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Mythic Sued Over Blocking Auctions of Game Tokens
Lukenary writes: "Mythic Entertainment, creator of the excellent MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot, is being sued by BlackSnow Interactive, owner and maintainer of CamelotExchange - an online auction site for the exchange of in-game items, money, and characters/accounts. This could be a landmark case: if you spend (typically) weeks of playing time to garner 1,000 gold in-game, do you have the right to auction off that gold for real money? Mythic has not yet had an official response to the suit, but you can read BSI's press release at the CamelotExchange site above. Personally, I find it interesting that BSI is going after DAoC, calling Mythic a "software giant," while ignoring the more established compettion in EverQuest producer Sony, Asheron's Call producer Microsoft, and Ultima Online producer Electronic Arts. Mythic's only product at this time is Dark Age of Camelot, which was released last October."
i would say if you agree to the TOS when install and sign up for the game, you are bound by it. if it says no dice... no dice.
If you ever reach the point in your life where buying a developed character in a game makes more sense than actually playing the game because the time simply can't be afforded, perhaps it is time to step away from the computer.
Is it acceptable / legal to hire people to play the game for you?
Is that the same question or not? I think it basically is.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
I feel almost guilty over this, as I'm rooting for the game companies here. As an alienated EverQuest player (what do you mean the stats don't matter?), this is difficult to stomach.
As a casual player, its hard enough playing against people with no lives who play 12 hours a day, muchless the farmers who play for a living.
Less Talk, More Beer.
This is ridiculous. These people have spent the time to obtain the rankings and items which means they should be allowed to sell them. What they are selling is what they have created. If someone decides to type a book in Word they should be allowed to sell that book at their will.
A lot of people think that because you did all of this work for your item in game then you should be able to do what you want with it, and there is something to be said for that. Unfortuantely in the grand scheme of things it's not so simple. A problem arises when a lucrative market springs up, then you have people who use the game as a means to make their living in the real life.We call these item farmers. These people are a problem for the game system because they spend vast amounts of times gathering items and resources in the game beyond what their character could possibly want or need. These items are of limited availability (they all drop on spawn timers or on a rare percentage of monster kills) so this results in the actual players of the game being pushed out. This of course works for the item farmer because it helps to create the market.
Creating and then maintaining a sustainable economy is a very difficult thing to do in an MMORPG (indeed, nobody has done it yet) and item farmers just make it more difficult.
Sigs are awesome huh?
I find this disturbing: people will pay more money for a fake character than they will spend on themselves.
Think about it. I can imagine an unemployed guy sitting home bidding hundreds of dollars for some imaginary characters, while in the same breath complaining to his friends that he doesn't have the dough to buy a suit to go interview for a job.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I find it hard to take seriously something that uses such turns of phrase, but then again I've never been one to scour complaints. At any rate, the lawyers hired to represent these people appear legitemete, even if the document reads like a high school essay.
Am quite interested in how it turns out.. this always was a sticking point between Verant and EQ players as well. Would be a nice precedent to have established in the books, because it would also cast shadows on the legitemcy of EULA's.
This could be a landmark case
Didn't we go through this last year with Sony/Verant vs. eBay.
What was the outcome of that case, and why wasn't it the landmark?
---
Oregon
Microsoft couldn't care less if you sell on ebay. Hell the way they handle the game it encourages it.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
It's pretty clear why they aren't going after Sony,Microsoft or EA, that being relative resources. Do you want to get into a court battle with Microsoft and see who can afford it better?
/.?
First they target someone small, and assuming they get a judgement in their favour they then go waving it in front of other courts as precedent when similar cases rise.
I suppose I should mention IANAL but would anyone actually be stupid enough to base a case on legal advice from
People are making money off of *mythics* hard work; not their own.
Just because a gamer has no life and plays 10 hours a day doesn't mean he has a right to be compensated for it. It is not a job, no one owes him anything.
Players that sell accounts and objects for real money are capitalizing on the amount of work that mythic has put in to the game.
I think if this is to be allowed, Mythic should recieve a cut of all sales. Of course, since this wouldn't happen, I think it's perfectly right for Mythic to disallow this practice.
I mean really, if you want to make money, get a damn job. If you want to make money using games, become a game developer (Like me =) ).
The should let people sell that stuff online, they can use the money to buy a life.
Mod me as flamebait if you want, but come on... Let's be realistic here.
I wonder if Mythic lost this suit (which I doubt), if they'd be liable for preventing fraud in the types of transactions BSI deals in.
If I were Mythic, I'd be pretty worried about players getting ripped off and then turning to me for compensation. That may be why they take such an aggressive stance on the issue now.
---------
Get back to me when my brain starts working.
This is all well and good, but I think people should bear in mind that Mythic created and owns the entire DAoC set-up. I've never played it myself, so I'm a little sketchy on the precise details, but it seems to me that if Mythic chooses to restrict certain practices within the boundaries of their creation, then they are fully within their rights to do so. Players pay a monthly fee for access, not for rights to private ownership of what their character has. DAoC is hardly a monopoly and people play because they choose to, and within the rules set forth by the company. Whether players selling items is permitted or not permitted outside of the game, I believe it is Mythic's perogative.
--My purpose set, my will defined. Caress the air, embrace the skies.
Let's face it, would you rather be sued by Sony and their coven of lawyers or Joe-Bob's cousin? They're going after a smaller fish to try and get some precident on their side when/if they turn on Sony et all.
"Personally, I find it interesting that BSI is going after DAoC, calling Mythic a "software giant," while ignoring the more established compettion in EverQuest producer Sony, Asheron's Call producer Microsoft, and Ultima Online producer Electronic Arts."
It's not interesting. It's called going after the littlest guy you can so you have a better chance of winning. Once you win, a precedent has been set, making it easier to go for the bigger fish.
That's like Lawyering 101.
I think you have it backwards. It's more like that old commercial with the monkey and the cocaine. You have some guy cranking on the game putting in a good 142 hours a week then auctioning off his character then go buying the newest multi player online game. He's saying to himself I've got to do this so I can play more, so I can make more money, So I can get more online games.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
Are they saying that all player interactions are a work for hire benefiting the company?
Just how does the Company control this in terms of a legal argument?
I am so confused.
--
* 2002-02-06 13:23:59 Google Programming Contest (developers,programming) (rejected)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Mark this.
This case could be the first splash on the legal scene that leads to the legitimization of non-physical economies.
Why is this important?
Imagine that at some point in the future, a corporation creates an amazingly successful MMORPG. The MMORPG is successful enough that the parent corporation spins off the division to form a new company. This new company maintains the virtual world of the MMORPG and derives all its profits therefrom.
Very possible.
If the company then made a move to allow players of the game to purchase commonly traded shares of the corporate stock for in-game currency, there is a tie between a physical-world economy and a virtual one.
At this point, it would take very little imo/ for the virtual world of the MMORPG to classify as a nation-state.
Consider. It _has_ an economy. There is an exchange rate (albeit an occluded one) between the money of the virtual and physical world. The virtual world has a defineable citizenry.
When enough people engage themselves as citizens of a virtual state, and bring enough income into that virtual state, and exchange income between that virtual state's money and the money of other states....
What happens?
Eventually, would a banking house take interest and provide an exchange rate from one economy to the other?
If so...
How long before the citizenry of the virtual world demands rights.
How long before the citizenry of the virtual world takes those demands to a world-recognized forum?
How long before the representative of Norrath addresses the UN?
You have to have a credit card to view porn, you have to have a credit card to play games. Well, the do-gooders of the world have accomplished one goal. They taught every 13 year old boy in the world how to do credit card fraud.
I read your rant, and it seems that you were just unfamiliar with string comparison syntax in java. (Replies in your blog show you how to do it.)
Being unfamiliar with a language is hardly a reason to deem it "sucky."
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Regardless of the way BSI thinks things "should" be, there are a few very simple facts:
1) To play the game, you have to abide by the EULA.
2) The EULA specifically DISALLOWS sales of items and currency, but (at the time of writing) allows the sale of ACCOUNTS in an "as-is" fashion -- specifically, that Mythic is not responsible if such a deal goes sour, etc. If you ebay your account and the buyer gets the account banned, don't be surprised if they hold the SELLER responsible as well, etc.
Since these provisions are spelled out in the EULA, I see no merit to this lawsuit. EQ, UO, etc. were gray areas because the original agreements don't discuss out-of-band commerce relating to the game. Mythic's EULA for DAoC DOES, and that makes their position all but impregnable.
They can legitimately say that the rules are in place to preserve the physical security of the game, and to preserve the enjoyment of the player base -- something that has DIRECT economic value to the owners of the game.
The players have NO right to break those rules or work outside of them; they're both paying to play, and agreeing to abide by the set provisions of the game when they do so. If they're not happy, they can save themselves 10 bucks a month and play elsewhere.
Bottom line, it's in Mythic's best interest as the owners and providers of DAoC to not allow the sale of items and currency -- they probably shouldn't even allow the sale of accounts, in fact. It's just like a bar or nightclub -- you can pay to get in, but if you try to grope the women or sneak your friends in, you should expect to get kicked out and black-listed.
