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Everquesters Suing Sony Over Virtual Ownership
Thomas Charron writes: " A group of Everquest players that have had their accounts yanked, etc., is filing a class action law suit against Sony Interactive. They belive they have the right to sell 'virtual items' in real life, including the buying, selling, and trading of actual online accounts. They have set up a home page at Gravityspot.
Kinda fringe, but as an EverQuest player myself, I humbly submit that they do have the rights they claim. You be the judge.."
When I say there needs to be a limit, what I mean is, maybe Sony foresaw the situation above. They don't want powerful characters camping and ruining the game for the rest of the people, so they put the clause into the ToS on purpose. How can you claim any rights then over the virtual items? If sony knew they couldn't prevent this from happening then they never would have made everquest in the first place (lets just say). So, I guess the important distinction is whether they prevent the sale as an 'after the fact' squashing technique or if they foresaw this problem and were trying to preemptively handle it. At least to me.
I can't believe these players think they have that right. The "world" was conceved by whom ever it is that Sony bought. Yes, it would be nothing without the players, however that is not concidered "fair use". They are trying to make money off of someone elses work w/o permission. I've run a couple MUDs in the past and I would be pissed if they did to me what they are doing to sony. Normally I really never side with large corps, but this time I do. Besides, I would bet that it states in their Terms of Service that what they are doing is prohibited. If they don't like the terms than don't play the game. Personally, I think that Everquest is no better than a quake/ut mod. It is not an RPG. Hell, chess is in RPG...any game is an RPG.
wrong, just look at the updated (as of 1/27/01) EULA here
I've played UO, AC, and EQ. UO for about a year, EQ for about 2 months, and AC for 4. What exists now in AC and UO is pretty disgusting. My UO experience, was fun. I kept my account around, sold it after I stopped playing MMORPG's for about 450 bucks. One of my friends sells a CD with a .pdf doc on it for 250 every week. All it has on it is 80 pages on UO and the neat little tricks etc on it. I never once thought of selling my account, and until we stopped playing, we figured we may as well see what happens..and voila, lots of dumb people out there.
EQ from what I remember was where I first heard of character selling. I believe the first sold was a level 38 ranger for ~2k. After that..Rubicite armor was the uber camp of all time, pieces going for plenty of money. Can't find that anymore, Verant took out the spawn. With the new EULA that they have, it's toned down alot, and has curbed alot of the problems that I see in the other games.
As for AC..I think it's the worst of the bunch, great game, but the people spend way too much. 8000 recently for one character, many going for around 5000. A set of two pieces of armor goes for 1k. As of now..most of the serious gamers sold out, no longer play, and so the characters that were bought are out running around, pretty shitty at playing, but with godly characters. While playing AC I ran across people who duped items in UO, one person (who was in college) made about 30k off of it, then bought an AC character, and made more off of item camping.
After realizing that there are now a large portion of players who play a game just to make money, instead of playing to have fun and an enjoyable experience, I had to quit. There's a reason I work, and there's a reason I play games. Sueing Verant/Sony isn't going to solve anything, and really, they click on "Agree" everytime they log into Everquest. When it changed, they should have stopped playing if they intended to sell characters and equipment.
Whatever...some ppl are just dumb.
-Pervis
Except you're not really creating anything -- you're being loaned a bunch of virtual items to play with in a virtual space. In my opinion, you have no more right to sell EQ items than you do to sell the plastic balls at Chuck E. Cheese.
Ya know, back on the muds, where you'd just pretend to be a chick and cyber with some level 50 dweeb to get equipment.
Afterwards, you'd say "This is cool, sweety [*], but could you take me hunting to get some experience." And, of course, he'd say yes, and to impress you, would try to take on the hardest mobs in the game. Then, when he gets really worn down, and says "Heal me, now!", you beat him to death with the sword he just gave you.
* the hardest part is supressing the gag-reflex at this point; actually, there's a virtual gag-reflex in there that you should simulate (if you have some artistic integrity), but you don't have to behave like a real woman to fool anyone who's got the time to put in to having a level 50 character on a mud.
Hmm, now that I see the direction this took, I think I'll click that post anonymously button.
I have had the unpleasant experience of running into a bought character several times while playing Everquest now. Playing a character in the 40 and above levels, in my opinion, requires that you at least know how to play whatever class you happen to be. When a level 50 warrior, all decked out in his finest, asks you how to reply to a tell, you can bet someone is going to die soon due to this persons ignorance of gameplay. I have not had one good experience with anyone who has admitted to buying their character. They have either caused total party wipeout with their incompetence, have harrassed people with endless questions about gameplay (you figure they didnt want to spend the time leveling a character to begin with, why would they even try to read on how to play), and one person I had to eventually put on ignore because he wouldnt stop asking me to sell him something my character was wearing. When the auctioning started, I really didnt care at the time whether someone wanted to throw their money away on a bunch of pixels, but when it started affecting the fun of the game, thats when I realized it was a bad proposition and why Verant probably made the rule to begin with. So to all the people who feel they should get something monetary out of playing Everquest for so long, I say too bad you wasted all that precious life time on a game that didnt give them enough fun and entertainment. Hopefully the next sit in front of the computer for hours session will be more profitable. P.S. Pardon the lack of quotes and apostrophies, but they are not allowed in your java script.
If players expect that they can sell items for real money, Sony would have a liability issue on their hands. If their server crashed and someone lost some of their items, someone might try to sue for the value of the items based on what someone on ebay would have paid for it.
As nice as it would be to just let people sell the stuff they have collected, both current game conditions and past game history demonstrate that it just isn't viable to allow it. First off, one of the biggest variable costs Verant has is CS. CS gets called when people's Windows-based computers start crashing, which even though it isn't always Verant's fault, is something that eats up a lot of time. There's also players going above and beyond the call of duty doing nasty things to each other that causes CS to get involved in-game. Biggest on this list is *fraud*. It doesn't take any time at all to establish what looks like a kosher vendor profile on EBay or Yahoo, and then start taking people's money and simply never delivering the items. Twisted as it may be, it happens a LOT. There are also side effects from allowing this to go on... When people are just being powergamers and trying their darnedest to get the "best" items and the biggest pile of loot, they can be pretty competetive. Normally they'll only go hunting things that are reasonable for their level and class this way, since very little worth having ever comes from monsters who are too low to give exp points. Let them *sell* stuff and suddenly the level 50 players have a reason to play dirty and chase level 35-40 players away from monsters and loot they'd normally have no competition from, all because the level 50 player can get the Fancy Brass Shield of Eyes (made-up object, don't ask me where to camp it!) to fall out of a monster's hands twice an hour, and sell it for $400 or more on Ebay. Not only have high-level players driven low-level players out of areas where they wanted items to sell, one entire GUILD became so organized at it that they pretty much ruined gameplay for most of the people on an entire server, because regardless of where a special item fell, if you wanted it, THEY were camping it, which meant you had to basically pay them REAL money to get it, or decide you didn't want it bad enough. While it would be nice if people could sell their stuff legitimately on auction sites, the fact of the matter is that it causes far more headaches for Verant than can be considered reasonable (especially when there's fraud involved with selling accounts, since the original account holders usually have no problems taking them BACK a few months later and the person who bought those accounts is now without the characters they bought as well as the money they spent), and it causes far more long-term problems for players that also isn't reasonable to allow.
Ayup, most likely.
You pay Verant $20 (or whatever) a month to in effect rent a small chunk of the game at a time. All the game content is owned by Verant, you are just paying to use it. Therefore, my position on this (like anyone cares what I think :) ) is that a player may sell his account but not specific items.
The player's account, defined here as the character and including all his stats, represents a large investment of time by the player. The charcter is unique and was created entirely by the player during his time in EQ . If the player wants to turn his accumulated time and effort into money and/or transfer it to another player, I have no problem with that; Vernat doesn't have a claim on the character since the player made it.
Items, on the other hand, are, as said before, pretty much rented. Your character is allowed to use those items because you pay Verant $20 a month (and found them in the game, but the former is required for the latter anyway). They are created from scratch by Verant and they are Verant's property, all you own is the ability to use them. You may freely trade them with other characters because that is an option that Verant has decided to give you, but charging for them may constitute illegal resale.
Prolly.
The more you know, the less you understand.
People play EQ because it's fun. They get together with other players to complete quests and find items and progress through the game. As soon as money enters the picture it's no longer fun. It's like you and your buddies playing poker or Quake (or pick a pastime) on odd weekends or days off for fun (ok, there may be some money involved, like, say, loser buys beer). Suddenly there's a $1000 pot. It's not not fun because there is money involved per se, but most players want no part of that (buying high level characters), they don't want some guy plopping down a grand and effectively gaining an unfair advantage. I'd go so far as to say it's cheating, it's as if a brand new player signed up with a high level character instead of starting at 0 like everyone else. There is an unstated assumption that everyone starts out equal, and it comes down to skill (and time and determination), not who has the most money. And when something stops being fun for some people (for whatever reason) they will leave and find something else they enjoy. It's bad for the game, as any form of cheating is.
Of course, there's also the factor of almost everyone scrunching up their noses whenever someone guys their way in. It's just not the way it's supposed to be done.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
I can think of two reasons't they'd mind:
1) What if someone paid for a +50 sword of carousing on ebay, but when they got the item in the game, it was only a +1 sword of mastubating? They complain to sony, who doesn't want to get involved in that crap.
2) Sony is not getting a % of the sell profit.
While I agree that it isn't fair that you are not allowed to sell your account/items from outside the game, there are things to keep in mind:
There are only so many GMs who can be hired by Sony/EQ.
Sold accounts are said (by an EQ representative known as Abashi on line) to be the #1 source of fraud perpetrated against the purchasers; bad person sells account, then shortly thereafter removes all in-game items from that account and transfers it to another one for instance.
Most purchasers will go to GMs with complaints about this kind of fraud.
There are not enough GMs to deal with this in addition to legitimate in-game complaints/bug reports/etc.., and it's not even Sony's problem, as they never intended that accounts be transferable.
So, what do you suggest they do? Hire 1000 GMs, who can magically figure out who perpetrated the fraud and then pursue them in real life legally? What about the players who need to report a game-related problem? Do they just have to sit there on-line waiting for hours for a response?
It's a matter of what they can deal with. They can't help people who get defrauded, but they don't have a mechanism to just ignore people who petitiion GMs, flame them for not helping the defrauded, etc...
They may get flack (or lawsuits) for not allowing the sale of accounts & in-game items, but I for one would rather just go along with them on this than have them wasting time and money on lazy stupid people.
What bad thing happens if an Everquester sells one of his/her possesions or characters?!!? I don't understand why Sony are being such pricks about this! What harm comes to them from trading these items freely? Is Sony jealous that they're not getting a piece of the pie? How is this different from buying, selling and trading Magic cards?
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And Justice for None
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And Justice for None
Thank you for boiling it down to this issue, but I have to disagree with you about EULAs. Many of "us Slashdotters" hate EULAs because of the way Microsoft (and IBM before them) has used them to choke computing freedom. The point that is missed there is that the GPL is a EULA, as is every Open Source license. GPL, APL, LGPL... the "L" is for License, folks.
I think Americans, in particular, have lost sight of the benefits of living in a society that respects its own laws. Over the last decade or so, members of the Reagan administration were found to be subverting their own government, President Clinton was impeached and President Bush was elected in what can most politely described as a "seriously flawed" election. Yet, all we suffered was a lot of 24-hour-news coverage and Jay Leno monologues.
I'm old enough to remember the Watergate scandal. There was a palpable sense of fear that Nixon, having gone as far as he did, would invoke his executive powers and US Army tanks would roll into Washington to enforce his presidental power. It didn't happen, and now people can't even seem to imagine it happening. I'm not complaining; I think it's great! Look at any country where the military is called up to prop up a failing regime and ask yourself if you'd want to live there.
Now find countries where EULAs are not taken seriously. Look at their software industry. What software industry? Exactly. How can you be in business when there is no expectation that you will be paid for you work?
Trust me, if Sony is robbed of its ability to impose a Terms of Service (and it ain't gonna happen anyway), they will cease to provide the service at all.
Yeah, but, Sony is probably thinking that the sale of characters represents lost potential profit, because there is 1 character (and thus 1 set of monthly fees paid to Sony to create it) but 2 people involved. Sony would rather have them both create their own characters, and have twice the revenue as they would have with the character-sale situation. So, ultimately, it comes down to profit motive. Watching Sony lose this case would be an enjoyable conclusion :)
the real at&t mix
No, don't be silly. The editor is a derivative work of the software used to create it, the running binary is derivative of the chipset and CPU... I think that everything gets sent back to Von Neumann, or Turing, or someone. :)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
And I haven't seen anyone complaining about ISPs deleting accounts for spamming and stuff like that.
I have friends working for largish ISPs, and they regularly get complaints about that, even threats about lawsuits (but no lawsuits yet, AFAIK).
Your sig is a step in the right direction...
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
The only they really own is the time they spent playing the game. All they are tring to sell a membership to service there are plenty of services that do not allow people transfer a membership from one party to another. So what is the big deal here? The fact that these guys are tring to make a money off something they agreed they would not. Next if you do not like the rules do no play the game.
Hehehe, I like your style. :)
cunnilingus (kn-lnggs)
n.
Oral stimulation of the clitoris or vulva.
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[New Latin from Latin he who licks the vulva: cunnus, vulva; see (s)keu- in Indo-European Roots + lingere, to lick; see leigh- in Indo-European Roots.]
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cunnilingual adj.
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I, and many others, have put in 100+ days since playing from release(proly close to 200 now). When im done with the game... i really dont just want to hit delete. Thats what keeps me from quitting all the way.
I would love a valid option to sell and feel at least a small part vindicated for my time.
Verant, instead of trying to skirt the issue, which has been causing fraud and scams, which is the reason they dont want them in the first place... should set up a system for character transfer internally. It would lessen customer service problems, and make a lot of people happy. As far as individual items.... some items have a real life day or more behind them... thats why they are worth money.
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
What the real question here is, IMO, boils down to a question: Do you own the in-game objects that your character has, or are you just using them?
Does a football player own the ball he just received? Whether or not we are paying to play or being payed to play is irrelevant. Do you own the bowling ball that you use to bowl with down at the public lanes, even though you are paying to bowl? The obvious answer is no.
