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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.."
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.