The nightclub doesn't tolerate such behavior when it's expressly forbidden, and shouldn't be required to by any means. The same applies to Dark Age of Camelot and Mythic.
You shouldn't verb words.
It boils down to the fact that BSI is trying to sell Mythic's Intellectual Property. The "money" and the "items" are Mythic's IP. BSI (or anyone else) has no right to sell those things. It's not a ToS issue, it's a LEGAL issue.
IF this lawsuit even makes it to court, BSI will be squashed, and I'm certain Mythic will file a few counter-suits of their own.
The only prescedent this will set is that the courts will finally say "You can't do that".
The games themselves cost around 50 to 70 dollars (more than a fair price for the months to years of development.) However, do you really think that the person who spends a few weeks gathering 1000 gold in a game deserves twice that amount?
Really? They are adopting an excellent strategy AFAICT. As they don't have as much money as the larger companies, nor as many corrupt officials in their pockets, they're going after the smaller company to set a precedent which they can then use against the larger companies.
Precedents are important.
I would worry that if there is a precedent set that selling fake stuff IRL is legal, then game developers (the programmers, not the companies) would have an incentive to put backdoors into their games (e.g. talk to this shopkeeper, tell him the magic words and *presto* he gives you the most powerful weapon in the game).
For a game developer, protecting against this type of thing does cost money (in man-hours). Therefore, I say that they should be able to set whatever policy they choose.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
But what if someone finds a way to cheat in the game? Or a programmer modifies the game code to give himself extra weapons or gold or any other game-related item? Said person then takes the items and sells them for real cash. It may seem like a remote possibility, but when real money is involved, people tend to become pretty creative...
I find it obvious. Who is most likely to have the worse lawyers? The smallest company.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It would seem to me that if DAoC is their only title, they've spent more time trying to make a great game, and less time with the legal types creating a more defined agreement.
Speaking as one who's been unofficially affiliated with Verant for a number of years, I can tell you that Everquest has been around for much longer that even its beta program. What I mean by this is that they've (ever since EQ's predecessor Tanarus came out) had since early '97 to tweak their user agreement to close loopholes and make their "I Accept" button much more ironclad.
It's a sort of changing of the times in that a company that develops a MMORPG *must* spend an ordinate amount of time/money/resources on the legal aspect of the game, instead of just creating a kick-a$$ game that everyone will enjoy...
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
Employee abuse. Unlike real items, these virtual itmes can be made and unmade by the trillions with a few key strokes. If you are one of the programmers or better yet sysadmins that happen to have access to the database that controls all this, you could really make a killing by adding in tiems and selling them, with no effort.
There is also a legal concern. For example, suppose that your game features the Ultra-Rare Sword of Asskicking +10, of which there are only 3 total in the game. There were given out as a one time quest thing. So they get traded around for real money, and a fair bit of it. Well you then decide it's time to expand the game. You up the level cap, add in new abilities, monsters, etc. You also decide to make that sword just an uncommon drop from a high level monster.
Now the people that own the orignals are pissed. Their monetary investment has gone to shit, just because you decided to change the way the game worked, so they sue you. Stupid? Yes, but I've seen worse lawsuits that have been won.
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1) IIRC, Verant updated the EQ EULA specifically banning the auctioning of items and plat on ebay because they got sick of whining bitches petitioning the GMs saying "I bought 100K off this guy on ebay and now he wont give it to me! Can you get it for me please?!?!?"
2) If anyone ever discovers an exploit which allows item duping, the items immediately become worthless. No doubt there would be a large amount of loud, vocal, hardcore gamers looking for a convenient scapegoat. Blame the company for its "crappy programming" and them "not testing enough for exploits".
3) Being able to buy your way to the top makes the game pointless. Parting of being uber is being uber enough to stick it out and work your way up all those levels. Getting to level 60 on Everquest requires months of dedication to a character. How pissed would you be if some little shit down the street got his parents to buy him a Level 60 character for his birthday and he goes around boasting about it?
This could be a landmark case: if you spend (typically) weeks of playing time to garner 1,000 gold in-game, do you have the right to auction off that gold for real money?
If you are really that serious about such a game that you are interested in selling game points for profit and consider this to be a "landmark case," I think you need to put on some clean clothes and take a walk in the park.
0-) the promo material for DAoC said that item farming wasn't going to be an issue.
To stop black market either:
1) Sell booster packs (1 unique, 3 rares, 11 magic items) of assorted random items for a small fee (eg 1.99 Euro)
2) Whenever something is sold by online auction, create exactly the same item and then sell it to the first comer for half the price the person paid, thereby making them feel like an idiot
3) Sell any item for a tiny fraction of what it would take to go out and get it yourself. Eg assume it takes 1 hour to find the SuperKill Sword o' Doom. 1 hour of burger flipping = say 10 Euro. Therefore sell the Sword o' Doom for 1 Euro.
Note that you can always put a cap on the price of black market goods if they are easily available from the manufacturer at a set price.
The problem with DAoC is that it is based on Player vs Player combat, and anything that is perceived to give anyone an advantage at that is going to have all the whingers up in arms. So they are especially vulnerable to the issues of trading.
Just look at Diablo II duelling - lots of people running around with exactly the same equipment. Whereas for monster bashing noone much cares what equipment you have.
Generic MMORPG:
The only ways to really prevent this are to disallow trading items between players, and all variations thereof (dropping items, looting corpses etc)
But the real question is why on Earth would they want to prevent having a secondary market? Look at the popularity of collectable card games, if anything they should be trying to emulate that and get a piece of that action (see also booster pack idea above)
...the company would do it itself. It would be great for them to be able sell high-ranking or rare items as a primary source of income. I've seen MUDs do that, but always on a very limited scale: a handful of select, not too powerful, items given to people who pay extra (or pay at all, as it's usually on otherwise free MUDs that I've seen this).
The problem is, that doesn't make a good game. It's like playing chess in a league where people who bribe the referee can have all their pawns replaced with queens at the start of the game. Either you have to spend your money just to get a level playing field, or you have a hell of a time getting a decent game.
So it's a matter of protecting the gameplay. They can't just allow it. The question of legality depends entirely on the contract. Obviously, you can set acceptable use rules in the user contract.
This challenge looks pretty ridiculous to me. It seems basically to me like people disputing the right of a sports league to ban players for taking bribes to throw the game.
they would let the gamers trade their online game items/characters. Then create the uber-ultimate-weapon (Level 999 longsword with a +500 attach) and promply begin to auction the item off.
If people are willing to spend a couple hundred US dollars on some electronic gold coins, then imagine what they would spend on a weapon like that!
After all, if, say, 100GP has a well-established market value of $1, how is getting 100GP as a result of an MMORPG server rolling random numbers any different from getting a $1 poker chip as a result of a video poker server rolling random numbers?
I'll bet most Slashdot readers can see a difference, but articulating that difference to a judge (or the Interstate Commerce Commission, or a state gaming board out to make a quick buck) could be difficult. Maybe the "software giants" just don't want to take that on.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Most judges have no clue what a MMORPG is. let alone what the hell BSI will be talking about...
I hope those losers at BSI lose bad.
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
In the case of a book, you are creating new intelectual property. You own teh rights to that by inherant copyright. You aren't doing the same with a character, you're just making changes to a database that Mythic designed and owns the rights to. The other thing is, in the case of the ISP they still do own the physical server you are working on, and can dictate how you use it. Suppose your ISP hates books for whatever reason, so they tell you to knock it off. If you don't, they can most certianly shut down your account. Same with an account in an online game. You sell an item, Mythic can shut down your account for it. For that matter, they can shut down your account for any reason. They don't have a contract with you gautenteing service. You pay for use of their game, they decide the terms of that use. If you dont' like it, vote with your dollars and go play elsewhere. If enough people cancel their accounts becasue they can't sell things, Mythic will either revise their polocy or go out of bussiness.
java sucks you love C#? Yea, you love it while microsoft doesn't rule the world with it. But eventually they will find a way to use it against you. My Guess is that they will rob your grandma and kick you dog. Or at least it will feel like that.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
[snort] that sounds SO absurd. funny too.
Which of course means that everything has been done before, so creativity within a defined set of limitations is utterly impossible.
Actually what they are selling is right of use of gaming tokens as stored in the server. The right to flip those bits, which has been bestowed on you in consideration of the money you gave them.
Of course, if you had no right to flip the bits, then why did you give themn money in the first place?
But then, this is Microsoft logic. Sort of like buying the keys to a car, but not being able to let anyone else use the car.
If I as a character can bestow to any other character anything that I have, then to forbid me to do so screws up the game. To forbid me to speak or communicate about this to anyone else in the game really goes against good sense.
The only way to really enforce it would be to bond all of the players. and who would play the game then?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How did this tripe get modded up?
31337 h4x0r indeed...
And what about other games? Can you buy a vowel in Scrabble?
I find it sad that in this day and age people cannot separate reality from *virtual* reality, and would waste real money on something that's really imaginary. Do they also believe that fairy tales are true life and that the Budweiser lizards really talk?