I can see that Verant/Sony have a legitimate beef here. I know that people become very attached to their characters, but does the EULA say anything about who owns those characters (I don't know for sure)? I'd be willing to bet that Sony/Verant have retained ownership of the characters, for the simple reason of liablity (someone posted earlier about how Sony would be responsible fiscally if a character owned by a player were to be wiped out in a server crash).
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
If I was the judge, I'd hit these losers with my hammer !
C'mon, people, get a real life !
- sigs are for wimps.
There is a very complex economy implemented in the game, and your character's race(species really), class, location, and faction standing with certain NPC groups plays a big part in this economy. The other side is the character to character auction system in-game. If you have some uber item you wish to sell, you auction it in-game and receive fair-market value in the form of platinum(pp), gold(gp), silver(sp), and copper(cp).
The whole point which Sony/Verant are attempting to state in their EULA is that the EverQuest world is a different world than Earth. If you want to auction items, you do it on the world you obtained them, and they have value to others, on. What value does a Short Sword of Ykesha (an EQ item) have to me on Earth if I don't play EverQuest? NONE! The value exist only on Norrath (the EverQuest planet) - so all trade should be performed on Norrath.
This is the concept that these cry-baby's don't like. They feel that the Earth-based time they spend "on Norrath" entitles them to disregard the entire role-playing intent of the game. I disagree completely! I spend as much/perhaps more time "on Norrath" and have no trouble conducting my auctions there - as was intended. Are they claiming that thier Earth-based time is more valuable or deserving more rights than mine? Not in America bud! We're all equal here on Earth, in the country EverQuest was born in.
I could go on, and probably will later... but I have to work today and must hit the road!
I AM, therefore I THINK!
End User License Agreement (EULA)
GNU Public License (GPL)
If EULA's are on there face "illegal. Period." then the same is true of the GPL and the rest. As a user of a GPL'd piece of software, I may not even see the notice stating the code has been release under the GPL. That notice is typically writen within the source code (although some include it in readme files).
What the problems with EULA's and all other software licenses is that portions or particular statements may be ruled illegal by a court. But to throw out the baby with the bath water, as they say, is a dangerous notion.
I fail to see the legal standing the plaintiff's have in this matter. They are not impacted in any real world manner that can be litigated. They are simple restricted from selling in-game characters and items out-of-game. The notion that these players have spent hours of real life time obtaining them, therefore are entitled to some monetary compensation is false. The real life time they spent obtaining the characters/items was spent playing the game - the use of Sony/Verant's system is their compensation for the subscription fee and time spent playing.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
For example, bat wings are a required component for levitation spells. Everytime you cast the spell, a bat wing is used from your inventory (items you carry around with you). If you are out of bat wings, then you can't cast the spell. Bats are level 1 creatures, but even at level 57 I will still need their wings for my spell. So rather than spending 30 minutes slaughtering bats to collect the needed wings, lower level characters that get experience killing them collect the wings and auction a stack of 20 for say 10pp. At a high level, 10pp is spare change, but to a level 2 - that 10pp will go quite a way.
The in-game prices players auction items between each other is in a constant state of flux. An item, when first discovered, has an enormous going rate since it's rare and there's a cool factor of being one of the first to own one. But then the farming sets in, and the item becomes so common it's value plummets. So the farmer's move on to the next hot thing. Once that first item slowly disappears from the in-game auction channel (a method of speech dedicated to trading/selling), the value begins to creep back up since those who can benifit most by the item's attributes begin paying more for the harder to but item.
This is the major problem with selling items outside of the Norrathian world - it disturbs the in-game economy. This is Sony/Verant's main cause for complaint. They put a lot of work into making the player run economy work as well as it does. Players who distort it by moving the transactions outside of the game, have a detrimental effect on the game play itself. Those who claim that Sony/Verant is just upset that they don't make a profit on these outside sales are completely wrong. It has nothing to do with real-life money, they make plenty of that off of their subscriptions and expansion packs. It's the damage to the game they have spent so many years on that pisses them off.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Where the license appears, or what it restricts, and how it rescricts it is irrelevant when taking this "illegal. Period." perspective.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Impervious to normal fires, bearing inscription which becomes visible when heated. Ring causes owner to become invisible when worn.
Inscription reads (translation):
One Ring to Rule Them All And In The Darkness Bind Them.
VGC, only 4 previous owners, including one titled owner (Dark Lord).
Offers?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Everquest is NOT a skill based game. Lets nip that sorry excuse in the bud. Everquest is about TIME, and how much of it you have to spend sitting around camping for junk (and probably watching TV at the same time to kill the boredom).
Spare me.
Your characters are not like 'documents' created in word.
You do not own them.
get over it.
get a life.
> Anything that is deemed as having value and does not damage an individual or the corporation should be salable.
Possibly explaining why we never see Slashdot karma on the block at ebay.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> By selling imaginary items one acquires in the game, it makes it possible for someone with a lot of disposable income (and not much of a life) to gain an unfair advantage over other, possibly more skilled players.
Kind of like real life, eh?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's, I say, it's a joke, son.
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Do I look like I speak for my employer?
I could see it happening exactly as you say.
The real issue, though, is that there are not, and never have been, definitive laws saying what is allowed to have 'value' and what doesn't. Some people pay to get the shit beat out of them because it turns them on... to others, that would be almost criminal.
When you sell something in an online game to someone else, you are not selling 'property' in any strict sense of the word, and we should quit pretending it is. You are simply agereing to transfer control of something, be it an item in a game, or a character, or account, or whatever, to them.
In other words, it's all about selling control of data.
I personally think, with online games ilke, this, (the ones where you have to pay by the month, as well as for the game in the first place), they should *have* to guarantee fairness and consistency in their game, because yuo are PAYING them for it. It would be different if online play was free, like diablo... if diablo loses a character, i'll have trouble suing them over it.
Just because it's in a contract and has a signatuer does *NOT* mean, in any way, it's absolute. Not even close.
In your case, your heart-beating scenario wuold probably be illegal, as would a clause stating 'you must give us your firstborn child' or 'if you play for more than a year you must give us your house'. Neither is enforceable in any way whatsoever.
Now.. if lawyers, notaries, and witnesses were invovled, and it could be irrefutable that everyone understood all the terms of the contract in great detail before signging, and it wasn't signed under duress... that might be different. But that isn't the case here.
While I personally think paying real-world money for virtual items is ridiculous, I do believe in the idea that people should be able to sell their accounts with their characters intact. Everquest, Civ II, and the software for my digital camera are the only reasons I have my Windows partition. I retired from EQ about eight months ago and then returned. My account was still on reserve (though my characters would have expired had I not deleted them by hand) because it was tied to the activation codes on my CDs. If I had sold the CDs without selling the account, the new owner would not have been able to play the game without contacting me first. Also note that the Everquest EULA was amended to ban the sale of characters and in-game items after it had become standard practice. They freely tweak the EULA and require every player to click the 'I accept' button every time they play the game (or restart after every client crash). This guarantees that people are agreeing to things they haven't read, because even periodically reading the EULA every couple weeks may mean missing a change in the licensing (and there is no copy or changelog on the client machine). And for the benefit of the person who posted the portion of the EULA above: Let's try continuing that happypuppy article with the following: "You hereby grant us permission to download Game-related files to you. You also grant us permission to access, extract and upload (i) Game-related data as part of the patching process and (ii) data relating to any program that we, in our reasonable discretion, determine interferes with the proper operation of EverQuest." That's a piece of legal dung that no Open Source user or decent lawyer would accept, and it's one I missed being added in the time I was away. (It was also, according to The Register, hastily scrapped after an obvious outcry by users.) It's also one more reason I'll be happy to chuck everquest off my hard drive if I get into the Anarchy Online beta next week. (Yes, I'm addicted, but I'm not willing to use the online equivalent of dirty needles. I've already told Sony to fsck themselves over their predatory banning of people who post stories based on their characters in forums Sony doesn't own (see The Register again, Oct 6, 2000), and their unwillingness to honor Windows refunds for Linux users. My next laptop will NOT be a Vaio.)
But then you've got a catch-22... I think that in your solution, people would get rather uninterested in the game quickly if the demand was low for the "better" items.... I just don't think it would appease the hardcore players (then again, you can't please everyone... can you?)
Karnal
If Sony's contract says they have the right to terminate the service of anyone at any time, with a simple repayment, they're wrong.
..." because they didn't have any legal right. The exception would be if they knew me, from previous experience, to be a thief. Otherwise they opened themselves up to discrimination charges.
Contracts like that don't fly in any other industry and they wouldn't fly here. If a business wants to kick out one customer and let another stay they need a fairly good reason or they open themselves up to lawsuit.
For example, I'm a young white male, and I carry a duffel bag with me everywhere. I went into a Wal Mart type store and was told I'd have to leave my bag in their little cubby holes *at my own risk* while I shopped. I said "Hell no" and pointed at a woman in her thirties who had just walked in with a large open purse. I told them that statistically she was more likely to shoplift, and that if they refused to let me in with a bag while letting her in, they'd hear about it. They called a manager and he agreed, he said that technically the greeter should be saying "We *ask*
Further, if Sony didn't discuss this contract *before* people bought the game, then it's not binding. Shrink-wrap licenses aren't binding because you didn't find out about them till after you buy the game. Here, even if this license is 'negotiated' at the time you sign up, it's not binding because it functions to limit your use of an already purchased product. It'd be like Adobe saying "we admit shrink-wrap licenses aren't binding. So, you own a non-functional program. To make it work, come to our website, sign a contract, and download the required file to make it work." Because Everquest is nothing without the online service, limitations on that service are limitation on the product you originally purchased. And they can't do that unless the box says that the are certain rules which govern the use of the service.
On the subject of copyrights... Derivative work only applies if you modify an existing copyrighted work, or use too-large chunks of it. This varies. Using 'Captain Kirk' might be considered too large, in a space story, etc. But if you write something ABOUT Star Trek, you're fine.
Using a copyrighted tool is no different that using a patented tool. The creator of the tool has no power over what you do with the tool once you buy it.
Anyways, on the subject of the save-game. The file is made at your request, and represents your development of the character. Much like a graphic in photoshop; you don't color the pixel on the monitor, you direct the program to do it. The save-game could contain copyrighted data (like in PC games sometimes they save the whole level, with your character in it.) and you wouldn't own that, but by saving a game, they're giving you implicit permission to use any data they put in that file (for the purposes of save-game restoration).
But if you charged to let them in, you couldn't kick one out because he was in the same line of work as you and you didn't like competition.
That'd be breach of contract and would allow him to sue for his enterance fee, damages (lost business), court costs, etc.
Similarly, Sony says (In a "contract" similar to an EULA (ie, not binding)) that they reserve the right to kick anyone out if they refund the enterance fee. But they can't... They can't kick out one person for an offense and let another who did the same thing stay.
Sure, Sony may get complaints from people who don't like the idea of someone buying a powerful character (I'd complain) but they don't have the right to forbid this. (As a similar example, the CueCat company would have liked to forbid a certain use of a product they made but they didn't have the right to because they didn't own them anymore.)
If Sony wants to change this they need to figure out a way where this can't work.
In Quake, it'd be simple, if you did get to buy accounts and come into games fully stocked, the test would be to pit you against a similarly armed bot of a certain skill. If you bought that rank you'd be killed and lose your stuff.
Maybe EQ can do something skill-based, such that a good player will do much better than a new player even with a similar character. And then powerful characters can encounter these challenges. And maybe they could tax players a percentage of their income, so powerful characters would have to work to keep their status, you couldn't just sit around with this god-like character and never risk anything.
That way someone could buy a character, but if they weren't any good, it wouldn't help them.
But, if EQ isn't skill based and it's all about logging into the right account, then people will sell that password, and more power to them.
Correct. Good to see that more people understand this.
They're also an attempt at extortion. You can't use a product you bought unless you "agree" to our illegal contract...
Troll.
It's painfully obvious to anyone with ANY legal experience that EULAs are NOT valid contracts.
And further, a real contract that contained a clause like that wouldn't make it in the courts. Judges have squashed contracts with unconscionable terms for a long time now.
Sony can claim anything they want in the EULA but it's not binding. Meaning that people can click the "Agree" box and not be obligated to do anything.
EULA's are based on post-sale disclosure of terms (which means they sell you something and then tell you what you can do with it) and extortion, where they limit your use of a product until you "agree" to what they want. It's much the same as a protection racket where a thug tells you that you need to pay him a $50 insurance fee, or your car might get badly damaged...
The reason software companies are pushing the UCITA is that EULAs aren't binding and they know it. But if you live somewhere the UCITA isn't in force, the EULA is just a joke.
Troll. If you've read anything on Slashdot you'd know that companies are pushing the UCITA because EULAs aren't enforcable.
If you buy something from me, I can't tell you (after the sale) that there are restrictions on how you use it. And I can't then withhold the item you bought until you say you agree to my terms.
The first is post-sale disclose which is just invalid. And the second is outright illegal.
This just hasn't been pushed in court by someone with enough cash to hurt Microsoft or any other big company.
If you've been following EULAs, I pity you.
That's because EQ sucks.
It may be a neat concept, but if they can't come up with some plot device to prevent people from camping weak monsters, they're idiots.
And if they can't come up with the idea of RANDOM spawn locations, they're likewise idiots.
If there was an adequate supply of magical items and monsters, they wouldn't have these problems. People might still sell 50th level characters, but they wouldn't inhibit the ability of other players in doing so.
There are many things they could do... Have monsters spawn in locations where nobody is watching, have more powerful monsters drawn to more powerful characters, and so on. There shouldn't be any one thing you can do to get powerful, or any one place to sit where the good items are spawned.
Sony's just pissed that people are making money off of their game.
I'm sure they let it get to the point of pissing people off (through lack of items, etc) to appear to be the good guys when they got all heavy-handed and shut it down.
Actually, you're wrong.
When I buy a CD in the store, there isn't a license contract. The only thing I'm bound to is federal copyright law.
There's a license in the box, but they didn't show it to me before I bought the game so I'm not bound to follow it.
And when you "agree" to the license to play the game, that's not binding either. You can buy the game which entitles you to use it, and the only way to use it is their server, so they can't place any restrictions on that use without making it clear on the OUTSIDE of the box.
Nobody can say they didn't see the EULA, but being as how it's not binding, they can say they laughed and clicked through.
(How far would you get in the real world if you changed contract terms and didn't tell the other party?) Jail is my guess.
