because we all agree it is stable. In the end, gold is just as "virtual" as the current dollar or the EQ token (or whatever).

The key thing to remember is, economics is illusion. Seen in the light, the essentially contra-rational actions of people, corporations, and governments start to make more sense.