BLACKSNOW INTERACTIVE SUES MYTHIC (DAOC) IN FEDERAL COURT FOR MMORPG PLAYER'S RIGHTS
Mythic Entertainment is named as the defendant in this case filed on Febuary 5th 11:50AM involving various anti-trust, copyright, and anti-competitive issues. BlackSnow Interactive (BSI) is a group of individuals that play, buy, and sell in various Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). Growing from only one person nearly two years ago, to seven full-time people, this group has successfully developed a market in which they are able to supply players with gaming currency, items, or characters at competitive prices. Mythic wants BSI to cease all sales immediately.
After entering the DAoC market, shortly after its release, BSI created a website and began listing their sales on various auction sites, such as Ebay. BSI's Director of Sales, Lee Caldwell, was quoted as saying, "What it comes down to is, does a MMORPG player have rights to his time, or does Mythic own that player's time? It is unfair of Mythic to stop those who wish to sell their items, currency or even their own accounts, which were created with their own time. Mythic, in my opinion, and hopefully the court's, does not have the copyright ownership to regulate what a player does with his or her own time or to determine how much that time is worth on the free market."
Caldwell goes on to say, "Mythic's attempt to stifle competition in their own game makes it possible for only full-time gamers to succeed in the game and most MMORPG players can't compete on that level. The person that plays just a few hours a week, can't put in the time required to build their character or collect the items needed to join others in the online battles. No one has stood up to any of these software giants, until now."
If you would like to take a look at the actual court document, please visit www.camelotexchange.com.
I think anonymous cowards should be allowed to buy and use karma points. Never mind that they're meant to reflect the quality of the participation of registered users. If you earned them, you should be able to sell them, right?
Anybody who commits "10 hours" a day, or even 3 hours a day, to a hobby sounds like motivated individual to me. If I devoted a large part of my day to swing dancing, or playing chess, or , would you say that I have "no life"? What if I enjoy playing Diplomacy all day? Or Counterstrike?
And if we're jumping on the no-lifers out there, then maybe we should throw in people who watch TV or drink all day. In that sense, is a being hardcore gamer so bad? Maybe I'm overreacting, but who can judge the difference between doing something passionately (like game for ten hours on a Saturday), and having no life?
(no signature)
time to the game to level AND make money. Result:
I haven't played DOAC in a couple months, because
I have better things to do with my time.
It seems to me that Everquest is the other way around. Of course, my experience with EQ is
limited to the fact that when I tried it I gained
to about the 5th. level and just gave up because
it just wasn't fun at all. Anyway, in EQ, it
seems to me that it is easy to get stuff, and hard
to gain levels. Unless of course you get power leveled by some level 55 guy who just thinks he can score with you because you are using a female character model.
The way that items work in DAOC is that they degrade slowly, and they also are designed with a particular level. So for an item to work the way
it is supposed to, it needs to "con" around your level. Sooner or later, if you gain levels, your
stuff is going to be next to useless for you. And
even if you keep it, it will eventually fall apart.
So basically this forces players to spend TONS of time doing both leveling and earning if they want to have a decent character.
This is a problem. If it were easier to make money, players would not have to spend hours on
end playing, doing boring, repetetive tasks rather
than fighting monsters and other players. There
would be fewer people devoting their entire lives
to MMORPG games, and the scene would be much
more attractive to the casual gamer who wants
to play 2 or 3 hours a week and still have their
character advance at a decent pace.
I don't know what Final Fantasy Online will be like, but I hope that Square makes it much easier
to enjoy the game without forcing you to make it a
second job. The game would actually become fun,
and there wouldn't be losers out there who would
feel the need to try to turn EQ into a money
making business, or who want to be somehow
compensated for wasting 80 hours a week playing
EQ.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The servers that play the game belong to Mythic. Mythic created the software, tested and owns the game and everything in it. No user of the game "owns" anything in the game, just like no one actually owns their Stone of Jordan in Diablo 2. Yet someone else, who did not invest in creating the game or maintaining the environment tries to sue to make new rules about how the game should be played. Somehow, regardless of whether it is a supposed "virtual economy" or not, I doubt litigation is going to work.
Of course, none of these were/are really sucessful, but I believe they have more games under their belt than your humble Verant. By the way, since you are "unofficially affiliated" with Verant Interactive, when is Sovereign due out?
==================
Hippie Logger Jock
==================
> How pissed would you be if some little shit down the street got his parents to buy him a Level 60
> character for his birthday and he goes around boasting about it?
Sort of like the kid currently on Battlebots who bought his robot on Ebay......
I don't know about any of you but I buy(I use buy loosely here) and play games for fun. When it becomes a job why bother? If the game sucks so bad that you have to be on level 40 for it to be interesting it's time to ditch it and find a new one. Not go out and spend hundreds of dollars to get to level 40. That's just crazy talk. Say you want to listen to a CD are you doing to go out and buy every peice of equipment just so it can be louder and sound better? Oh wait this is slashdot so yea I do. But anyways I think you should play a game to play it not be on level 40.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
Personally, I find it interesting that BSI is going after DAoC, calling Mythic a "software giant," while ignoring the more established compettion in EverQuest producer Sony, Asheron's Call producer Microsoft, and Ultima Online producer Electronic Arts. Mythic's only product at this time is Dark Age of Camelot, which was released last October."
Mythic doesn't have the money/lawyers to throw at the case that the others do...so it will be easier to win a precedent-setting case against them, and then go after the others.
Thomas Galvin
If you spend $10 a month playing a game, and 6 months into the game, the server crashes and you lose your data, or you lose all your items, or something strange happens, how are you to be compensated for the negligence of the company?
If there is adaquate precedence that character accounts are worth a certain dollar value, then upon this unfortunate loss, the company could be sued by the player for monetary compensation (encouraging the company to simply recreate the character)
Then you have the issue of cheating. Where before, cheating only gave in-game bonuses and the only potential consequence was the loss of the account, now you have some new issues. You can artificially inflate the value of your character. If this person is caught, should he/she be charged with fraud? One player cheating can lower the value of other's accounts. Can they sue the cheater? Can they sue the company for not stopping the cheating?
Of course, if the company forbids this, they're on better legal footing then if they condoned it or at the very least remained neutral.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I see this as a case with wide reaching repercussions. These MMPORPGs are virtual worlds and have always been in the name of entertainment. People, however, have been "gaming" for profit for quite a while. Just look on e-bay for Diablo or Everquest related items. What will happen if this case goes to court? There are two possible outcomes.
One, the court decides that players can "sell off" items for real world cash. If this happens, there will need to be laws in the virtual word if this is to continue. The Characters in Camelot will have to set up a virtual court system to judge the legitimacy of people's actions. The virtual court will have to determine that the item was acquired legitimately. "He stole my Sword of Burping +2 in a Non-PVP area!" Who is going to handle that if the courts give weight to the claims that virtual items can be bartered? Of course, there is the scenario that includes my friend, the programmer at "Magic-Tech MMORPG Company and he programs the game to drop the "SWORD OF GOD" when character named "flogger" pays some NPC named Gump 12 copper coins.
The other thing the courts can do is say, "Nope. No can do. Virtual items have no legitimacy and cannot be bartered for or against." What would this mean? (You try to explain to my wife how that would not apply to the stock market. Heh.) This would then outlaw those e-bay specials and force game companies to police their own areas to ensure this does not go on.
Either way, if this goes through the courts, some creative lawyers are really going to shake up "real life" along with the "virtual worlds."
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
The only thing I can see seems to be here, at camelotexchange's own site. There doesn't appear to be anything on Mythic's own site, but I wouldn't really expect them to post up anything that wasn't carefully reviewed either.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Consider, for example:
- If I earn 100 gold pieces do I have to pay income tax on them?
- Since my gold pieces reside on Mythic's servers, are they a bank?
- If I make a transaction over $5000 worth of gold pieces is Mythic required to report that transaction to the government?
- How easily could one use this system to launder money?
I can see why Mythic would prefer that game-money stay in the game and acquire no real value outside of it, although a part of me likes the implications of it all.See, jobless teenagers have way more free time than us working teenagers/adults. They can think nothing of spending 12 hours a day working on a character. So when they become uber, they fully deserve it. The biggest problem with online gaming today is immaturity. Who cares if you're level 60 if you're a total dick? I play a lot of Counter-Strike, and in almost every game I go into, there's some 10 year old bragging about his T-1 line and Godly computer. They're usually the same one using OGC wallhack/aimbot and screaming obscene things/playing music into the mic. They're also the same ones who will be saying, "god u sux, u only lv25" when their rich parents bought their character. Truthfully, I'd like to see only the skilled players with high level character, but it isn't going to happen.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
could interpret "does not condone the selling of accounts in any way, we will also not attempt to discourage it." and "will not help to resolve, in any way, problems that arise from the selling or trading of accounts." as "... has developed a system for trading, selling and exchanging the Account Items both in-game and out-of-game.