No, WalMart didn't have an absolute no-bag rule. That's the problem. If they treated everyone equally then I'd have made the choice about shopping there with that in mind. But the way they let one person do something and then immediately prevented me from doing the same was the problem. As to Sony... They should have the right to change the game, and thusly change the rules the world works in. If Sony forbids certain behaviour on their server then that's okay with me. If their AUP forbids impersonating a GM, fine. But if they try to regulate the behaviour of their players off of the servers, that's when I draw the line. It's only one stop from that to preventing players from publishing FAQs or walk-throughs of the quests. Where the line lies will eventually be determined by a judge. I think that line lies very close to Sony's servers, unless they provide people with a contract up-front, before sale. They should, IMHO, give the disks away and then make all the money on the service. Like AOL. That'd get them around most of this, because you wouldn't be buying the full game until you logged onto the net and read the AUP at the same time as you payed your money. Then they could send any fancy packaging and manuals to people once they subscribe. I really have no sympathy for a company that sells software and expect a shrink-wrap EULA to protect them. Especially when they do stupid stuff like say "Contract terms may change at any time and you are responsible for keeping track of any changes." That stuff just doesn't fly. It's like DC and the CueCat. They deserve anything that comes back to bite them. Let them write a real contract and get people to agree to it beforehand, and people can be responsible for signing their rights away, like in any other context.
A better memory serving me correctly, I could cite some names, but the gist is that the money of the individual did not need to play a big part of the Ring Trilogy, whereas the money of the state did. In the case of Everquest, it seems to be a reversed role, where there is no state to speak of!
I'm not exactly siding with Sony here - although my opinion leans toward them because these people are putting good economic resources into virtual values like games and that strikes me as inefficient and unethical and part of a bubble world - ha! - on the other hand it's just free commerce of something of value.
The point that makes the biggest difference is whether or not these people agree to, by paying for Sony's service, abide by a certain set of rules. I have to abide by an AUP: Acceptable Use Policy, by my ISP - it says I cannot portscan (and they even accused me of committing a crime when I *did* portscan), but my arguments, even with citation of the harmlessness of portscanning made precedent in the Georgia case, the point of interest is not whether it is legal, ethical, or moot to let me portscan - I am violating an implicit agreement between myself and the person I am receiving that service from.
So I think it is within the right of the users of Sony's Everquest service to demand changes in Sony's policy, but I do believe that it is outside their rights to break their implicit agreement with Sony and solicit items from the Everquest games. The ethical consequences of this may be deep and far reaching - but that's beyond this conversation!
One might cry "fundamental rights", or say that it's none of Sony's business. I think there's merit to this, and problems with implicit agreements, but I think Sony's in the right, and the users might have valid arguments in what they want but Sony has not done anything offensive to them (that I know of!) or essentially wrong within the constraints of the situation.
As an EQ player, I just thought I'd reply to your comment. The problem is that these auctions are causing problems in game. Example: Monster X drops nice weapon Y, which sells on Ebay for $500. Player or Guild Z decides they want the money, so they sit where Monster X shows up and kill him every time he shows up (which in some cases can take weeks). Now the only way to get weapon Y is to buy the weapon from guild/player Z, or try and find a used one for sale, which the player may not be able to afford, or dislike. Some players like the satisfaction of "earning" their equipment and don't want to be forced to buy it on the open market. eBay auctions, while not the sole cause of this type of problem, excaberates it. The other big problem that Sony has with these types of auctions, is the sale of player accounts. For example, Player A sells his character to Player B. Once Player B's payment comes through, Player A calls Verant and says "Hey, I can't get into my account, it's been hacked or something". Since Sony has no record of the eBay transaction and Player A is whose information is in their customer database, they restore Player A's account to him. Player B could be out $1000 or more. Player B has no way of getting his money back (since account sales are against their EULA, they don't support complaints from "non-customers"). I realize they could offer some sort of controlled environment in which they could manage account transfers, but again this leads to the problems above, of people creating accounts/characters to sell for profit, and subtracting from the quasi-limited supply of items in the game, at the expense of players for whom EQ is "just a game" that they want to enjoy and play.
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Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
Increasing the supply of valuable items decreases the demand, yes, but this is hardly a solution. Decrease the value of one item and eBayers will go "farm" another item. You might as well just hand everyone a suit of the best armor in the game to start out with and call it good. I think the EQ system is a bit flawed anyways, but I won't go into that at length.
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
So I take it to mean, that when you buy a book, you just are paying for the binding, and the paper... not the content inside it? Considering that books can be a useless piece of data as well.
Ultimately, the market determines if a good is a useful or useless object and sets prices accordingly. Apparently, other people disagree with you because the market price for a good character on Everquest or UO is $1000+
Just because YOU find it useless, doesn't mean it isn't. Obviously TONS of other people find software useful (it is a multibillion dollar industry)
And for the last software you bought, I refuse to believe that you did not pirate some things if the last thing you bought was Quake. Sure we are Linux/FSF people here, but you just gotta use commercial software sometimes. (especially with gaming!)
IMO - these people are total idiots hoping that the publicity their lawsuit recieves (from being posted on places like /.) will make Sony settle the lawsuit.... Sheesh...
It's actually worse than that. There is no law suit, from what it says on their web page it doesn't sound as though they've even taken legal advice. They are hoping that putting up a web page saying that they intend to bring a law suit will bring Sony (who let's face it are more likely to benefit from the publicity than to be hurt by it) to their knees. It's laughable.
Right. So, to take an example, it permits Everquest from having rules to their game like "you can't sell characters". It also permits Everquest enforcing these rules. There really isn't anything difficult to understand here.
Well, the impression I get from US law, being a US citizen, is this: given some action X, if X is not prohibited by law and I have not legally agreed not to do X, then I can do X without expecting any legal repercussions. It doesn't matter how absurd X sounds; it's still within my rights
What is absurd is the notion that you can sue Everquest for enforcing the rules of their game. It is the people allegedly intending to bring a law suit that are trying to bring about "legal repercusions" and they don't stand a chance.
You can (without legal repercussions) play Everquest.
Sony can (without legal repercussions) make a rule that says "no selling characters/eq/your time involved in geting eq/whatever silly rationale you want to apply.
You can (without legal repercussions except in truly extreme instances) cheat at the game.
Sony can (without legal repercussions) delete your character when they catch you cheating.
Where is your problem?
Don't be absurd. This is like me entering a chess tournament, then just when I have an advantage over an opponent offering to sell the 'time I spent getting to that stage in the game' to another player, who can take over and win.
It doesn't work. It isn't even remotely plausible.
That doesn't remove my right to enter into any contract I please. If I enter into a contract and can't provide the consideration I offer (e.g. a character in Everquest or a good position in a game of chess) then I am in default. My problem. No obligation is thus created on the part of the people running Everquest or the chess tournament.
Most of the comments I've read seem to miss this point:
The only thing that is stopping the EQ players from selling 'virtual' goods for real money is the EULA. The EULA state this quite clearly that that is not allowed.
Thus, the first step for the suit has to be for he EULa to be declared invalid. Whilst it may be feaable for only that clause to be struck down, I don't find that clause any more rediculus than most EULA clauses.
If this goes to court, this will be the EULA test case that many have been waiting for. The only way (that I can see) for the gamers to win is to have the EULA declared invalid.
Now, considering the vast number of reasons for getting EULA's struck down, I'm on the side of the gamers.
Not because I think that what they do is right (personally, they're a bunch of whining kids), nor proper (it spoils the game, and removes immersion in the environment), but because this, if it goes to court, could be the downfall of EULAs.
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By law if I rent your house, I own it for the time that I rent it, with all the rights that entails. Now, the title of the house never changes hands, because you didn't acutally buy the house, but under the legal system, any rented property is considered your property. The only thing is that I after a certain time (the rental period) I must turn the house back over to you. There may also be other exceptions in the rental agreement, but you do legally own the property and can legally do whatever would be legal in your own home.
That includes renting out the house to other people . It's called subletting. You could also "sell" the house (or basically the right to live there) for that time period that you rent. There's nothing that the landlord can do about that -- though they may not like it much and may try to evict you.
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I'd like that solution, personally, but I do not play on a server which allows for PvP combat. Only 3 of the 35 servers would allow for this type of solution.
:(
Unfortunately the only way to beat them is to get more people and try to outdamage him when he tries to take the kill. But many farmers utilize spell nukes which would outdamage 6 people because they're uber and we're not.
You can use the software all you want. You just can't connect to Sony's servers that you paid $9.89/mo to access if you don't agree to the terms. Nothing's stopping you from connecting the client to a hacked server that doesn't have 1/100th of the funcitonality of Sony's servers.
Here goes my karma, but since you've never played the game, you wouldn't know that everything you suggested here is impossible to do in EverQuest. Can't PK people unless you're on one of the 3 servers that allow it, can't change servers (due to people selling characters on eBay) and you can't set up your own server because the people who write the emulated servers haven't gotten good enough to actually put any NPC's in there. This isn't Neverwinter Nights or Diablo II - Sony runs all 35 servers currently operational.
Sony does refuse to take part of it, but people have put pressure upon Sony to do something about the situation. So now they have.
On this one, I'm with Sony. I've been an avid EQ player since about a month after it went public, and I've seen the trend that is going on here.
:)
What happens is that people who are level 35-40 in the game are camping areas that are for level 15-20 players in order to get the PH4T L3WT to sell on eBay. So, I can't play the game because someone else has quit his job to sit in an area where I'd like to be and is "stealing my kills" because he can make a buck.
This happened to me once, he got the item, and he said "I'll sell it to ya for $50."
And you can probably say "well why don't you move to another area?" I would, but there's an ebayer at every nice area of the game.
What has happened is that it's not the fact that they're selling it, but the "eBay Farmers" have taken up all of the locations of these items so THE ONLY WAY TO GET THEM IS TO BUY THEM ON EBAY.
You cannot quest for these items, you cannot kill the creature that has the item anymore, you MUST buy it from an eBay person. Is that really fair?
Also what happens, is that people will get scammed. They'll send the money to the person on eBay, and then the person will give them an item that looks the same as the one they bought, but really wasn't. Then, they either petition the in-game customer service Guides or call Sony to say "this person scammed me, get me the item I rightfully paid for on eBay!" There are many times that the in-game CS would be so tied up with people being scammed from eBay that they weren't helping the people that truly needed it.
So, the Slashdot crowd may say "It's their right to sell it! Down with The Man!" but it really makes it impossible to PLAY EverQuest, since you must BUY the items over eBay that you should have gotten playing since the people selling on eBay won't let you play the game it was intended to so they can make a quick buck.
I'm open to critisisms on what I said, so if there's something I'm missing here, please reply. I'm sure the flames will come soon.
The closest I can come to figuring out what is actually taking place in a transaction over a virtual item is this: All well and good unless EverQuest doesn't want you to do it. The bits in question do reside on EverQuest's servers, after all.
I have no clue why EverQuest cares if people sell virtual stuff (well, OK, maybe it's because it makes their gamers look pathetic to be spending real money on imaginary things
It's in the EULA. They agree to that contract to play the game then sue when they break the contract and get banned. The reason Ebay stopped selling the accounts is becaus the accounts don't actually belong to the players, they belong to Sony. Ebay won't sell something that doesn't belong to the seller so....
I don't see how Sony can lose this one. Then again with some of the judges we have you never know.
Damn players have been doing too much Evercrack =)
So, you sign up for EQ, and build a character, and that character owns a sword. Now, the player tries to sell the character's sword. There's a confusion of levels here - that can't happen. I asked my GM in Shadowrun what would happen if I tried to sell my character's stuff to another player, and he said that I would be a. disallowed, and b. thrown out of the game.
Likewise, characters cannot be owned. A character ought to have a personality and stuff, and while it's possible to give away a character to another player, it takes a lot of work to get the player used to how the character thinks and stuff. Now, I know that EQ characters are rarely RPed, but in principle, that's the major issue. Again, if I were a GM making rules for my players, I would require character transfers to maintain character.
So, if you look at it all from that perspective, Sony's position makes sense - you don't own your character's stuff, and your character itself is almost impossible to transfer without lossage.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
So buying this software and paying a monthly fee conveys no property right in anything--even the virtual stuff one can obtain in the game? Now I know why I've never played!
Gawd. I guess I'm old and cynical, but reading those rules disgusted me so much that if I had ever been interested in EQ and seen ihem, I would have been cured!
I think its fine to sell non-real items online. But I also say that its Sony's game, they can do what they want, no matter what anyone thinks. Don't like it? Go elsewhere. Now I just have to think of why Sony would try to stop people from playing their game with all these restrictions.
I was given a copy of EQ as a gag gift this xmas (I don't game much and have no interest in spending months of my life building a character) It took me a while to find a name that the filters would accept and I was very surprised that they allowed, Cunnilingus, who is a female, half-elf ranger or something. I'm looking forward to coming across gm with a large enough vocabulary to spot me ;->
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
People, read the damn thing!
The lawsuit doesn't concern the sale of items, which is against the EULA and therefore totally within Sony/Verant's right to ristrict. Instead, the lawsuit is about players selling their own time. Many eBay auctions for EverQuest items include a disclaimer like "the items named in this auction are the property of Verant and are not for sale. Rather, you are bidding on the time I spent in acquiring the item.". The Sony/Verant-directed removal of these particualr auctions basically means that Sony/Verant is preventing players from hiring other players to acquire items for them on a contractual basis. Since agreement to the EULA does not entail the agreement that Sony/Verant owns your time (which wouldn't go down too well, methinks), the removal of these time auctions might be illegal. It definitely needs the consideration of our judicial system.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
In the "real world" model, users usually create few of the goods and services that they purchase. They do, however, work for the means to purchase such goods. Much like the players do in Everquest.
It's possible to purchase in-game supplies using in-game currency; why is translating in-game currency to real world currency such an imaginative stretch? Whichever world you're immersed in, you're still working for the good.
Bullshit. Royalties are given for using copyrighted works --- if the work is entirely your own, no royalties are needed.
That would like be like a paper company demanding payment for a book printed on its paper (in addition to the cost of the paper itself)
How, exactly, does one remove, use, and then insert a cd into a package without opening it? That would be a nice trick.
Again, that's like saying anything compiled with gcc is a derived work of gcc. Merely using something does to create something else does not create a derived work, no more than a house is a derived work of a hammer!
The biggest reason in my mind not to allow people to sell their items on Ebay is this: It would be fully possible to start a company, employing people to 'camp' at sites where the rare items are.