To any reasonable person, stating that you -won't- have anything to do with an action is about as far from establishing a system to perform that action as one can get.
The -only- possible claim that I can see is that Mythic has said they won't attempt to discourage the sales of accounts...and yet they seem to be doing just that (as well as trying to block sales of items). A poor choice of words in their policy, to say the least.
As an employee of another MMORPG, I can assure you that if the court decides that the company has no right to protect their game from these types of profiteers, I'll be recommending that we put them out of business by selling in-game items for real-world cash at a rate lower than they can afford to compete with. Of course, it won't take but a few weeks before those in-game items will lose all in-game value...but them's the breaks when you hand over control to people who have no reason to care about the game's integrity or longevity.
The funny thing is, that in Camelot the items and money are relatively meaningless. The drop rates in the dungeons are so out of wack that my characters have always had too much money, and items far above their level. On top of that, it is impractical to wield an item that is above your level, as it degrades too quickly.
You're wrong.
The following is from their websites, look it up.
"Mythic Realms, parterned with Electric Entertainment, is the home of many of Mythic's older titles. Here you can find Magestorm Millennium, Dragon's Gate, Darkness Falls: the Crusade, Splatterball Plus, and Independence Day Online"
"You get games like Magestorm Millennium, Dragon's Gate, Darkness Falls - The Crusade, Spellbinder - The Nexus Conflict, Splatterball - Plus and ID4 Online. That's right for $9.95 a month you can play all these games from your one account unlimited and without interruption. Tremendous value on the net and you can only get it here from Mythic Entertainment."
If I were to judge based on the number of games I would call them a giant.
The best analogy I can think of, would be a recreational sports league that adopts a rule that it is illegal to bribe the umpire to change the score.
If you want to bring up baseball, why don't you look at the pinch hitter rule? Doesn't it more closely resemble the actual situation than 'bribing the umpire'?
Hey how long til your sister is 18? Oh and please cut and paste that anti-spam guy's rant in reply
Turn it off! I don't come to Slashdot to have my eyes opened. Please, think about the children!
People are making money off of *mythics* hard work; not their own. Just because a gamer has no life and plays 10 hours a day doesn't mean he has a right to be compensated for it.
Does the "hard work" associated with manufacturing paint brushes entitle that manufacturer to rights in any artwork produced with that brush? Clearly not! Even using a stolen brush doesn't entitle the brush's owner or manufacturer to art you produce with it.
Substitute "Adobe Photoshop" for "brush" and it still holds true: the works of art I produce using the tool belong exclusively to me... And its true even if I'm using an old video card and am constrained by the software to 256 colors!
Isn't a character in an MMORPG a creative work of art? You used a software tool to produce a unique set of characteristics for it, right? You're constrained by the software to a limited set of parameters, but how does that change anything?
Somewhere along the line, the data which comprises that work of art (the character) was stored on a hard disk by a computer acting at your direction. Presto. Storage in a tangible medium, the last ingredient needed to make an independent copyright.
So, if 1) You own the copyright on your character, and 2) your work is not a derivative of their work merely because they supplied the "brush," then how does the "manufacturer" gain any say whatsoever over your sale of the character or any part of it?
Of course, you can also argue the other side of it, that the character is nothing more than a pre-existing icon built into the software by the manufacturer and that the user's manipulation of the icon does not constitute a seperate creative work. For example, if you restore an old dirty painting, the hard work you put in cleaning it, touching it up, and otherwise changing its state does not confer any rights on you whatsoever.
As I said, not so simple. Copyrights matters aren't. Consider this trick question:
I videotape a programmer writing a piece of software. The contents of his programming are stored on my videotape BEFORE he selects "save", moving the program from the computer's ephemeral ram to the tangible hard disk. Who owns the copyright?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Terms of service do not mean that you give up rights. You cant agree to TOS that say that they get the deed to your house. It dosent work that way. There are laws that superscede TOS.
Its a lot easier to go after a small company with limited financial resources than EA with a big pot of lawer types
They have the power to do whatever they want with their game. They can create objects faster and sell them cheaper then the farmers, and reap what they sew.
I have found that the pay-by month games are all that worth it. I've had a lot more fun on pay-once games for my $.
[]
The bans on trading items have nothing to do with whether it affects game balance or not. They have everything to do with the amount of support calls it generates.
Every screwed up sale, every dishonest transaction, every CD lost in the mail, the offended party can't get 'justice' from the other side, so they go and complain to the in game support. Consider all the fraud on E-Bay etc. - it generates a massive support load on the companies running the games.
Now think back to the regular complaints on every MMORPG story on slashdot about how they "rip us off for $x/month". Most of that subscription goes to covering overheads - most of which are support.
Now do you really want them doubling their support load and so having to charge you twice as much each month because people get ripped off on E-Bay?
Finally, consider how actively they actually go after people who do still trade accounts? They don't - other than making an occasional public show of those who most publicly flaunt the rule. That's because all they need is the policy in place so no one will try calling them. Once that's done, they don't really care.
What Mythic is effectively being sued for is refusing to provide free support to people who get screwed using CamelotExchange and can't get justice from the site that was used to screw them. Put in those terms, why should they?
Charge a TAX...
Yup, for every sale of coins, items, characters, etc. Charge a tax....heck, if they got smart they could even charge a death tax. (Imagine how much that'd suck....having to actually pay your own death tax?)
First, I'll talk about why they might be going up against DAoC instead of, say, EQ or UO. Anarchy Online isn't even worth mentioning here. *chuckle*
EQ's official policy on sales of in game paraphanelia for real life money seems to be, "It's bad, and if we catch you, you're gone." Not to flame any software giants, but it's akin to Microsoft's policy of making 'secure' operating systems. IE - if they stumble upon something, great, but if not, they're not going to bother with it.
A quick look at Player Auctions shows quite a few EQ auctions (As well as auctions for other games. This, my friends, is a vast industry with large amounts of capital involved - keep in mind PA isn't the only site coordinating sales.
So why are they going after DAoC? Simple - DAoC is the 'new thing', and the majority of people who *do* have 40+ hours a week to play are switching to it. Those people are the ones who generate the most amount of items/money/characters to sell. Not only that, but as the game is new, items there will sell for higher amounts than those on other games. Items in these games are open-ended - that is, more and more of them enter into the game over time. Logically, if I have spiffy sword +5 on EverQuest, but there's a few thousand of them around, it'll bring in less money than swell sword +3 on DAoC, of which, there's only a few hundred in circulation.
I'm also guessing it's because of the fact that E-Bay went head to head with Verant. Verant said politely, "Please, don't allow auctions for EQ related merchandise." E-Bay laughed - until it noticed the five thousand foot long dragon known as Sony standing behind it. *chuckle* Microsoft's got an array of 800 pound gorillas to beat lawsuits down with, and as for EA, well, they've some muscle themselves. Mythic doesn't really have any phantom legal defenders.
Now, the ideas of legality here. Legally, I don't think they can throw you in jail or anything for doing this. *chuckle* I would hope not, at least, as that'd be pretty.. stupid.. to say the least. However, they can terminate your account if they wish - remember, kids, Terms of Service! Terms of Service! Terms of Service! Click Through Licenses! Shrink Wrap! The stuff everyone throws away and ignores tends to dictate why and how they'll be removing your access to the game if you violate their rules.
I think that it should be acceptable for players to sell goods online. Why? Because - the developers of such games are often driven by greed instead of common sense.
No, this isn't a, "They shouldn't make money" rant. Frankly, they should - the cost of servers, bandwidth, coders, PR, advertisement.. Yeah. They shouldn't exactly be giving out accounts and such for free. But the thing is, they design the games to make players have to keep their accounts as long as possible.
On most MUDs (And the 'era of MUDs' is hardly at an end, for much the same reason the 'era of books' isn't - but that's another story), if you want X equipment, you go slay Y mobile. Nice, simple, and it doesn't require weeks of boredom.
Now take these Massively Multiplayer Online Games (Roleplaying? Hah. That, too, is another story..).. EverQuest, for example. You want X equipment. Ah, but you can't just go slay Y mobile. Often times, Y mobile won't be there, and won't be there for days at a time. And, in the event that Y mobile is there, it'll often have a ridiculously low chance of having X equipment on it when you do take it out.
This in turn makes it so it requires lengthy amounts of playing time (IE, keeping accounts active longer) to get said equipment. Which leads back to powergamers who have 40+ hours a week in which to play. They end up 'owning' the game, they control the 'economy', because they have the time and energy to sit through hours and hours of boredom to get said piece of equipment.
Of course, powergamers are not the bulk of players - average, recreational players are. This leads to some nice 'class struggle', for lack of a better word. Low end recreationists want good equipment, too, but they either can't a) take the time to get it, or b) take the time required to raise the money to buy it.
Which leads us to their solution - buy it, for real life money. They're happy, the seller is happy. About the only people who aren't are the gaming corporations.
I, personally, don't find the idea of purchasing items/etc. for real life money 'strange' or 'done by people with no lives'. Tell me, how much do you spend going to the movies each month? On a case of Bawlz? On other sources of disposable joy/recreation?
In these games, equipment matters - it dictates what you can and can't do, in many cases. While a big part of these games is indeed socialization, socialization always seems to be more fun when you're risking your character's life to take out a large dragon or two. *chuckle*
Indeed, I'd rather take the ($15 minimum per film) money I'd waste seeing crap such as "Battlefield: Earth", "Mission to Mars", et cetera.. And instead, actually have some fun, buy some decent gear, and be able to accompany my fellows on some giant quest to slay a horrible beast.
..Especially when many of the people I play with, I know in real life. Perhaps this is a bad example, but how can people consider people spending money on TSR products (IE, buy this rulebook. Then this. Then these ten.) 'okay', yet consider dropping $20 for a nice sword for EQ/DAoC/etc. 'pathetic'? Both situations don't force you to buy the bells and whistles to enjoy the game - but both options certainly enhance the enjoyment of the game.
What's so sad about it? It's judging the quality of others lives based up how you value yours. I wouldn't do it myself, but in consideration, suppose you were a collector of stamps and the one stamp you needed to complete a series was going for $10, with a book value of $20, or you could wait for another one to become available for less. If you choose to take it for the $10, the difference between $10 and perhaps a lower price would expense as the value of having it now as opposed to later. Same thing they're doing. As long as the server owner keeps the game going, the characters and eqz have value.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Remember, if you bring common sense to Slashdot, the terrorists have won.
... (or at least the perceived scumbags) before they go after the good guys.
That's why they go after kiddie-pornographers first when what they really want to do is censor opinions they don't like.
That's why they go after terrorists first when they want to disarm the general population.
That's why they go after self-confessed promotors of the violation of copyrights first when they want to shut down competitive outlets for content.
And so on.
Getting a conviction of someone perceived as a "bad guy" - and the "badder" the better - is easier than going after someone who isn't harming others. Courts and juries, in their desire to make the "bad guy" stop dong "bad stuff", may overlook the fact that the prosecutor or plantif is using the wrong legal tool to go after him, or may overlook how the precedent could be appllied to a non-"bad guy". Once the precedent is established, it becomes a tool to go after people who are NOT "bad guys".
Additionally "Bad guys" also often have shallow pockets, leaving them unable to mount as effective a defense as the more affluent citizens. And that puts them in a similar situation to the "go after the little guy first" model in the previous post.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If this were a single-player game, would selling be an issue? If I buy a copy of and spend months getting high-level characters and finding cool equipment, no EULA can prevent me from selling the game to someone, even if I charge a much higher price than shelf-value. If there were a way to export individual items from one copy of the game to another, again no EULA could prevent me from doing so.
As an analogy, if I buy a book, highlight all the important passages, and auction it for more than I originally paid, no publisher has the right to stop me. If I could manage to auction off just the location of passages I highlighed to someone who already owns a copy of the book, it's absurd to think the publisher could have an EULA that prevents this.
So why should the fact that the game is multiplayer make it any different?
If my sister joins the game and I give her a lot of powerful equipment, it's ok, but if I sell that equipment to a stranger, it's wrong. What's the logic here? Nepotism is ok, but capitalism isn't?
If a friend does a favor for me in return for a powerful sword, it's ok. If the friend gives me cash, it's wrong? What's wrong with this picture?
If a mechanic friend offers me cash for a powerful item, but I'm forced to decline because that's against the rules, what if I strike a deal that in return for a magic wand he fix my car for free the next time it breaks down. Basically, what's happened here is that the mechanic has paid me with credit. No money has been transferred, but presumably there is no legal issue here.
Something is seriously wrong here. The items in the game clearly have value. They're going to be traded as valued goods one way or another. IANAL, but it seems like some sort of discrimination to prevent some forms of trade (online auctions) but not others (personal favors).
I can put you out of your misery you know.
Hey, was that an emu? Hmmm.
Pretty simple. If you don't like Mythic's rules, then either don't buy the game or take your chances and break the rules (but don't sue them!). It's their game, it's their rules, and they have the right to cancel cheater's accounts, just like an NFL player would be thrown out of the NFL for cheating.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Mythic just needs to exert the power they control over supply and demand.
-- Dan
Allow the trading of only EARNED (by gameplay) items, and
TAKE A COMMISSION ON THE SALES!
This would prevent the inflation of the "currency" of game items, provide an "aftermarket" for people who tire of the game to recover some of their costs, limit the impact on players who don't want to fork out for assistance or extra equipment, and provide an additional income stream to the company (which could be partially converted to reduced cost to ordinary players).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I dont play online rpgs.. so maybe I'm missing something, but how can you sue a company for getting upset when you violate their TOS agreements.. If you agree that you can't sell in game items for physical cash, and then go around selling your in game items for physical cash, you are violating the terms of service agreement you signed to play the game. I fail to see how this online auction house thinks they can win this case.
From their own website:
Who is Mythic Entertainment, and what games have they done?
Mythic Entertainment is the most prolific and one of the most successful online gaming developers in the industry today. With eleven online games to its credit, Mythic has been a major part of all of its distribution and publishing partners pay-for-play games including AOL, the Centropolis Gaming Center, Gamestorm and ENGAGE. Our titles include some of the most popular online-only games of all time including Spellbinder: The Nexus Conflict, Aliens Online, Starship Troopers: Battlespace, Silent Death Online, Rolemaster: Magestorm, Darkness Falls, Darkness Falls: The Crusade, Splatterball, Godzilla Online, and Dragon's Gate.
Mythic has more experience in developing and running multi-user online role-playing games than most of its competitors. Dragon's Gate is one of the longest running online RPGs out there, having just hit its 12th anniversary and is still going strong on the Centropolis Gaming Center. Mythic also has the successful Darkness Falls RPGs, which is available on the Centropolis Gaming Center.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The game manufacturers will see this and decide to monopolize this market themselves. You don't want to work up to level 10 then send us $20 and boom your level 10. Don't have enough cash in the game well for every $1US you give us we'll give you 100 gold. They can beat any auctioneer's price because it doesn't cost them anything. Then once this happens it will ruin every game and they won't be fun at all to play.
If your not cheating your not trying. If your not trying your not winning and if your not winning why play?
I can understand the temptation. Pretty much every progressive stats-dominated (IOW, MUD-style) MOG I've seen suffers from bunny-killer syndrome: when you start, you're pathetically weak, and you have to spend ages killing what most players consider pathetically weak creatures, the game-equivalent of (if not literally) rabbits and squirrels. Not very heroic.
It doesn't matter what they call the bunnies, or how fearsome they make them look, you still have this situation where 99% of the creatures could squash you like a bug.
This may work fine for a single-player RPG, because you're the center of attention all the way along, and not exposed to the stronger creatures, but in a MOG, your pathetic weakness is rubbed in your face by the relative strength of other players. This is escapism?
It seems that these games would be a lot more fun without the grind of the stats-building process, but that's also a lot harder and more expensive to make (they won't be leveling, they won't be farming items, what will they be doing? there can't be enough earth-shaking heroic quests to go around...). Also, the stats-building process does have an addictive quality that keeps people playing even when they're not having fun (camping, anyone?). It makes economic sense.
It's bad for the game on the whole, but it makes sense for the people buying. Building up your character from a puny noob just isn't the fun part.
So if nothing was created, I can't have sold anything either, so the EULA has no meaning, right? No?
When it comes right down to it, everything done on a computer comes down to flipping a few bits. The assumption that they own the rights to the code when they've used a third party tool (compiler) to make it, but that the characters someone have made using a third party tool (the game) holds no IP rights of their own lacks foundation at best. Now, I don't know what possibilities the game holds, but if I can make f.ex. a guild sign, that graphic is copyrighted to ME, no matter if I created it in Photoshop or in Mystic's editor or drew it on a paper, unless the EULA explicitly says otherwise.
It's not your property, it's not your IP, but not for any of the reasons you mention. It lacks uniqueness. A compiler won't accept reserved words (names it doesn't allow) or handle invalid syntax (characters the program can't interpret), that's the programs right to define what is valid input, however there's no transfer of rights from the one who inputs it to the program it was inputted into.
In the end it comes down to if an EULA can limit what you can trade things against. Personally I think DAoC could keep their noses out of if I trade gold for in-game items, USD or a blowjob.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
look, if i go out and buy Cakewalk Pro Audio, make a #1 hit song, should the Cakewalk people say that I cannot have rights to my song and not sell it?
if i purchase Adobe Photoshop, can i not sell any images i create with it? or are the images only there for me to enjoy personally.... um.
i don't exactly like the fact that some rich newb can purchase a character more powerful than the one i've built with hard work.
BUT, i think online items, real estate, etc will be a very real future of virtual, real-time applications.
if worse comes to worse, i suppose MMORPG companies can always insist that all auctions of game items must be done on their own game auction web site. that way, they could make a small percentage of the sales.
"you can read BSI's press release..."
Perhaps I've wasted too much time here and at E2, but am I the only person that saw 'BSI', and though:
"What does Block Stackers Intergalactic have to do with this?