Real players would be locked out from ever having a chance of getting an item normally. Even if there was no organized Corp, as soon as people started finding out you could make money doing this, the game would be ruined.
You don't own squat about your character. That's why I stopped playing months ago. Too much time invested in a lot of nothing.
Later,
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
This is the only post that cyrstalizes the issue, please mod this up!
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I agree, and I really don't want this to be the EULA test case. With a traditional EULA, you buy a piece of software, install it, and are then told that the software manufacturer, with whom you have never dealt directly, has decided that you don't own anything other than the physical media and you can't use the software in any way that they don't like. Unilaterally imposing additional terms after a sale is completed is such a preposterous concept that I can't believe they haven't been laughed out of court yet.
On the other hand, with EverQuest Sony is providing an ongoing service rather than a one-time sale. Unless there is a contract that says otherwise, I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to terminate that service for any reason at all. The closest analogy I can think of is an ISP with a no-commercial-use clause kicking you out if they find you selling stuff off the website you host with them. If this does go to court, Sony would have a good chance of winning and as you said, that would be an unfortunate precedent for EULAs even though this is a special case.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Look People... According to this excerpt from the EULA "You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
This is frigging simple! If you sell their shit then you are breaking the rules. Sony should have every right to shutdown the rule breakers accounts, period. It may be stupid or not... it doesn't matter. The auction sites on the other hand might be a different matter.
If I want to break a contract and sell something that I agreed not to, then by god any auction site that I go to had better let me auction my stuff including an auction site that the people I screwed owned, unless their EULA spelled out what I could and could not sell ahead of time. To not sell my, possibly immoral, but not illegal stuff would be discrimination or something like it. If the shit is indeed "illegal" then the auction sites are within their rights not to let me post the shit if their EULA says "you can't sell illegal shit".
I don't know if the shit is illegal or not but it's certainly not more illegal than 90% of the copies of Office for sale on Ebay.
What if I wrote some hunk o' software and in EULA stated that if the user allows his/her heart to beat while using my software they must pay me $100. Pretty stupid agreement right? Well if you are stupid enough to "sign" this agreement then you better not use my shit as I would have every right to come after my $100 and probably would, thinking you must be way too stupid to have enough money to be my software in the first place.
Why must we revel in our desire to protect ourselves from our own stupidity? And why must the courts get involved every time someone has a brain fart? I typically ignore those pesky EULAs, but if I'm ever caught breaking the rules then I'll take my punishment and be happy I've gotten away with it for this long. Oh sure I might try to fight it by saying it was not displayed prominently enough for me to notice, but I would never question such a clear cut rule as the one above and hope to have a prayer in hell of getting away with it. In fact if I wasted the court's time by trying I'd think I should get punished.
If these idiots win, and Sony looses, then the GPL has no value either. You can't have it both ways.
Don't like your EULA then don't buy the game, OS or whatever. Crying to the courts is BS. If you're not smart enough to read the EULA then you deserve what you get. If you read it and go ahead and break the rules then you deserve what you get too. If everyone would just say no, then things would change in a hurry.
"The only winning move is not to play" (or something like that it's been awhile)
G
This is simply Verant and/or Sony feeling that they should be the ever powerful Gods ruling over an idealistic fantasy world...
...right down to the name you may give your character.
No, it isn't. It is about Verant trying to save themselves the frustration of losers who buy EQ items or accounts on eBay and then bitch and moan to Verant when the purchased wasn't as described. Further, it is about Verant's responsibilty to ALL players to maintain balance and fair gameplay, which is much harder to accomplish if they allow the lazy and self-indulgent to buy the power and status for which others have worked very hard.
Is Slashdot more or enjoyable or less because of the juvenile actions of a few who think that trolling is fun? Imagine the how the tone of an RPG would deteriorate if Verant allowed players to have names like Lars WangSniffer and Gonad JizzSpew? I know, people should have the liberty to be cretins, but the non-cretins should equally have the right to pay for havens from them. It is in the Terms Of Service; if people really don't like it, fuck 'em. They can go play games where the TOS doesn't have such restrictions, and the adults (and I am not speaking with a chronological bias here) can enjoy the company of their peers.
And for those who will reply that I am elitist, or have a stick up my ass, fuck YOU.
:-)
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Sony is tryng to cover up the fact that their game model essentially sucks. First, there are two things being sold: accounts and items. Every account is tied to a credit card so this issue is easily fixed by preventing accounts from being transferred to different names (duh!). With items, the problem can be fixed in the game. Sony could easily make all of the cool items "nodrop" and non-transferrable. Or, even better, would be to set level restrictions on items. Seeing a 3rd level bard running around in full lambent armor was the final straw for me.
And while I'm on a rant, let me say that Everquest is one of the poorest excuses for a online rpg I have ever seen. The entire game can be summed up as camp/kill. The only thing that ever changes is the bitmap of the mob.
By selling imaginary items one acquires in the game, it makes it possible for someone with a lot of disposable income (and not much of a life) to gain an unfair advantage over other, possibly more skilled players.
Kind of like real life, eh?
Except Everquest isn't supposed to be real life.
Kind of like real life, eh?
You say this as a joke, but it seems to me a very clear element of a fantasy game's draw is that it's not directly tied to your real life. But never even mind any discussion of escapism. A common trait of many games is that they test the players' skills in a limited and well-defined context (which may include or exclude strength, motor skills, persuasiveness, tactical thinking, or even luck). A game is "fair" if this context is the only context which is really relevant to game performance. Therefore, it's 'fair' for me to use force in wrestling, but not in chess (as in chess, physical prowess is beyond the scope of the game).
I consider selling and buying characters and game-items "cheating" (in that United States Brand Dollars are unambiguously outside of the scope of an FRPG) and I consider it completely reasonable for Sony to eject players who are cheating.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
I am wondering if Sony doesn't want to allow selling of virtual items because they aren't getting a piece of the action. I mean, if Sony was clever and forward-thinking, they could have built the selling of items into the game. If they did, this they charge some extra fee for credit card processing and customer support and then a little more for profit and they have a really good business model. Getting paid everytime someone sells something that doesn't exist in real life. No warehouses, no shipping costs. Very much like Ebay's model, which is profitable. Hell you might even be able to sustain the game without subscription fees if enough people are willing to buy the items.
Is it really cheating if someone kills you because they paid a lot of money for good weapons versus someone killing you because they spent several hours/days working hard to obtain these weapons? Let me just say that I haven't ever played the game, so I don't know all the facts, this is just conjecture and speculation.
All I know is that if I had some money and free time I would definitely think about creating a nice MMP online game with built-in e-commerce engine for selling of whatever virtual items there are in the game. Sounds to me like a great business to be in, as long as you can create a game that is fairly popular.
> There is nothing to protect you if you get fucked over because you legally bound yourself to a bad contract.
Not true. If the contract is for an illegal act (like murder) then the contract is null and void.
You can "escape" a contract, if it was signed under duress (i.e. a gun held to your head, with someone forcing you to sign)
> Sony needs to prevent players getting unfair advantadges (yes, buying items is an unfair advantadge)
That is a fallacy. SOMEONE had to SPEND the TIME in the FIRST place, getting those items. Sony ALREADY got paid by the person spendind the time acquiring those said items.
> Then they need to make the statistics and controls for experience points and rewards and rating systems available as open source to the gaming community and let the gaming community have partial control of the gaming experience and development.
You want to let non-designers and non-programmers tinker with the game? They don't have the *real life experience* to even know where to begin ! (not a troll, just stating a fact.) Putting "fun" into a game, is not something you can just "throw in." Look how long it takes "real game designers" like Peter Molyneux, or Sid Meier to design a game.... Years.
I don't see how this will help to "solve" the problem. Of course games are unfair. The "difficulty" curve is "easy" in the beginning, and quickly ramps up (making a S shape if the two ends of the S were pulled out) If games didn't get "much harder", everone would have them finished. If the game is too difficult people will stop playing it. What EQ has done, is found the "perfect" middle ground (as flawed as the game is. Yes, UO/EQ/AC all have their strenths and weaknesses)
Yours aint so low either (I know that someone with an ID less than 1000 is gonna reply the same thing to me...)
Mark Duell
there is a debilitating habit called "diarrhea of the mouth"....
Database Results Error [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver] The database has been placed in a state by an unknown user that prevents it from being opened or locked.
Boy, those Con comments are pretty strong.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
This was bound to happen. The amount of time involved and the increasingly pervasive nature of virtual worlds were bound to bring on a court case.
Some people on the Everquest(eq) server I play on (which has been up for around 17 months) have 190+ days played. That means they have played the game for 190+ 24 hr periods, which is stunning.
Time is essentially the fundamental metric of success on massivly multiplayer online role playing games. The cost of time is not equivilent in real life. I can be a 15 year old and play for fun because I have nothing better to do. Similarly, I can be a 34 year old doctor who likes to play but has very little time. Economics is going to say that I pay the kid to get what I don't have time to in the game. What is 500 $ to me compared to the 100 hrs it would take me to amass the items if I played?
Another side effect of these games is that I don't think companies will be able to get by with a click disclaimer. Say I violate a policy unawares in everquest one night. Verant can technically destroy 1000's of hours of my time. I understand the desire to keep strict control, but how can that kind of loss be enforced in a court of law for swearing or some little offence.
As a overly dramatic analogy, consider comparison to jail time. Should it be legal to sentence someone to half a year of jail time for selling an item in an online game. It would be insane.
The ultimate question comes down to ownership. Verant is claiming they own anything and everything. Customers will claim that the money they pay and the 1000's of hours they put in give them rights. The conclusions will be far reaching, so it will make an interesting fight. Ironicially, it will be a fight over things that essentailly do not even exist.
I think that the most important issue here is balance of play. I support Sony, Verant, et al in opposing the sale of in-game items and characters for the simple reason that it offers an unfair advantage to specific players that is not an inherent part of the game. I play EQ because I enjoy playing the game (read 'cause I am addicted') NOT because I can make a buck doing so. My character is not that high level so far (10th level shaman), but I have already seen characters appearing in my area that come decked out with equipment that is far beyond my price range - which I have to assume they have either purchased elsewhere or given from one of their players to another of their players as handmedowns - giving them a tremendous advantage over me.
I am distressed to hear from other /.ers that when I reach the 15-25 level range I might find all the good areas camped by higher level characters so they can make a buck on Ebay. I sincerely hope this is NOT the case. I am not a supporter of EULAs generally - I think that placing conditions on software or services AFTER I have purchased them ought to be declared illegal - so I am now in a real conundrum: I hope Sony and Verant win this case because I am opposed to online sale of items and characters that I feel has the potential to ruin a game I really enjoy, but I also dont want to see the concept of the EULA given any legal approval.
In the end I think the quality of the game experience is the most important thing to me - its why I play - if it gets turned into another place for pathetic, useless, and utterly dispicable individuals to try to exploit and make another buck from equally useless wretches who are unable to do something for themselves and instead feel they have to purchase any advantage they can get rather than gaining skills for themselves then I will have to vote with my feet (and great regret) and go find another game that is more reasonably contructed (or give up a hobby because the bastards have won out over the true players).
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Sony should run the game. They should run the game as specified in the EULA. If they fail to run the game as specified in the EULA, they are failing in their responsibilities to the customers who do not want to play on a server where people buy and sell characters and items.
Personally, I think that Sony might want to put a server that supports this, and maybe allow people to buy and sell through their auction site, but this isn't about stealing from the people who want to buy and sell. It's about keeping the game fun for those who don't.
I'm not paying $10/month to play a game filled with people trying to gain artifacts to sell to people in the real world, or with people who are willing to sink a fortune into starting off as a level 50 character. I'm paying $10/month to play a game according to the rules that were presented to me when I signed up.
Sorry, but the fact that the character can be sold is completely irrelevant. You can give the character away, and the new owner can still trash other players. Or, you can decide that since Sony won't let you sell your character, you'll just use it to trash other players anyway.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
If the EQ players win the lawsuit, it means that Sony will have to remove that line from the EULA, because it will be considered illegal to restrict the sale of user accounts.
Frankly, I don't understand why Sony cares. What difference does it make who plays a particular character? The new player will still have to pay the monthly fee and he'll still have to own the game.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I don't see the wrong in it. It is a game, but it is also pay to play. When people invest time and money into the game, they place value on their characters and objects in the game.
I've seen auctions where people pay out the nose for works of art I'd never place in my home. Baseball cards, comic books, any kind of collectibles. Junk to one, treasure to another.
Regardless of the outcome of this, I'm fairly certain that the selling of characters, objects, or money cannot be suppressed outside the game anymore than you or I can be thwarted from freely swapping mp3's with each other. Sony may have the influence and bank necessary to convince Ebay and other auction places to remove the listings, but the trading cannot be stopped.
Clicking "I Agree" is hardly the legal equivalent of a signature, hence EULAs are not legally binding.
Getting around that annoying problem requires that users be qualified to have the character they buy, like having a drivers license. That would just plain suck and take the fun out of the game.
I don't think you should be able to sell anything you acquire in the game. The user didn't create anything - none of the graphics, none of the sounds, none of the quests, etc. Verant/989 made it all and can do with it as they please.
For those who disagree then it would be proper to say that we own all the content on Slashdot. We are the ones posting the comments and submitting the stories. You should call your lawyer and get a percentage of the advertising revenue from this site.
I don't think that profit motives are a major player in this decision. They probably opened some eyes to the situation, but the way they are choosing to rectify it, to me, indicates it is for the integrity of the game.
:).
It is late, and my reasoning may be flawed. But I think if profit were the motivator, or the prime motivator (that sounds cool), well I think Sony would open up their own everquest auction site. They could undercut whatever eBay's take is, and keep the auctions in house, and make a slight amount of cash.
Doesn't look like that is what they are doing though. So that leads me to think it is the ultimate profit incentive: Game Integrity. If the game loses its integrity, it loses its player base. End of story there. Oops, looks like I think the decision was profit motivated, but not the way you implied in your post.
Besides, It *is* sony's game. they can do whatever the heck they want with it. And if that means denying people the game because Sony didn't like the way they played, too bad. I don't open my front door to everybody who knocks. I gauge, via the peephole, whether I want them to gain entry or not. Some people just don't make the list. They don't sue me because I don't let them in (I'm not that popular
On a sort of side note, I think computer people get way too excited over the concept of virtual.