Followed by: "Hell, since when have they released press releases?!"
I guess I'm odd...
The point is that if it is possible to buy an advantage, it makes the game suck. If people are farming for money, this makes the game suck more, as they interfere with the people playing for fun.
So taking a cut would not only hurt their image, but legitimize and encourage farming, hurting their gameplay, either costing them more in development and support to compensate, or costing them paying accounts.
I don't think it's like that at all. It isn't a spectator sport. No one is betting on the outcome. Nothing is produced. Time spent in DAOC or EQ is utterly unproductive, besides the intangible "fun factor."
It may infringe the integrity of the game, but the game is a self-contained system that exists for no other purpose than to occupy your time -- so how wrong can it go?
... if your trying to get this done (Legalized selling of in game currency/items/accounts) camelot is probally the best ground available to do it in really. Sony is to big, to much money to throw against you... Electronic Arts, Funcom, and Microsoft don't close down auctions (at least as far as i've seen). That leaves mythic basically. Personally i'd like to see mythic lose, simply because its a nonexistant item that took your time to 'create'. If people wanna buy and sell someone elses time... let em. Hell get in on the act and make more money for your company!
Shadus
I see the largest problem as letting an in game items hold real world value. If they support this or the court orders them to let it happen they open themselves up for all kinds of legal problems. What is something happens to their servers and some characters get wiped out. Can they then be sued for the value of the characters? Or what if some type of dupe bug finds it way in? Then you have a lot of people who might have paid quite a bit for some items that are now worth nothing..you can bet they will have something to say to Mythic. You even leave room for a banned player(perhaps for ksing or maybe for just being a jerk) open to try to sue for the price of his character if he feels he should not have been banned. The current games on the market were not set up to deal with issues like this and I think its really up to them for how they want to deal with them. After all this is not a Dev Tool, or even an office tool used to create things. Its a game, with a large random number gen that pops things out if you spend enough time playing it.
All this talk about company XXXX blocking auctions of in game [MONEY | CHARACTERS | EQUIPMENT] .. what about Karma, eh? I seem to recall slashdot [FIDDLING WITH | DELETING] the accounts of those who try to sell their high-karma accounts on eBay.
too much pepsi today.
One, this is totally off topic, but I cannot resist the urge to "comment" on DAOC love. I Played DAOC after being away from AC for about 4 months, bought it the second batch out.
Items in AC are like EQ, but most of their positive attributes are based on your skill, hence, level.
As to the second part, I like in-game economies like this. It is a very definitive MMORPG feature that I would never live without. It can be restricted, but I would quit if they took it away. It is too boring trading things that you just macro-basket-weave anyway.
In AC, you drop a few of you most valuable items(to be re-looted), and your skills are temporarily lowered until you make more xp. I quit DAOC because I just couldn't level past 11. I didn't put as much patience into it as I could have, but at least it made me apprecite what AC did right from the beginning. So much so, that I went back to AC.
AC doesn't have horses. They have portals to help get around. There may be "zones" in AC technically, but you will never know the diverence. It is an evercontinuous landscape, and the only cut is when entering dungeons. Also, there are like hundreds of places for you to explore. Many are a waste of to the bottom line, xp, items, and money, but they are really fun to explore.
Just decided to throw another game into the mix. It is too often ignored, but a really fun game most of the time.
Bye!
If you walk into EBX you can purchase (with cash) monthly credits for play.
"Hell, not even your CHARACTER NAME is your property, because essentially, all you did was enter a variable in a program, but that variable was planned for"
By that logic, your email is now officaly the property of Slashdot. They planned the varriable for your Email to be there, and now have rights to the address.
Hey Slashdot! Sell all our Email addresses to a Spamming Market organization!! =) J/K
Your logic is flawed. First of all, your not paying for the code. You paid for that when you bought the CD. All the code you ever need is right there. Your monthly account bill is paying for access to the server.
Second, Mythic does not plan on people having X amount of money or X items. No algorithm in the world will anticipate that (except Unified Field Theory).What's to say that the person I paid for the money from is not just a friend who's giving it to me to help me start out, or a fellow player being incredibly generous?
"Everything you type was anticipated down to the exact sequence (which is why you can't type in names they don't allow, or characters the program can't interpret)."
Really?? Then what the hell is Mythic doing making games?? They've predicted teh exact sequence for everything I'll type??!! Why don't they make a progam to predict the stock market and make themselves some real money??!! Wonder what level I'll be in 3 weeks.. =)
But seriously, they can only compare what you input to what they already have storred in the database, they can't predict. People who put in names of characters that are already there are compared. Odd ones that are put in (Names like RoXXoR for characters on an RP only server) will get allowed at first, but eventually changed when some one reports it.. and that's the only reason..
Just trying to enlighten the crowd....
"Every computer Crashes, cause Every OS Sucks.. Everything since Apple/DOS..Just a bunch of crap"
I think this business of selling items in the
real world is A Bad Thing.
The problem is that the game's creators are
trying to produce a credible virtual world. If
people start doing things for incomprehensible
reasons (like giving all their gold to a
complete stranger), then that credibility goes
out the window.
Imagine if this kind of thing happened in the
real world! It would destroy our ability to
understand people's motives - it would be a
hard place to exist in.
Some auctions go through, others are banned.
To the average observer, you never see the banned auctions, so it seems like there is a market.
You may spend your hundreds of hours playing the game with the sole intent of making money to pay for college(like my one friend), only to find out Mythic bans your auctions on ebay.
The auctions that go through? Well I have heard some bad things that Mythic is actually selling the stuff themselves and banning other people.
Think: Create an online object server side and get 1,000$.... Do this about 50 times a month... and thats a salary that took less than a half hour to aquire.
Definately stuff worth suing over. At least to let the public know if Mythic is doing this shady buisness practice.
God spoke to me
Was join a good guild. While they won't hold your hand, they will help you out. I've recieved a fair amoutn of finincal and item support form my guild, and they continue to give it. I also give support to lower level characters, and make trips to rez epople and so on. DAoC really seems to be built on the idea of cooperation.
One of the reasons Mythic is being sued is its double standard on ebay, allow some auctions to go through others not...
God spoke to me
Hmmm - so if you owned a company that runs a rival MMPORG, could you destabilise the economy in this game by purchasing large quantities of 'stuff' from the game (to the point of impoverishing all the players in the game) - and then 'dumping' it all back into the game in a large lump to further destabilise the internal economy?
...items is it favors the uubers, and is bad for gameplay.
Face it, the majority of people with cash do not play EQ or DAOC 24/7... they would if they could, but they have jobs and cannot. On the other hand, they will tend to take longer to "finish" the game, and may offer a higher longevity of play (at $xx per month).
So, you've got a choice. Focus (what's sold as) a long-term game on 4-month-life players, or focus on people who may play it for up to a year or more... at $xx per month, both cases. Not exactly tough guess which one you'd pick.
The problem with selling items is it promotes farming. We all remember "EverCamp"... people waiting IN LINE to go kill a freakin mob. I've seen entire zones camped, by people who stayed there for weeks on end - long after the kills or item drops did anything for them, they simply exploited their high status to get items they'd sell for cash. And in doing so, they made it impossible for legitimate players to get and use.
Farmers certainly piss off the casual, 4-hour-per-night player. Especially if there's a "waiting list" over 8 hours long, and big time if the farming causes an item unavailability. Real-cash sales of in-game items, if the game does not have anti-farm tactics, alienates game customers like crazy... because of the farming it causes, no other reason.
I don't think the game vendor has legal right to prohibit such sales, however... such item transactions within the scope of a "game service" would simply be considered value-add. Their remedies are strictly limited to coding.
Character sales, otoh, can be prohibited. The game is marketed as a service, and services usually cannot be transferred. After all, go sell your catv service to your neighbor some day. Or, your Triple-A auto-service. Or the extended warranty on your car. You can't sell your health insurance coverage, and you can't arbitrarily sell your mortgage. It just doesn't work... the agreements (contracts) are with you, period. Most times, the ability to sell a vendor's service to someone else generally requires a franchise agreement. And, no vendor is required to GIVE such agreements to anyone... nor should they be. You can't just open up a store and start re-selling Verizon Wireless, you can't decide to re-selling new (or used) AOL accounts... you need to get their permission. After all, they are the one entering into contract with the customer, and God Help Us All of you think you have implicit proxy authority just because you know them.
You can, by law, sell or transfer the game license and media that was purchased in the store. You cannot arbitrarily sell or transfer the account used to play it, nor should you be able to.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Selling these items has been going on for years. A while ago people created duping programs to duplicate and sell hundreds of replicas of the same item. Some of these replicas sold for upwards of 600$. Most of these sellers spend 15-17hrs a day playing these games. If they were instead working, they would be making much much much more money. The fine print in the liscence agreement is a little hazy on the issue, it leaves these people a loophole to sell these items.
I think it's just amazing that people will pay over 1000 dollars for a couple of bytes on a computer in California.
I agree with your paint brush and Photoshop analogies in principle. However, the difference here is you are running Photoshop at Adobe's office, or using the paint brush in that company's warehouse.
Even if you see a representation on the screen, the actual character data and items are not stored on your computer, but on Mythic's servers.
I don't see how this is all that controversial. The people in question are using Mythic's servers for the data in question. They aren't clicking the menu option "New Item" to spawn the Zot-slaying Broadsword +12 (as opposed to clicking "New Image" in Photoshop). Mythic has a right to disallow the improper uses of its data.
Please don't think about what might happen if "farming" is actually a job. Who hired them, and who pays taxes???
And the answer to your trick question: You both own the copyright. Of two different things. He owns the copyright on the program, you own the copyright of the video (and NOT the program).
Greg
Why would a company try to ban the right to sell your possessions in an online game in the real world?
It's very similar to the issue where Ebay stopped allowing people to auction off their Everquest characters.
They should not have even considered stopping this; if someone wants to pay for it, let it rain.
"Truth suffers from too much analysis." -Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
Trade the whole damn thing. You remove your credit card and address information from the account info screens and stop automatic monthly billing. Put your account on ebay (including a possible 5 characters on each server) and sell the whole package. Asheron's Call already is setup this way and it doesn't stop anyone from selling anything. There does seem to be one beneficial part to the selling and tradeing of accounts. You end up with people that haven't earned thier levels or equiptment and don't have a clue how to effectivly use them. They get bored quickly and leave the game in many cases which in turn reduces the number of high level characters.
it's just a game for fucks sake, get over it. Anyway, what's wrong with Americans wanting to sue everyone?!? Thanks you to guys we've got the same thing happening in Australia and it's ruining companies because they can't afford the premiums anymore.
When does the commission on providing for the safe sale of in game items and characters become more valuable to the company than the monthly income of the people that leave or won't play due to this "feature."
You make a good point, but leasing space still entitles the creator to their creation. Imagine Adobe hosting everything related to photoshop on a cluster of their computers, in which you share the processing resources on this larger computer with the other tenants. You would still own your creation even though you stored it on Adobe's computer. Farming is not a job, its a business, they provide a service that is valuable, because someone else will exchange money for their services. Just like any other company they would be responsible for their own taxes, unless someone starts Character Farming, Inc., and hires them to create items, chararters, and other game goods for sale.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
since you don't have any items. sure, you can sell "your item," but they can just as easily say you broke the rules and delete the record of your ownership of that item from their databases. who are you to tell them what to do with their own databases?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's also acceptable / legal for them to delete your account if you break their rules. Remember, they're not taking away any actual property from you, merely terminating your service because you did not agree by the terms of service.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Mythic wants to keep "cheaters" out of Camelot, because they feel newcomers who don't have a lot of cash will be miffed at not having the real goodies, and won't subscribe to their service. They don't want the game to turn into something like "Magic: The Gathering".
On the other hand, look at how successful Magic cards have been. Maybe they ought to rethink their strategy.
TheSHAD0W's law of Magic Card games: The winner will be the person with the most disposable income.
Some friends and I were discussing this the other day. We were discussing how if gold/etc rewards from killing things scales up with levels, it is trivial for a high-level character to supply low levels with gear. Therefore, what should happen, is items should have wear and tear, and the wear and tear should be too expensive to repair on a too-powerful-for-your-level item. This is one key to a functional economy, since the major problem with a MMORPH economy is there is eventually infinite supply, because nothing ever is destroyed. IE, give us entropy, or give us a joke economy.
That said, people seem to have forgotten the "RP" in MMORPG. I'm waiting for a company to not only make a game like Everquest or DaoC, but enforce roleplaying so that idiots running around going, "d00d, the sword will spawn soon, let's get it!" are simply slain irrevocably and directed to read some "don't be an idiot" FAQ. Of course, this is the good thing about Neverwinter Nights -- it will form communities that do just this, and without the profit motive that Verant/et al have to permit any player, regardless of their crappy roleplaying. The sale of items, and more so characters, completely undermines the RP in a MMORPG. You should, over time, get to know what a person behaves like -- are they aggressive, generous, noble, etc? Of course, if they actually made a balanced game, then they could take an important step: permitting unwanted PKs to occur anyhow. A game isn't "competitive" if players can't compete against each other in a meaningful way. Racing to a certain level is not meaningful, because it indicates nothing more than time available to play. Best equipment? normally the same. But if players can take things from other players by force, killing them against their will -- that's different. Now its a fight to survive, a hunt to kill people off, etc, and you wrap that up with excellent roleplay, and its an unbeatable blast. Several muds do it well -- for example, Avendar or Carrion Fields. This REQUIRES some sort of active enforcement. Not a lot, but some, because it is important to not let the game be ruined by non-roleplayed mass murder, especially aganist the helpless/uninvolved, just for kicks (this was a serious issue with UO).
Mythic has some games on AOL as well...Dragon Realms and Magestorm, etc. Also, they provide some of the stuff at centropolis.com. I was a GM for one of their games, and I can attest to the fact that its a pretty amateur operation. They have very little money, and their products are usually relatively half-assed. This one may be different, but I suspect they will be an equal in a lawsuit, and are by no means the "gaming giant" that they're made out to be.
You have no clue. EQ is soooooo much more item oriented than DaoC, it's not even funny. I am so glad I left all those goddamned loot whores behind when I left EQ for DaoC.
Time spent in DAOC or EQ is utterly unproductive, besides the intangible "fun factor."
A productive activity being what? Productivity is relative. What's the fixation on being able to measure tangible results from an activity?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
What is AC??
The same is true for every recreational sports league I've participated in. They exist for the entertainment of the participants, most of whom would consider such behaviour akin to, or literally cheating.
I'm NOT fixated on that, but everyone in this thread keeps talking about people being "owed for their work in the game," and I am trying to illustrate how that is not a good way to look at it.
...you didn't bother providing any evidence of your claim. So naturally this is hearsay, and not what I would consider insightful.
Vermifax
Logout
Does the "hard work" associated with manufacturing paint brushes entitle that manufacturer to rights in any artwork produced with that brush? Clearly not! Even using a stolen brush doesn't entitle the brush's owner or manufacturer to art you produce with it.
No creative or artistic efforts go in to making a paintbrush, unlike a game.
Substitute "Adobe Photoshop" for "brush" and it still holds true: the works of art I produce using the tool belong exclusively to me... And its true even if I'm using an old video card and am constrained by the software to 256 colors!
The difference is that photoshop is sold for the express purpose of using it to create content to do what you want with. Dark Age of Camelot and other MMORPGs aren't sold with that as the purpose of the software.
Isn't a character in an MMORPG a creative work of art? You used a software tool to produce a unique set of characteristics for it, right? You're constrained by the software to a limited set of parameters, but how does that change anything?
A game is not a tool; a game is a creative work of art in and of itself.
You are not *creating* anything. You are moving around and manipulating *their* creation.
If you take someone's code, cut and paste it around, perhaps change a function name here or there, without changing the core functionality, or adding anything new, does this code become *your* creation? No, you have altered it, but it is still someone elses code.
Just as Microsoft is Turbins publisher for Ashrons Call, EA for UO and Sony for Verant's EverQuest (though i belive Sony owns verant).
the strait dope can be found at site mythics site
The only MMORPG game i've heard of that didn't have a large company as a publisher was Anarchy Online, which unfortantly seems to be failing badly.
-Jon
this is my sig.
How is purchasing a character any different from outright cheating?
Cheating is using a shortcut to achieve something without proper due course in the game.
If you purchase someone elses account, or items from the game, you achieve them without proper due course.
I can understand the reason why Mythic wouldn't allow it; it allows someone to 'cheat' their way up to high levels, without actually playing the game as it was intended.
Edward Castronova, of the economics department at California State University at Fullerton, studied thousands of EverQuest transactions performed through eBay to determine the real-world economic value generated by the inhabitants of Norrath.
Castronova discovered that Norrath's gross national product per-capita is $2,266. If Norrath was a country, it would be the 77th most wealthy in the world, just behind Russia.
Castronova also found that Norrath's virtual currency is more valuable in the US than the Yen. And his research shows that EverQuest players earn an average of $3.42 for every hour spent playing the game.
...
Launched in 1999 by Sony, EverQuest is one of the largest role playing games on the internet. According to Sony, the game has 400,000 users in total, with up to 60,000 inhabiting the game at any one time.
AC = Asheron's Call - run by Turbine and Microsoft.
IANAL, but it looks to me like Mythic is interfering in interstate commerce. I think the law will not favor their stance. Try to keep an open mind in these legal wrangles as laws and precedents which cover many other things may be relevent, or like a recent article, may get tossed out of court because the court doesn't hold jurisdiction.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The worst aspect I've ever seen as a result of people buying established characters is that they have missed out on a lot of finer points of experience from game play. In short you end up with stupid high level characters, which on a whole can drag the game down, but only if more experienced players make the error of being led by these sorts.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What if I sell a piece of paper, with my signature on it, for $XX USD. And then just give the buyer 5000 gold because he's a nice guy. Is that legal? Quasi-legal?