The problem with EULAs is that they are a one sided contract. Most retailer will not accept returns of open software, so if you read the EULA and disagree you are hosed (either out the money for software you will not use or agree to a EULA you don't really agree with). I think most people regard EULAs as just one more screen you must click thru to get to you program. Perhaps we need a Twelve Step group. First step: Admit that you are powerless over EULAs.
You are right. Profit motives are bad for gaming. We should lobby for a federal Department of MMORPGs, and ensure that all MMORPGs are run by the right sort of people, helped out by generous subsidies from taxpayers' funds. We don't want any of those corporations involved; they'll just ruin the fun.
Actually, those rules seem pretty reasonable. You don't want to know how many people will try to con other people into believing them they're game admins, and they need the other people's passwords for admininstrative purposes.
Also, would you really like to play a game in which many players would have wildly inappropriate names?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
The fairer the game, the more money Sony makes. A win-win situation!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Some people enjoy 'roleplaying' game in the sense of Diablo II -- action, in which you play a character. But Diablo is no more a roleplaying game than is Tomb Raider, where you 'play' Lara Croft. A true RPG, where people assume an alternate persona, requires a certain consistency, an effort, at building up a set of mannerisms, a coherent scheme of mores for an alternate personality.
If one person builds up a personality, and another just 'takes over', they will very likely be unable to play the character in the same manner. They know nothing of the characters history, their associations. They will compromise the integrity of the character, and therefore contribute to the compromise of the game.
Viewed in perhaps another way, if you played D&D with a group of friends, who accepted your character as 'real' for the purposes of their gameplay, would you expect them to welcome another person playing that same character, who had no real idea about them, because they paid you for the privelege? Undoubtedly not.
Having not played Everquest, I can't say whether this is a valid concern for them in particular, but having recognized the issue, and heard debate in general about whether people have a right to all their virtual property, I have considered the question. I don't believe they necessarily have the right, if it is made clear up front that it is not acceptable.
The scarcity of items/characters in such a game is inevitable given larger demand than supply (almost a given, if people have something to try to do in a game), and a closed system. Diablo II is an excellent example. Too many players, not enough of certain items, closed system. But unlike an RPG, diablo 2 does not suffer a loss from the sale of items.
I wonder how the players and sellers would feel if sony/verant simply said: "ok, they are your property, feel free to sell. And, by the way, we're now offering characters and items, for an additional charge, for you to use in the game." And they could simply sell for less than whatever anyone could fetch on ebay, with a swift descent to a value of 0.
I don't know if most of these EQ and UO type games have any policies posted about such things. But maybe as the number of these 'massivly multiplayer' games increase, we'll see more that flout one policy or another, and the folks who want to play to sell their virtual propery for cash and those who want a game where someone can't simply buy their way to the top with real life cash will only play a game after they check out the policies.
As a gamer, I don't really like the idea of playing a game for a awhile, building my character or empire up and see another player do the same by spending some extra bucks. I mean, maybe it means I'm pathetic, but part of the reason I play multiplayer games is to enjoy myself in an environment where people can't cheat, steal and kill outside of the game rules to get to the top. I don't even think I'm an especially competitive online gamer, and I don't have anything against those who are, but it's not fun when someone buys their way to what you've taken time to build up.
I get an ISP account from lameisp.net, can I sell my account on lameisp.net to anybody esle. Probably not, most ISPs won't let you transfer your service like that. What's the difference?
--
Free Mac Mini
They'd just have to change the way loot is dropped© Now, all those monsters are camped because everyone knows what they are going to drop© No wonder there's a bunch of ebayers camping around every monster which has a guaranteed 20$ drop©
If the loot was dropped completely randomly ¥meaning that you can get the kickass 100$ sword from any monster with a 0©01% chance, and not just from a hardcoded single one the problem with the campers would completely disappear!
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But after that -- I'm going to assume that things you could purchase from other players in the game will give you an advantadge over other players -- Sony needs to prevent players getting unfair advantadges (yes, buying items is an unfair advantadge) because it will harm gameplay if players can advance unfairly -- if something hurts gameplay it hurts their subscription base, and that hurts the bottom line. Its the same deal as blizzard and id's war against cheaters: If the game isn't fun, no one will play it.
On the other hand though -- people are willing to pay 10$ a month to play the game -- thats how Sony makes their $$ ... so its not really absurd to think that people would be willing to pay for items in the game -- I suspect sony is a bit "jealous" in the sense they don't want people profiting off their game.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
IANAL but... You don't buy software. You license software, all you own is the media. Your rights are those that you agreeed to when you agreed to the license contract. In point of fact, EQ (ratehr annoyingly) shows you the EULA and makes you click to agree everythimre you play. So there really is no excuse for claiming they didnt know and agree to the rules. I don't think this will pass the laugh test in court.
Why, why, why, why, why are there so many high-rated comments containing this falsity? I think someone's been reading too many EULAs again.
Yes, you DO own a copy of those games. Not just the discs they are written on. No, you cannot copy them. This is because copyright law says you can't, as you do not have the right to make a copy. Not being able to distribute a savegame file is an issue of the file being a derivative work, no that you don't own the file. However, I AM perfectly within my rights to sell a memory card or VMU to someone. After all, the data on the card is useless without the associated game. Otherwise, you start getting into the relm of intended use and the DMCA.
The other question is: are those VMU files REALLY a derivative work? After all, they are arrangements of binary data created using a game, which are meaningless without an interpreter... Is every piece of fiction I create with WordPerfect a derivative work of WordPerfect?
-RickHunter
EULA's are such grey area in the software world today. The earlier post about Sony saying "after one month you have to give us your first born son" is obviously against your un-alienable rights as an American, however, that's a little off base from what Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is actually saying. What they are saying is that buying and selling accounts is in fact against the rules. I, as an avid EQ addict know this is in fact cheating and knowing that some corperate putz who's never played a day in his life, could come and get in my high level group, and end up getting me killed, possibly losing my corpse and losing MONTHS of invested time. That's just BS to me. The only analogy I can think of would be, you RENT the data from SOE...you rent the calls to the items on their servers, which is the only place you can play the game. What selling an account would be is SURE, it is your account name and password, ect. But it doesn't make what's on the other side of it yours. Let's say someone you don't know rents a car, and puts his name on the agreement. Then he goes to Wal-Mart and makes a copy of the car keys, and auctions them on Ebay for a substantial price. You bid on it and win. Now you OWN that key...it's yours. What you cannot do is take that key, open the car and drive off with it....it's not yours. It's still owned by the car rental organization. Sony's case lies there. Now because the calls to the items stored on Sony's database are on your hard drive is another story all together, and I'm not quite sure how that will pan out.
Suppose for instance someone decides to take it upon themselves to farm the frenzied ghoul and sell Flowing Black Silk Sashes on ebay. First and foremost, they've taken part of the gaming experience of other players by monopolizing the room, and with real money involved, are not likely to just give it up to a group. Second, it links the ingame economy with the real life one. Suppose someone buys an FBSS over ebay and later heads to howling stones and get a Sash of the Dragonborn. Better haste effect, so they decide to sell the FBSS (rather than put it on a twink) ingame, they sell the sash for say (not sure on price) 5000 platinum. He didn't *pay* 5000 plat for the sash, he paid x amount of real life money for it. So for the ingame economy, the sash was *given* to him for free.
This brings up two points:
And those are just the gameplay issues with it, don't forget the possibility of fraud in sales, as it bypasses the ingame trade windows (both have to agree to the items to be traded before the trade occurs)Stupid is as stupid dies.
I believe that a better analogy wold be this:
Take, for instance, a collectible card game made be Foo Games called BazWar. Many other games would work as well, but a CCG is familiar to most of us in theory if not in practice. Players of BazWar by packs of cards and put them together in decks in order to give themselves the greatest chance of winning the game. Players also trade and sell the cards that they have aquired over time. Now this is clearly outside the realm of the game, real world money is affecting the game outside of the intent of the Foo Games. Foo would certainly rather players buy many packs of cards to get the particular card they want, creating more revenue for their company. So is Foo allowed to ban the trade of these cards?
The answer is, of course, no. So should Sony be allowed to prevent the sale of Everquest items, in my opinion, no. These items are not being copied and then sold, they are the actual items earned through Sony's system by a player. Many times the fact that an issue is related to computing invalidates applying real world* ideas to it, but in this case an almost perfect ananlogy can be drawn. Does this mean that Sony is completely wrong, unfortunately... no again. The break down of this analogy is that Sony is hosting this game, and may draw any rules they like. Again I'll use the analogy of CCG. Many CCG tournaments will have a sealed deck rule. This way they can prevent any one player from dominating the tournament through the use of outside means of gathering cards. This is entirely legal and ethical, and has the benefit of allowing the skills of the players become the primary means of success. Sony has a similar situation in Everquest. The manner in which they enforce fairness is through the banning of selling or trading items. I think that this class action suit is attacking the wrong policy.
I may be mistaken, but I believe that Sony has tried to block the use of Everquest servers other than their own. This is the issue that should be in question. I'll return to the CCG analogy again, (might as well squeeze all the life out of it), say Foo Games runs a yearly sealed deck BazWar tournament. Should I be banned from running my own tournament, of course not, and this is essentially what Sony is trying to do.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Why does Verant (AKA Sony/Everquest) even care that items are being traded for cash? The only plausible "reason" I can fathom is that their employees are becoming career gamers, finding it more lucrative to play EQ than to punch a clock. It seems to me that the Ebay market complements Verant's interests, I am certain that the game would be much less popular if players could not buy themselves an advantage which makes the game more fun. Many people buy and sell game items through Ebay not for profit, but because it is simply the best way to find what they want. This is not exactly a small market. In my estimation, Ebay is/was making as much or more profit from Everquest as Verant (Verant grosses more of course, thier overhead is much higher). On Jan 17 At 9:30 PST I did a search of Ebay's ended Everquest auctions and found that there have been over 21000 between Dec 28 and Jan 17, and I would estimate that average selling price on each auction is no less than $25. Yep, all those spent out, post-Xmas shoppers are still coughing up $250000 a week for their habit. By the time Ebay makes their cut on insertion fees, end of auction fees and Billpoint fees I would think they might actually be willing to take this to court if necessary. At present Everquest is by far the most popular multiplayer online role-playing game. In the absense of a comparable or better game they will retain that title simply because players have invested so much time and energy in a character that they are unwilling to permanently delete so that they can save $10 a month. The aggressive stance that Verant has taken toward cash sales does nothing to contribute to the success or popularity of the game. It only encourages a healthy percentage of their clientelle, including the sellers, consumers and hard-core gaming fun-mongers, to seek out and bolster the next game that caters to the way they want to play.
"My heart gave a shiver, 'cause I was livin in a VAN, down by the river!" - Matt Foley, motivational speaker.
I beleive Sony charging real money
for access to virtual reality
of thier game. I do not see why
this could not be extended to the
participants selling their virtual
stuff for real money.
In the EULA, Verant explicitly says that in order to be allowed to play their game, you MUST agree to NOT sell or transfer any in-game items for real-world money or services.
The issue of selling such items on auction sites (or otherwise) is valid, however. What constitutes property?
Beyond that, though, Verant has every right to close accounts for people selling in-game items. It's in the EULA. They said they would do it, players agreed by playing the game that it was an acceptable rule, and thus, these people have no reason to be pissed that their accounts get closed.
How ironic, it seems, that a community that is so very (and often vehemently) biased towards the righteousness of the GPL, villify another software licence. How can anybody expect a court to uphold the GPL if its very adherents refuse to uphold any other software licences?
Does anybody else see the hypocracy?
The fact of the matter is, the GPL protects the rights of its author, while maintaining a 'freeness' of its work, disallowing it to be used for commercial gain without the copyright holder's consent. We all agree to this licence when we use our beloved free software. Some even take their belief in the GPL as to make it a quasi-religion.
And yet so many who are this supportive of the GPL feel that any other licence is morally wrong. This is akin to 'I can kill anybody and be morally right, but you can't kill anybody because for you, it's wrong.
Even stranger are those who believe in the GPL, and refrain from purchasing, or pirating proprietary software due to the price, or nature of the propriatary software; they refuse to pirate the software because they feel it is wrong to violate the terms of the propriatary licence.
Yet, they complain when there is a proprietary software, and it's proprietary licence that they want to use. (And, to no suprise, it's often entertainment software) And, in the case of EverQuest, it clearly states in the licence agreement that sale of characters/items is a violation of the licence agreement.
How can we support the actions of these players who are suing so they can willfully violate the software's licencing terms? Do we not realize the *dangerous* precedent this will set? If a group of gamers can sue because they disagree with a term of a software licence, then just exactly what would keep Microsoft, IBM, or any other corporation from doing the same thing to the GPL - because they disagree with its licence terms?
I'm afraid that many don't realize that in the eyes of the law, software licences must be treated equally. Agreeing to the licence is equivalent to signing a contract. Breaking that contract revokes the licence, and the right to use the software.
The LAW doesn't care about anybody's feelings of a superior licence. The LAW demands that the agreement be kept, and violators be dealt with accordingly. If it were not so, the GPL (and any other software licence) would be completely worthless. And megacorporations will begin 'stealing' and selling code that is meant to be free. But it won't be stealing. What's the point of a software licence if it doesn't matter?
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Just have to say - good show. It's nice to see somebody else believes in the Darwin awards.
I hate dealing with idiots.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
If you compare this with a game like Tribe which the only real skill advancement there is is your ability as a player to better control your character in whatever situations you come across. I for one would be very happy to play a MMORPG that doesn't have ant skill advancement technique.
I think there would be a lot more roleplaying going on if every "naked" character would be technically equal because there would be much more incentive to cooperate with others to gain an advantage.
D'oh. Should have previewed that. Stupid bold tag.
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Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Here are my thought both for and against selling EQ Items/Characters.
For
The first and best arguement for selling items is an analogy. Take people selling magic cards, for example. These are people spending money, time and energy hunting for valuable game components and selling just those parts to other players.
WOTC goes along with/encourages this because it encourages people to buy more cards. Cards get priced by how easily you can come by them.
How does this compare? Well, these are people selling virtual game components to each other. Sony charges all players equally regardless of whether they get access to particular components.
Against It's a question of fairness. EQ is intended to be a game, but by its nature it's also a community. Sony is being beaten on by players who don't feel that it's fair for mercenaries to build and sell characters because the new players of those characters haven't earned their place in the community and most people don't feel you should be able to buy your way into it.
I think a fair compromise would be to allow the sale of anything but the characters. Kind of like reality. You can sell anything, except your kids or yourself (or even parts of yourself).
I agree with one of the other posters that Sony should set themselves up as an impartial broker of these sales, taking a small cut, rather than trying to ban them. Maybe they can make the game cheaper by facilitating these transactions.
--
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
If I wanted to filter out all of the stories myslef, I would go to every site that has news. (CNN, NY Times....) I don't want to do that. And I don't want to have to come to Slashdot and see the same old stories about stupid lawsuits over and over! Is it me being lazy?? Probably! Just how I feel!
Does anyone really care about who the hell is taking whoever to court. Tell me about new techie things.. Hell even bash MS, but I'm sick of all this law crap! Go watch CourtTV!
In almost ALL EULA's, somewhere near the bottom there is a clause stating that the terms of the agreement are subject to change at any time, at the company's whim. I'm sure Sony's does as well.
If you agree to let Sony change their EULA whenever and however they want, then you really can't do anything about it.
Burris
From looking at the link, it looks to me like the issue in question is more about having the auctions pulled, in which case the suit should be against eBay (who would probably win). If it's over the accounts getting pulled, I think the question would simply come down to whether or not Verant asked the players nicely to stop doing what they were doing. If so, then the players would be in violation of the TOS (the part saying that players need to obey the instructions of Verant personnel). If not, then I think the best they could do would be to sue for a month's worth of fees, which certainly wouldn't attract any lawyers.
The problem that I see is with Verant's game model (or most online persistant gaming system's for that matter). They give out a fixed item for every "X" monster spawns (X = a preset random time frame). So monster "BigGuy" always gives item "NeatWeapon" every 4-8 times it re-spawns. So players who want this "NeatWeapon" will sit in front of the spawn area and kill "BigGuy" until they get the item. Get a group of players playing the same high level character 24x7, and they have a virtual business.
The problem is that average players like me can't get the good spawns, because those organized groups are camping the best spots 24x7 (for profit). *THAT* is what Sony is trying to avoid; it's a playability issue, not the fact that these players are making a few (or a lot of) bucks on the side.
The best solution, in my eyes, is to change the gaming model, not going to court. Change the rules (and yes, this affects the gaming model and the story line) so that unique "cool stuff" is spawned randomly according to the difficulty of a particular monster. This would make camping one spot less fruitful, and would require more playing to get the good stuff, and less fixed-spot camping. In the current model, fixed-spot camping is FAR too profitable.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
You are missing something..
You are buying the most valuable thing you can "buy" in life.
Time..
And hey it may not be worth it to you but something has value as long as someone else is willing to pay for it.. the fact that people buy these accounts says they have value.
THis is all a bit much saying people are blowing money... *shrugs*
It may be worth it to someone to not play for 800000 hours to make a character (time is not an actual time it would take I have no idea, just that it is a lot of they are worth this much money)
Jeremy
Think about the number of complaints they get on the phone thanks to the ease of fraud on these items. I work for eBay, and when I heard that Sony had finally filed the necessary paperwork, I celebrated! Over 90% of the EQ stuff was touched by fraud, misrepresentation, shill bidding, or some other type of cheating. And when it did happen, who got the blame? Well, the sucker who bought it won't take the blame, and "everybody" knows it's not the seller's fault. That leaves Sony and/or eBay! Never mind that it was your decision to pay a 14 year old $4000 for a piece of data that you knew wasn't even a legal transaction!
You're probably a troll, but here's something obvious that you've missed: ever bought a computer program and downloaded it? Mp3s? Porn? What are you getting? Nothing? Or a string of 1s and 0s that, in some configurations, is very useful?
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
These plaintiffs are not innocent victims who got stepped on by big corporations, they are power-gamers who hoped that Verant/Sony would sit by while they flagrantly violated the legal contract they had _agreed upon_ when they signed up for the _service_ provided by the EQ staff and servers.
As much as many Slashdotters seem to detest EULA's, these were a part of signing up to play the game online, and the people who knowingly agree to such rules deserve no sympathy when they get punished for breaking them. You only get what you play for.
Yeah, like elections and intellectual property (patents, etc...).
See Democratic Party, Republican Party, Microsoft, and Rambus for specific examples.
And look at it this way, what are you buying? Nothing. Its not tangible or visible in real life. Thats like me selling you a jar of air from mount everest. Why don't those people get a life instead of blowing tons of money on something that isn't even real.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
No money is exchanged when you download mp3s or watch pr0n. As for software the last thing I bought was quake in 1996 when it first came out. Applications have real uses, without the everquest game what you bought is meaningless. A piece of software can run on many computers and does a specific job. Buying a charcter or item is just a useless piece of data.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
One other thing to consider is the effect on other gamers. What I mean is this: Joe Sixpack buys a level 50 character off Ebay without knowledge of EQ, nor how to play and how to group with others. Then Joe goes on a raid to the Plane of Hate (a nasty place) and proceeds to get the rest of the party killed because he doesn't know how to play his bought character. Many non-EQers see this as no big deal.. A character death, so what.. But what non-EQers don't realize is that at level 50+ a death can mean literally weeks of gameplay down the drain becuase the experience penalty is quite high at those levels. Seg
segfaulteq@home.com
...that their monetary system sucks. If money would really be worth something in the Everquest Universe then people would be able to sell their items ingame. But Money is something wich isnt worth anything inside EQ. If i look at other RPGs such as the still pretty unknown, DarkAges you dont see such madness as selling items for thousands of dollars in RL because you can buy them ingame with ingame Money...so Everquest fails here again in another Roleplaying Issue like it did so often before...Lispy
This is not true. Adobe CAN charge you for anything they feel like, but they choose not to. There IS such a thing called royalties. For example, some of the sound editing/composing programs do not allow you to redistribute your tracks without paying a royalty. Also, you probably heard of Unisys charging for creating GIFs, and Fraunhofer wanting to charge for MP3s. Legally, there is no difference. The whole big idea with suing sony/verant is ridiculous. They can delete your account if they feel like it - it's their own business. Your ISP could also delete your account if it found that you violate their TOS or even if they feel like it. And I haven't seen anyone complaining about ISPs deleting accounts for spamming and stuff like that. If Sony/verant doesn't like how you play the game, it's within their full rights to remove your account, provided that they return any money that you paid in advance.
You mean poker without a substantial pot is fun?
Actually, transfer of ownership is forbidden. Strictly speaking, they only want you to have one player per character. It's just that the auction of items and characters is actually enforcible.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
One of the more serious problems I have run across in EQ has been players sitting and camping for quest components and rare items in order to sell the final product. Nothing like being stuck for 2 weeks of playtime waiting for an NPC to show up, only to have him axed by someone who had been hunting him DAILY in order to get some other component for a saleable quest item. Main reason why I stopped playing was because of all the camping...everything else I enjoyed about the game, but like many good things, EQ's popularity is killing it.
Actually, there is an easy way to solve the problem of selling items online. Make items that are captured from NPCs and won from quests NODROP items. NODROP items can't be traded or looted. You eliminate about 95% of the camping issues that are the motivating factor for selling and buying items through realworld sources. I would say that the only items that should be excluded from this rule should be materials for goods that can be manufactured from trade skills, which do have their place in the game.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
I remember an interview with Hemos and CmdrTaco where they admitted to messing with someone's karma who was trying to sell their Slashdot account on eBay. Cmdr's opinion was (at the time of the interview that is) that karma doesn't matter, that it's not THAT important.
I remember reading that... I believe it was a log of an IRC chat. Can you post a link to it? I don't remember where it was. I don't think it was an article on Slashdot.
If I remember correctly, the owner of the account "FascDot Killed My Pr" was selling his account on eBay because he didn't want to post on Slashdot anymore, and given the account's high karma (above the karma cap) and low user number, he considered it marketable. He advertised it by continuing to post regularly, but with "Bid on me! (Serious offers only)" as his signature with a link to the auction page on eBay.
Well, CmdrTaco found out, and, right at the exact minute the auction ended (and the winning bidder was chosen), he reset the account's karma to zero. When questioned about it in the IRC chat you mentioned, his justification for his action was, "Virtual property is stupid."
I do remember Taco and co. talking about people trying to sell their EverQuest accounts on eBay last spring on Geeks In Space. I don't remember exactly what they were saying, but I think basically they were making fun of the idea.
Anyway, it's quite clear that for better or for worse, karma has become a sort of pissing game that has affected a lot of people. Heck, I'm kind of annoyed that I only had about +35 karma when the karma cap was put in place. I think it would have been cool to have "excessive karma", even if only for a short time.
I've been a Slashdot reader since early 1999, and I got my account in January 2000. I don't remember too well, but checking the archives suggests that CmdrTaco and co. used to regularly participate in the discussions and post news stories about various changes and amendments to the Slashdot rules. These days, of course, they don't. Today, Taco seems more like an enigmatic figure behind the curtain, secretly manipulating Slashdot (bitchslapping people, instituting karma caps, adding lameness filters, etc.) from behind the scenes. I think if he came out into the open again and had a regular dialogue with the readers, people would understand his actions and be a lot less critical of him. He could do all the things he's doing now, and people would understand. Perhaps Slashdot's huge userbase or Andover.Net's control prevents him from doing so.
That said (just had to get it off my chest), some earlier posts in the discussion pointed out that Sony has a clause in the EverQuest enduser licence that forbids selling characters.
As for more Slashdot accounts going on sale, I believe at least one other account was sold on eBay, but secretly. I'm not too sure about that. I also know Signal11's account was given to a troll to "burn off the karma". Basically, someone was using Signal11's high karma to flame and insult people with the score +1 bonus. It was great fun to read, just because of the extreme rudeness "Signal11" exhibited. Eventually, he trolled one of Michael's (jellicle's) stories and Michael changed the password, effectively banning "Signal11".
Anyway, if Slashdot doesn't explicitly forbid the trade of user accounts, karma and all, they shouldn't object to it when people do it. But, to be safe, if you're going to auction or sell your Slashdot account, don't let Taco and co. know. Advertise it on Kuro5hin, or better yet, WonkoSlice or Plastic.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was hoping someone would.
I hope this particular suit doesn't go through... People agreed not to sell items and accounts as part of the EULA... With this suit setting a precedent we may find people trying to sue people for outcomes of more online games. I got the impression that some people were considering litigation (or some lawyers would like it anyways) because the author of the Sims released a patch that contained items that would make your character fall ill and probably die. As someone who is hoping to get into the games industry some time I *really* do not need to face law suits because some moron didn't like the fact that he doesn't win because he sucks. MrMeanie
wholeheartedly that the players of any game have teh rights to do what tehy wish with their characters. They play them, build tehm, and should be able to decide how tehy wish to trade, sell, or auction items for them. Sony has no right what so ever dictating the values of sony over players rights to their characters. Sony has the right though to not condone it.
Actually, unless things have changed, the users/players of EQ have to click 'I Agree' every single time they start the game.
The EULA is displayed in living color for everyone to see EVERY time they start the game.
Sony actually changed the EULA after the game was released and most people never bothered to read the changes, they just clicked 'I Agree' and kept right on playing like they do EVERY TIME they start the game...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
That doesn't make sense. Suppose I rent you a house. You now "own" an intangible asset: the right to live in my house. But, assuming we used a standard rental aggreement, that asset isn't something you can sell.
Your rights are important. But if you insist that your rights are absolute, than nobody except you has any rights, except where they don't conflict with yours. This is not a problem in an elitist society, where few have rights. But in a non-elitist society, people's rights are always conflicting with each other. You may think Sony (or your landlord) is interpreting their rights more strongly than they should, and not paying enough attention to yours. But once you have explictly promised to honor that interpretation, you have no say in the matter.
__________________
Good lord, what have you been reading? That's about 180 degrees away from my experience as a tenant. Most landlords won't even let you have a cat. You're saying that all those "no pets" clauses are illegal? Or that I can sell off my landlord's appliances? Come to think of it, the frige he supplies is a real power waster....
I'd be very interested to see you argue that in a municipal court. Or does that institution not figure in your legal theories either?
__________________
Canada has state provided healthcare so why do some canadians still cross the border to get surgery? Because the US does it better. Sure we have problems with drug companies conspiring to make money, but with no incentive to make new drug/techniques, we would all be screwed.
Oh BTW, if my neigbor does go crazy with an M-16, I can legally defend myself. I am glad I live where I can carry a gun, not so much for me but for my girlfriend who is smaller then me. A gun iz called the great equalizer, if a rapist is coming at her, she doesn't have to worry about trying to overpower him, She can "equalize" him.
Just my 2 cents
By your logic if I use a editor to create a document (code, text, html) then the company that produced the software owns the document. So of course you should be able to sell any data created by use of that application. Tell me how this is different because it is a game. There is just no good legal reason why you should not be able to.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I predict that this gets shot down in court for more than one reason:
a)In the terms of use agreement, there is a clause that says they can update the policy at any time. They then updated the policy by banning the sale of items and characters.
b)What you are really selling is data, on Sony servers, created by Sony software. What you pay for, when you are paying to play is access and alter the data stored on the server.
c)They will be going up against Sony lawyers. I don't care how many items or characters you've sold, you won't be able to match Sony's legal budget.
+===========================+
|http://mere.2y.net/scoop/ |
|Tome=SCOOP+COOL_CONTENT; |
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Crudely Drawn Games
On Topic, Taco supposedly killed "FascdotKilledMyPr" when he (now OlympicSponsor [wtf?]) put his highly valued low UID login up for sale on eBay. And no, in this ironic story, I don't know why his first UID was killed.
The rational was that it was legal for Taco to do so under the DMCA.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Perhaps you don't know how legally binding contracts work, but yes, Sony could demand whatever they wanted from you if you signed a contract that let them.
Goddamnit, read the contract! I thought that everybody learned this. Don't they? You never sign something legally binding without reading it, whether that involves writing your name in pen or clicking 'I Agree'. There is nothing to protect you if you get fucked over because you legally bound yourself to a bad contract. The best you can get is protection for some of your rights so that you can't be legally killed or so on. (companies can't break the law)
Still the whole deal is pretty ridiculous. Who cares what we buy or sell online. I heard there's even a game in production where the in-game finances = your RL finances.
~ The Irony is, The only reason I'm not at Berkeley right now is because I was on acid during my SAT's..
obviously you don't play
~ The Irony is, The only reason I'm not at Berkeley right now is because I was on acid during my SAT's..
However, it's work pointing out that the General GPL (as listed by doing 'info gcc' and selecting the 'Copying' link) specifically excludes the program output:
That being said, it's worth pointing out that this whole line of reasoning is made somewhat moot by the issue that characters are stored exclusively on the EverQuest server and how they can be modified is governed by the EverQuest server code. If I suddenly have exclusive rights to my character, does that mean I can:
Of course what'd be really funny would be if EverQuest agreed that users do have the rights to their character data file: Anyone wishing to exercise this right will receive a copy of the character via email and infringing data will be removed from the servers.
That item was added to the EQ EULA after the launch. I used to play EQ (major time suck I dont have time for right now) and when I moved from being a BetaTester to a full account the topic had NEVER been discussed. Now, they have changed the EULA - after i have invested time and money in the game - consider that I may have intended to sell my items/characters after having read my EULA... now Sony decides to alter their EULA. Suppose that I DONT want to agree to these new terms - it dosnt really leave me much choice does it? I have already bought the device under a FORMER EULA.
As an example: I sell a you a computer, for $X dollars, with an EULA that states "You may not use this computer to kill people. Terms subject to change." You consider this reasonable. You and 123,123,123 other people find this a reasonable restriction and lay down your $X. NOW I decide to change the EULA to state: " yOu may not use this to play games, connect to a network, run Linux, calculate Pi or watch simpsons AVIs. Terms subject to change".
Not very reasonable - can I get my money back now that I find the EULA to restrictive? Will Sony rebate my $60 for the EQ box???? Would those 123,123,123 people be allowed to return their computers?
I hope you never plan on buying any advertising on a radio station, after all what are you buying? Its not real after all, it exiists for only microsoeconds as the vibrations passes tour receiver.
sales, i.e., it's all a game, people.
aren't games supposed to be about accomplishing some sort of goal?
(hehe, or QUEST, as the case may be)
I play EQ because I want to accomplish all the small goals that are part of a role-playing game.
Selling the shit I want to people who didn't earn it, and thereby making it nearly impossible for me to earn those items myself, makes the QUEST a pointless exercise. Yeah, Sony's pissed...people like me won't want to play if I have to pay ANOTHER $50 bucks for an item that I can't even have the inherent enjoyment of winning for myself.
It's just a game people. Games are fun. Keep it that way, and just play the goddam thing.
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1984 wasn't just a book..it was a warning --from a post by Lughlamfainn
Yeah yeah, it's a free country, hooray for free enterprise all that. But does one have to be an asshole about a GAME to validate one's place in a capitalist system??
I am a regular EQ player, and find that I am disgusted at the greed and exploitation older players exhibit with these "sales." Not to mention how pissed off I get when I work my tail off for a stupid lvl12 and a fucking newbie at lvl 34, dressed to the nine's, begs me for food because they are broke.
I read the contract before I signed it. You don't like the rules? Too bad. You bored at a high level, and wanna make a fast profit because you have no life outside of EQ? (this coming from a player!!) Get a fucking job. EverCrack isn't real. It's just fun. Good god.
-k-
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1984 wasn't just a book..it was a warning --from a post by Lughlamfainn
I don't believe that it valid to compare a footballer's ownership of a football with a players ownership of their character.
For a start a player's character is often a manefestation of themselves, maybe not in reality but at least in their imagination.
A footballer can be considered an employee whereas a game player is a freelance contributer within a community. They are not employees and as such do not produce their characters out of obligation to the game providers. They freely participate and their characters are as much a product of their own creativity as an artists drawings IMO.
I think that one's ownership of their 'avatar' is vitally important because clearly we are probably not going to be spending less time online as time progresses and very likely our existences on the net will more and more be represented by characters that we have created.
I think there are a lot of other ideas around this but my basic thought is that player characters are a manefestation of themeselves and a game provider should own the character no more than they own the actual real life player themselves.
power mongers like sony do like to do this sort of stuff without consideration of public opinion. Like firing their high paid workers in cinemas... bashing unions, and of course piss off everybody, to show how strong they are to their shareholders.
This will not stop until sony products are not a considered choice such as buy PS2, Home Electronics etc...
Am I the only one who believes this is just natural evolution of the game ? It's just becoming more and more like real life, with fraud, treachery, organized "crime" and retards with money running the world. Sure it's "unfair", but life never was fair. Getting rid of this hypocritical selling prohibition would simply open up new paths for expansion of the EverQuest collective conscience. For example, to combat the cheap campers we could come up with some sort of law-enforcement or military regiment. Since this one rule can have such a strong impact on the mindset of many players, there are many new developments that would be made possible.
My other argument is that if someone's stupid enough to pay real money for an unreal item, well I'm not one to stop them. It's surely not as vile as Amway.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
How many people sign any paperwork that is put in front of them?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
The briefs should certainly make for interesting reading. I would have to say that I'd come down on the other side, though: I think that Sony, etc. are probably within their rights.
The question that you have to ask is: Legally speaking, what are these players selling? Their experiences in the game may have made for unique characters, but you have to decide whether those experiences can be separated from the intellectual property that *is* the game -- in other words, the programming that directed those experiences.
It's one thing to sell your "experiences" -- in the sense of selling the rights to the story of your life, for instance. Here, though, it seems to me that the players are selling data; and I would guess that, legally, the company retains ownership of the data.
Consider it another way: Could you, as a Dreamcast owner, legally sell a Visual Memory Unit containing game files to another Dreamcast user? You purchased the VMU, after all, and you played the games to generate those files. Yet you don't own the games; you simply own the discs on which those games are stored, and the right to use those discs. You don't have the right to use those discs to produce copies of the discs, so it's conceivable that neither do you have the right to use those discs to create VMU files to sell to other people.
This sounds like a very interesting case. If it proceeds, I hope that Slashdot will follow it.
crib
Please don't read my journal
Does this apply to karma? I remember an interview with Hemos and CmdrTaco where they admitted to messing with someone's karma who was trying to sell their /. account on Ebay. Cmrd's opinion was (at the time of the interview that is) that karma doesn't matter, that it's not THAT important. If these guys win will there be a flood of /. accounts going on sale?
Hmm, was this not outlined in the Terms of Service. I am willing to be that the kind of action, such as selling accounts, is against te terms of service. Thus, it cannot be disputed in court because it was outline in a contractual agreement, which the person(s) are SUPPOSED to read before playing.
From the everquest EULA:
"You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
HappyPuppy has a good article on this. You play the game you agree to abide by the rules, fail to do so and sony can yank your account. Seems pretty cut and dried to me.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
In this one, I sort of think there should be a place for things to be *just a game*. Yes, you can still play with your limited resources just paying for the subscription, but my past experience is that this sort of thing causes problems for those who either can't or don't wish to spend so much money. (Disclaimer: I have not played EQ. Perhaps someone who has could share their views? Thanks). I really think there should be a place for online games that require a simple fee to play and where there isn't a way to spend more money on it -- I think it adds a lot to the feel of the game to know that people really worked on their own to get where they are in game status (or at least that most of them did). So, I think the decision is up to Sony, and my understanding of the EULA is that these people "agreed" not to sell items. I have all sorts of problems with EULAs, including this one, and I believe that these people basically are morally in the right. But isn't there some way that a game can be just a game, and not about spending money to get ahead? I used to play MMORPGS, but got out not long after this sort of thing became common.
So, one question: is there a way for the proverbial "nice company" (as opposed to big bad profit-seeking corp) to build something that is "just a game" without this happening to it, and can people not attack them when it happens?
Also, does Sony fit the bill in this case? They certainly have profit motives, but I think they're trying to keep the gamers that share my view in doing this. So i guess I really don't know where I stand on the lawsuit. I do know that I wish people wouldn't make the suit necessary in their minds and just play the game for once. I know, I'm being idealistic. I'll stop whining now.
All EverQuest is is the loical conculsion of MUD's, MUSHes and MOO's. Not that this is a bad thing.... Think of what some people have done in order to gain a level on a MUD or become a wizard or whatever : dropped out of school, failed degrees and lost jobs.
And you can just shut the hell up. It's people like you make me wishI could call myself 'troll'.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, post on Slashdot about it.
...All that money those people made from selling money/characters/EQ/whatever will be immediantly offset by bandwidth costs from the SlashDot effect.
Nice, huh?
...for the lack of insight in the posts on this thread. /. readers think EULAs aren't worth a bag of dingo's kidnies.
:)
I have played Ultima Online since September, so I have a little expierence in the MMORPG arena. Not alot, but enough to understand that these games mimic real life. Thats right, if you are rich, you will be more successful! OMG! The travesty! Thats life. Get over it. You are going to be pretty miserable in life if you can't get over it and that's a fact.
For those folks who think that "its only a game." I agree! Okay, okay...I did buy one particularly neat piece of equipment for my character. $25 for a suit of "Ranger Armor" off of E-Bay. My purchase will never hurt anybody else's game experience(its a rare item, but not a very good one). Other purchases can and do hurt others game play.
Real Estate brokering has become quite lucrative for people who know what they are doing on UO and makes a hard situation even harder for people who don't have a house to try and get one. Yes, if you own 6 houses(you are only allowed one per account on UO) you are helping to ruin the game for other people. Yes, if you are camping powerful items to sell them on E-bay, you are ruining the game for others. But we (Americans) live in a Capitalist Culture. If you can make a buck, legally, then it is your RIGHT to do so. And I think its a safe bet to say that most
Pointing to the EULA is not a valid argument until the EULA is upheld in a court of law, until then I don't want to hear it. These guys can write whatever they want in their EULAs, I for one, am only agreeing to the terms that I deem enforceable. I don't have to do what the EULA says unless the company who wrote said EULA can come after me about it. If they can't, then it shouldn't be in the EULA. This is how contract law works.
For Jesus' sake people! It was bound to happen! We are capitalists at heart. This is the American way(not that I think that its good, but its the way things are).
Look towards the future: there is a market in virtual objects in crappy games like UO and EQ? Wait until we get even more immersive 3d technology!
VR is coming, be prepared to waste your life at your computer like you never have before.
--Chris
No, its not. Its the closest thing to immersive VR we have, and VR will mimic RL to the best of its ability. See below, comments about organized crime, and retards with money running things. :)
--Chris
I am happy for you that your priorities are straight. Really, I am. Its my belief that there is not room in Capitalism for everybody; there will always be have-nots under our socio-economic system, here in America. Thats the way it works. I don't like it, but I don't see anything better, so I guess I'm stuck here. I think I'd rather be a rich punk and be stuck here tho...
--Chris
WHOA! When was the last time you checked out the economy on UO! Its not fine! A small cottage costs upwards of 300,000 gold(for those of you who don't play, thats about how much I have earned in 4 months of play, being a non-addict, but serious player). Castles sell for $1000 on e-bay! Or 12,000,000 gold, if you can find someone who would rather have the ingame gold than the $1000 and wants to sell. :)
Unlimited money ruins any economy. Think about it. Inflation; yes you've heard that word before...Oh YES, INFLATION, that does ruin an economy doesn't it?! Gold is limitless in UO, therefore the economy runs rampant. 100,000 gold for a magic sword, no matter how good, is ridiculous. But they are sold for that price because people buy. Hey, they have the money. So why not? Not everybody has the money, tho. Inflation is bad.
--Chris
I hope they win the fight, because if they do, it will be a huge PR success for all online games.
It might even make Doom look like Pong.
Will code a sig generator for food
software doesn't exist period.
But that doesn't mean you can't sell it. Ask Bill Gates about this! He will tell you that people really are stupid enough to actually pay for bits and bytes!
Will code a sig generator for food
If anyone are stupid enough to buy it, be my guest.
Sony: "Don't you get too excited about this game, we'll do anything to avoid another Pokémon craze with OUR product".
Uhm, something is wrong here.
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Lots of folks raise the same arguement here, that it ruins the gameplay. Well, there is a solution: Organize! Hear me out. Get together a dozen or so hardcore, very high level players. Set up an 'anti item camper' guild. When you get reports that some 1337 h@X0r is camping items, send out a half dozen 50th level characters to reduce him to ashes. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. A variation here would be for Sony to do the same. This way, everyone could be happy. A fellow who played the game a lot, but is now tired of it, sells it, and his account info, to someone else. So long as he sells it lock stock and barrel, and is honest, that is a legit desire [hey, that way someone gets to benefit from the hours of gameplay]. But if a bunch of morons wants to try to make a business out of it, they get smacked down hard. [Maybe the Sony folks could create some sort of uber characters, 5,000,000 HP, regenerating, untouchable by all but 1,000th level characters, can do anything the game engine supports, that sort of thing.] Besides, wouldn't it be more satisfying to actively participate, or at least watch, as some cocky SOB who's been picking on low level characters gets his loin cloth handed to him? I mean, yeah, its a lot of work, but its better than involving the lawyers, and would earn brownie points for being creative.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Yea, thats why he posts as anon. Looks like an ad for a refer magnet to me. I'll use it hold up my papers. This isn't exactly the place to pitch your wares guy.
BMaximus
Whoa! That's an awfully high UID. Did you start that account recently?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
They're implying that EverQuest is more addictive than a class a drug. That and you wouldn't have to have Sony charging your credit card every month (personally, I can't even stand having Sony charge me 8.50 to see a movie!).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I can just imagine CmdrTaco hopping on to reply to this one. UID #1, heh.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Basically, my sig reminds software developers to keep their objectives in mind, and it admonishes them for their "Hey, let's squeeze THIS into the code!" tangents during the coding process.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
"Some of us have considered replacing EverQuest in our lives with a debilitating heroin habit; not because we advocate illegal drug use, but we think heroin is less addictive and we don't have to see our habit reflected on every month's credit card statement."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Now, I don't now nor will I ever play EverQuest, but I'm an ardent MUDder, and I despise people who do this sort of thing. It completely undermines the point of the game, substituting one's personal wealth for skill or time investment. It's highly unfair to people who actually play the game as intended.
Of course, the real reason is probably 'cuz they don't want to lose the accounts of people who abandon the game out of disgust of this sort of cheating. (They are a corporation, after all.) Nevertheless, I'm firmly on their side no matter what their motive. Buying your way into success in a game is just lame.
(And yeah, I know it's "just a game". I take games fairly seriously.)
[the absolute destiny: apocalypse]
many hardcore gamers of EQ don't want some newbie kicking their ass just because his parents are rich.
sony maybe afraid that they might lose the support of many hardcore gamers.
as far as sony is concerned, they aren't gaining anything if account ownership tranfers from one individual to another...and if this happens at the cost of other players' accounts going belly up, you can bet sony is against it.
- golgotha
I just bought a +1 sword of vanquishing from a level 14 dwarf. Can I borrow a few gold pieces so that he can FedEx it over here?
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I'm just an ordinary man with nothing to lose.
I wonder if Sony could create the whole bunch of characters and/or items and just sell them through an auction site, just to make money...
Scary thought, I know, but anyway....
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On scale from -14 to 56 this post is '-15, Nonexistent'
Most EULAs state the they can be changed at any time. The idea is that if a change is made, then you have the option of not continuing to use the service. I'm not sure whether the clause regarding non-sale of items was in there from the start, but if it was added at a later date, then allowing users to sell their virtual belongings seems a valid way to allow them to exit, and gain some value from the time and money they have invested in creating those entities.
with their monthly "pay-to-play" business model for Everquest. If they get gamers used to the idea of coughing up money on their credit cards just to play, why are they surprised when some players are willing to pay a little more to enhance their playing experience with powerful items/weapons?
I used to have a sig, but I traded it in for a glock!
I don't know the specifics of everquest so these examples might not be exactly aplicable, but here goes. Say I sell some platinum pieces to you for real money. I then get a theif friend to steal it back right away. Technically I completed my contract and get to keep your (real) money.
What about things like an in game casino. If the money you win/lose has real value, sony might have to obey gambling laws and exclude minors and people in certain states.
What if verant descideds to nerf jewlers? Can these people who spent weeks building up cash cows sue sony for lost revenue?
By saying that you can't sell items they avoid having to answer any of these questions. If they were to insist on geting a cut of the sales, they would have to answer all these legal issues (and a huge one being do they have the right to insist on a cut).
Besides, there's a certain purity to a game where rank is descided purely on dedication and skill. FPS's too frequently fall into a battle of who has the most expensive video card and connection. Then there's the other major question: Would anyone really enjoy the game if most of the powerfull characters where rich brats who's moms paid for the best accounts?
And about the spelling...
"It is a weak mind indeed that can find but one way to spell a word!" -Ben Franklin
Sony doesn't have the right to sue the people selling their account, but they reserve the right to stop it at any time. They decided to do so.
The ONLY way the law suits would work was if SONY and the users had entered an Indivisible contract, where they created a contract where neither party could end the contract until a certain time. The lawsuits will come to no avail.
On a more personal note, I believe that buying a charater on Everquest defeats the purpose of playing the game. This game was made so you could work to progressivly create something, a charater with certain abilities and traits, that was unique from everyone else, but if you purchase someone else's account, that is just the same as putting you brain in somone elses purchased body. You never know what they could have done!
Thats my 3 pence
--The oh so nervis one
Doesn't matter, the virtual items don't belong to you. In this case, Sony owns them and they can put as many restrictions on them as they want. If you try to sell something you found in EQ (in real life), Sony has every right to pull your account since it's clearly stated in the EULA. Whether this is right or not is another issue, but there are other games such as DiabloII where items and character accounts are being sold on eBay. So far I haven't heard blizzard complaining. Maybe Sony should back off a bit...
However, from what I remember, Sony had some good reasons for putting in this restriction. For one thing, players with far too much real money to spend could gain an unfair advantage in the game. Secondly, there is also the possibility of a player getting screwed on a bad deal since it's hard to prove ownership and distribute such a thing.
I don't agree with this. It seems to me that you do own the CD, just as much as you own the box, the manual, and the jewel case that the game probably came in. There is no physical license with most software, however some companies give you paperwork when you purchase x number of licenses. The CD is just that, a CD. The license is separate.
I'd like to see Sony countersue and claim that the people buying and selling the imaginary items have reduced the value of Sony's property by creating unfair advantages that reduce the enjoyment of the game for many players, thus cutting back on sales and online participation.
If I thought that any of the people involved in this idiotic lawsuit had any chance of getting laid, I'd be calling for them to be sterilized now before they could breed. Fortunately, that is a non-issue.
P.S. Yes, I know that Verant and "others" were to be named in the suit, but I just mentioned Sony in the interest of brevity.
You dont own "your" character. You certainly don't "own" any of these items created by Verant / Sony and found by "your" character in game. Heck.. you probably don't even own the CD you bought the game on...as it is just a license. It isn't right for an individual to profit off another persons creation. At least not in this case... Verant / Sony never asked you to go out and find these items and sell them... infact.. they are asking that you don't do that. Verant owns the software, servers, and copyright to all things Everquest. Yes... that even means they own "your" character. Sure... they let you come and play in their world... heck they even let you pick what "avatar" of "Everqueset" you would like to be represented as... but that doesn't mean you can sell portions, or whole parts of the scenario. -I don't think this class action lawsuit has a chance.. and if it does... God Help Us All. -minus
I am Jack's HTTP Server
You free marketers, come to these peoples' aid. Anything that is deemed as having value and does not damage an individual or the corporation should be salable.
Furthermore, these sales should increase the value of Everquest, because more people will play and play more often if it seems lucrative. They should contract out to brokers of these goods!
Goat sex free since 2001
They have lawyers who wrote a EULA which goes against common sense, this is a news flash! Lawyers make EULAs and patents and things that are utterly absurd all the time.
When something in the black market becomes widespread, it goes into the grey market. When something in the grey market becoms widepread, a smart corporation will license and control this something in order to regulate and reap profit from a previously revenue-draining service.
Sony should verify character sales and have its own market for them, instead of putting it on E-Bay and letting E-Bay get all the profit that could come from such sales.
By the way does anyone have an approx. aggregate cash value of sales of Everquest characters on E-Bay?
Goat sex free since 2001
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
Verant could inrease the supply of valuable items, thus driving down demand. In a game like this, all Scarcity is Artificial, no doubt about that. A few clicks in the admin mode and Godly Plates of Depleted Uranium come raining out of the sky, newbies rejoice and people who paid $400 real cash for a virtaul item would weep at their squandered misfortune.
"And so the first will be last, and the last first." *grin*
The carefully cultivated artificial scarcity and competition for scarce resources with others are what make artificial bits worth real money, so they wouldn't tamper with that. Verant is on a fine line here- they want their game and the items in it to be worth playing, but not worth paying?
One of the things that makes rare items valuable is the time it takes to collect them. People could aruge that they are being paid for rendering an Everquest-related consulting service for which they are being paid for their time, then transferring the item itself for free? ; -)
What if someone paid not just to have the item, but instead to have someone show them where they could find it in the game? Of course it's a sorry person who needs cash motivation for the fun of helping others in a game, but would the EULA prohibit that as sale of an Everquest-related service? Would it be illegal to teach a class on Everquest for money? I know the demand is high for Everquest Seminars and Motivational Speakers! ; -) Maybe Verant would change their tune if they were bribed- by receiving a certain cut of all sales of Everquest items.
I personally avoid such corporate-control dilemmas by not playing EverCrack ; -) Ahhhh.
I really don't see a problem with this -- I go to school with somebody who plans on paying next year's tuition with his Everquest character. It's a pretty decent investment for somebody who enjoys playing -- pay the monthly fee, invest your time and in the end you end up being rewarded. Sony isn't being hurt by this, it's helping others.. so what's the problem?
''You be the judge..'' ??
Isn't the whole idea of a "character" to build its character? How can you do this if you simply purchase it? Isn't that a bit like an attempt to purchase status? While they might have the right to make such purchases, it seems as though the people buying are making a bad mistake, and missed a key aspect of the game.
Never was such a wonderful chance for a great RPG more efficiently wasted. I find it interesting that Verant has kept up the farce so long with gimmicks like the roleplaying switch.
What are you implying?
Sony loses the suit. It is now perfectly OK to camp and sell items/characters/etc on eBay or wherever.
I camp and get a level 3000 player (never played the game), with an eBay market value of say $2000.
Sony has a server crash and my character somehow gets lost. Since this character now had a value on the open market, my most logical recourse would be to sue Sony (here in America anyway, land of litigation).
I think that we can all extrapolate where this goes. If Sony (or any of these game makers) has to be put under the additional burden of protecting a bunch damn video game character files b/c of possible lawsuits, Sony might be a little less interested in continuing Everquest, or making sequels, etc. At what point does the potential financial burden caused by additonal legal burdens convince Sony to shut EverQuest down?
It is at that point that the insistence on defending the "players rights" of a group of greedy individuals (those selling items/characters/etc) will remove all "rights" from all other players.
Anyway, its only a game, how can anyone take it this seriously...[mumbling "must play more Quake"]
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People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
...but I dont see anything wrong with selling EQ items for big bucks (:
I think the bottom line is going to be that it's just a game. I have to wonder if these people have considered the bigger picture. There are other online games to play if you dislike the way Sony runs theirs. Everquest isn't a right, or even a realm where your rights apply and can be defended. I'm not a fan of Sony, and I don't like the way EQ is run. But I still have to say that no (even moderately sane) judge is going to rule against Sony on this.
The EULA specifically states that users who sell or try to make money off their game playing may be suspended.
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why or what the hell would posess anyone to pay for bits and bytes. but i suppose that if someone is dumb enough to pay for something that doesnt exist you may as well take advantage of them.
It's called freedom. If you don't like it then move to a socalist area like Europe, or Kentucky.
Want to make another inaccurate blanket statement?
Sure, by US standards some of the nations in Europe would be described as "socialist" but most people this side of the pond wouldn't call state-provided health, welfare and education services (not to mention effective gun control) that way. What they do call it is progressive and civilised.
You keep your right to bear arms and I'll keep my right to see a doctor if I need to. When your next-door neighbour starts going crazy with his M-16, or you need a malignant tumour removed, I'll be thinking of you.
In the meantime, you take care now, y'hear?
(Oh, and by the way, choosing to move to Europe, or Kentucky, would be exercising a freedom. Duh.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Sony just sees things different than OSI. OSI sees the fact that in-game objects sell for real life money as proof of how popular/spiffy/etc. UO is. It clearly states that the account and everythig in the game is the property of OSI/EA, however they have no problems with anybody selling.
Ask a GM in game if it's alright to use something not available in the game/to other players to gain an advantage in the game, and they'll say no.
Substitute the word 'money' for 'something' and you have ebay.
The real life money situation in UO caused many many many MANY problems for players (and many left) when housing was opened up in Trammel, as many players were beat to housing spots by people who's sole goal was to place a house to sell on ebay.
First off, I think that buying and selling items in a game is terribly lame.
Now the question of what exactly these auctions are selling has been brought up. I think what's being sold is a service - namely the service of getting you whatever weapon, armor, or item you desire.
If I call a TV repairman and he can fix my problem without any new parts by simply tightening a loose connection then what am I paying for? I have received no physical objects and no information. I'm paying for the service of being able to watch Scooby Doo again.
However, some TVs come with fine print that says their warranty is null and void if they are serviced by anyone that's not manufacturer certified. And the repairman I called happened to just that. So now I'm screwed out of getting a free replacement, or free repair, even though I'm still within the warranty period. Now this is perfectly fine and a fair thing to do on the manufacturer's part. Even though I can't get a free replacement, I can always pay to have my old one fixed, or buy a new one.
Now let's say I buy a great sword in an auction, violate the EULA, and am banned. The difference is now I'm left with having paid $40.00 or whatever (I don't own EverQuest) for a game that I can no longer use. I can't pay someone else to play - I'm screwed. And so begins the gray area. Yeah, I violated the agreement. But with the more traditional model (the TV) I can still use what I paid for even if I don't get the full benefits of the agreement. With EverQuest I'm left out to dry.
My personal opinion is that these people can be banned because it's Sony's right. But I also think this is definitely a gray area and I look forward to seeing what happens.
First of all, Katz didn't create jack shit.
Second of all, some of us realize that just because it's a law doesn't mean it's right. Laws need to be examined and updated.
Just like an individual can infringe on a company's rights by pirating a product, a company can infringe on an individual's rights by monopolizing a market and driving up prices. These things go both ways.
First of all, I don't believe there is anything wrong with auctioning a character or item from games like Everquest. It's a free country. If someone wants to pay for it, and it doesn't hurt anyone, go ahead and sell it. But ... Does it hurt someone? As a former EQ player, I know first-hand how irritating it was to try and get a certain item, but be unable to do so because it's being "camped" - basically some powerful characters waiting around to grab the item, not allowing other players to get it.
I believe that online rpg's like Everquest get hurt the most by some of their players. There's always some people who ruin the experience for others by being obnoxious in some way. The true role-players would not wait around at a spawn site to grab a bunch of items ... and they would probably not auction them off either.
So here's my mixed feelings --- there's nothing wrong with auctioning off these items, but from personal experience, the people doing this are usually the ones who hurt the game experience the most.
Not a troll or flame - simply my opinion.
/.) will make Sony settle the lawsuit.... Sheesh...
Sony can NOT allow the selling of EQ items and characters. Doing so makes them liable for the value of those items and could render them vunerable to lawsuits. For instance, I sell an item A to player B. The server crashes and my item is lost (before sale is complete). If sony allowed the selling of items, I could hypothetically sue them for the real world value (i.e. what I sold it for on eBay).
Sony probably would lose money because of that due to high lawyers fees and stupid lawsuits... Also as any real EQ player knows - the gameplay would degrade a fair amount. Every so often... I bump into someone that either is a newbie that was twinkled (EQ Slang for recieving items from a high level character for free with the sole purpose of boosting their low level character) by their friends or bought a character. They are absolute idiots and most of the time get in the way.
Sony knows this. As the Online RPG Market is very competitive and hot right now, (Asheron's Call - UO - EQ and others) they have taken steps to prevent the ruining of the game.
IMO - these people are total idiots hoping that the publicity their lawsuit recieves (from being posted on places like
There is always a frontier where there is an open and willing mind
The reason verant wants to end the selling of items is because ppl make a ton of money by farming items. On The Rath the guild KeG states that they used to make 1000's of dollars a month by camping all the good items in the game. They do this not for fun not for skill advancement. They do it to make money and thats it. They have stated that at almost any giving hour they have all the major drops in the game camped by either Tagged or untagged guild members. This makes it almost completly impossible for anyone who just wants to play the game to do so.