It's a game. The game has rules and you have to play by them, you can't sell of your high score.
It would be like manchester united taking legal action because the rules of football don't allow them to auction of goals they scored to another team for real money. Nobody prevents them from trying, but the football authorities would just ignore any change in the match scores.
And to anyone who things this is a good idea, I've got a good space invaders high score for sale!
Sig is taking a break!
I think it's a pretty interesting idea to try to go after Mythic than Sony or M$. Well at first anyway. From a legal tactics POV it would be smart to get the ruling against a small(er) company, then use the precendent as a weapon against a larger company and their expensive evil bloodsucking lawyers.
MMMmm.. Wand of Precedence +7
5 dollah!
-=o
For your very first character in DAOC, if you are too stupid NOT to join a guild (who will probably take any non-retard player with open arms), yep money can be an issue. Such players are better off NOT playing DAOC.
There is a little known 'fact' on the money side; Once you hit about L30 in DAOC, the money just starts pouring in. And I mean pouring. Ask *any* level 40+ character, and he probably has 1000+ gold on him. Since the two best material types for crafting are not yet in the game, and siege equipment for RvR combat can suck your money only so much, they have ton of cash with little to spend it on. I've seen players with 5000+ gold on them. One reason for the money sales is the fact that some of these players see it as an easy way to make quick buck off clueless newbies. Blocking these sales which are basically SCAMS that work only on those too early in their DAOC career to know the fact that money becomes almost meaningless high up.
For normal, compassionate players, it's quite common to give out gold to a lowbies as a startup money. If you are given 100 gold at the start, when killing one mob nets you maybe 20 copper pieces (0.0020 gold), that will last for a LONG time. The equipment system makes using too good items pointless (they just decay faster and give no noticeable benefit over your own level stuff), so that 100 gold will buy you everything you need up to about level 25-30, at which point you become self-sufficient with no money problems.
Only persons who would ever buy money with real cash in DAOC are clueless n00bs who have their first character at about level 15-25 (the toughest range moneywise) and have no clue to join a guild and ask for assistance. Since mid-level equipment is downright useless to high levellers, you probably would be showered in gear suitable for you and get plenty of money to keep going if you just joined a guild and explained your situation (low midbie, tight on gold)
Item drops, while requiring some work, are nothing compared to EQ. So while in EQ there *was* a market for the uber gear, again in DAOC anyone who has played the game at all knows any item that is suitable to you (not too high level to cause it to decay very fast) can be obtained by building a group of 5-8 people, going to the place where it drops, and whacking away for a while. High level armor sets do take a bit of time to collect for a whole party, but at the same time, the experience is good and gameplay stays challenging. No reason to buy items in DAOC with real cash either - again, unless you are stupid n00b with EQ mindset.
I recall something about a fool and their money and separating them. Selling DAOC gold and items falls into this category, and it's in Mythic's best interest to block such sales to minimize the number of new players who feel scammed for paying real money for some ingame gold as soon as they start hitting mid-30's in the game.
A document you type in word is just a 'variable' So is the text I'm writing now (both in IE and slashdot). What's your point? When you write something, you own the copyright it doesn't matter how small it is, it doesn't matter where you wrote it or in what software program.
It would do you a lot of good to learn the difference between 'intellectual property' and real property 'Intellectual property' doesn't even appear in the law, unlike 'real' property. IP is just a buzzword thought up by pro-IP groups to give themselves more moral authority.
In reality, there are four kinds of IP. Patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. None of this has anything to do with trademarks, patents or trade secrets. It's all about copyright.
But, the fact that they have copyright over something doesn't give them any extralegal control over you. I buy your book, I can sell it to whomever I want for however I want. The book is your 'Intellectual property' but it's my actual property. Copyright doesn't give you control over what's done with something, copyright gives you the right to copy. No one is copying these objects. They are just selling them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Google only gets a non-exclusive license. That would be like the ISP or pencle owner demanding that they get a (single) free copy of the book.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Read the CamelotExchange website, especially their plea for donations to help their cause. Playing the victim in some sort of moral crusade to justify a business built around people who cheat at a role-playing game. Absolutely pathetic, yet the worst part is that enough people find it so strangely plausible as to actually merit serious debate. Will comic book readers file a class action suit if Batman beats up Spiderman? Well gosh, some people are thinking right now as they read this, maybe that's not such a silly idea. Yes, it is. It is as lame and fucking ridiculous an idea as CamelotExchange's suit.
It is definitely interesting that a real-world economy can spring up to trade virtual nothings, and in a way it just adds another dimension to the game, a kind of extraplanar realm where game characters can go get nifty stuff, as if from the gods. But role-playing games are controlled environments, at least to the extent of preserving an important principle called game balance.
Game balance can be ruined by overzealous dungeon masters who throw arch-demons at low-level characters, or hand out vorpal nuclear swords of god-slaying like candy. Game balance can be ruined by online players who hack their game cients so they can't be killed. Offline trading of virtual goods is just a social engineering hack. If the people who run an online game don't like it, well it's their game and their rules isn't it? It's their game, and more importantly, it's A game.
A deal's a deal, and if their TOS says that your character/swag/whatever aren't transferrable, then you're honor-bound to play the game by the rules.
Buying another player's character is cheating, as far as I'm concerned.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I recently attempted to sell one of my old UINs for ICQ on eBay, as it is very low and quite desirable; I received an email telling me that AOL had requested my auction be pulled as they were the "verified rights owner" of this number
Seems that AOL have the monopoly on numbers now...
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Look. It occurs to me that this is not about intellectual property or rights or any of that shit.
What this is about, in my opinion, is that the game makers want people to earn objects BY PLAYING THE GAME, and not to cheat by buying them off other people.
That's what it is. Cheating. I just don't see the point in spending money on a game and then cheating on it, the only person you're really cheating is yourself!
Basically, what the game makers are saying is that if you want a 10th level sword of arsekicking, you need to play the game and obtain it yourself - not just take a shortcut and buy it off someone else.
That's the whole point of having the game in the first place!
"Information wants to be paid"
They already made a hash of my local railway system :-(
ITS A VIDEO GAME.
Perhaps redundant but a good point none the less. If you spend 80$ on the game, then another $$$ on playing it you're getting cheated.
Games are supposed to be fun for the end user and business for the developer. Not business for both.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's not cheating if the league rules allow it. And that's what I am suggesting: the game provider build support in, or even sell in-game items or abilities for cold hard cash.
If it's the system, it isn't cheating. It's the way the game is played.
I don't play online MMORPG. The reason is that I would be paying to knowingly suck time away, and since I've had previous bouts with game addiction, I'd be setting myself up with motivation to get the most out of my $10/mo expense.
If on the other hand, the game company had a purely and explicitly laisser faire policy on item sales, as an outsider, It would greatly enhance my odds of paying and participating.
Its less of a time waste if there is an opportunity to cash out. Odds are I would probably never bother selling, but the assured choice makes all the difference in my decision to play.
Yes, TOS's banning the sale of items are quite common. The problem is that the EQ case showed that there's a way around it: sell the service of handing the item over (not "$25 for this sword" but "$25 for my time in logging in, meeting your character, and transferring a sword to them"), or the service of obtaining the item for them ("$25 for my time in logging in, adding you to my party, going to kill the R0X0R DRA60N where I deal 99% of the damage, then letting you have first pick from the loot window").
I think the copyright argument is rather vague, too, especially for selling characters. It would be entirely reasonable to argue that the series of actions that a player chooses for their character to take in the game is the PLAYER's copyright, which is tangibly fixed in the character's logs and present statistics. Also, it is not clear if the sale of the server owner's intellectual property is an issue because after all the server owner does not lose it as a result of the sale (it is still on the server)
But, at the end of the day, it really just shows that 90% of MMORPGs stink at the moment. Playing them is not fun; the only fun is in the reward you get for enduring the boring stuff for a while. Allegiance and Shattered Galaxy were quite playable, but every other MMORPG I've played has sucked rocks.
Well, they probably can't (and have no right to) stop someone paying someone else for a name and password. However, I don't see any reason they have to respect that name/password and let them continue to be used on their system, if they're not used under the conditions for which they were created (e.g., by the same user). That means the buyer bought worthless information, but that's not Mythic's problem.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...the game is absolutely NO fun whatsoever below level 40-ish. The only reason to keep grinding (and is a tedious grind) is the future promise of this bitch of a chore (labelled as a game) becoming actually fun to play some day.
And if I can plunk down $cost_of_game + $cost_of_bypassing_grind, and while ($cost_of_bypassing_grind $too_much_money) then I will simply exec whip_out_mastercard.
Here's the deal: Sony / Verant (and other MMORPG houses)would be well served to attract CASUAL gamers that play for 2 hours a month for those 7 months versus a grind slave that plays 6 hours every day for those 7 months. Thing is - I'll never reach the enjoyable stage unless I'm comitted to the grind, and this takes up more of the MMORPG house's resources than a casual player.
Also - maybe more on-topic - I know that Mythic has the IP rights to the game items and characters, but an analogy I can think of is this: Baseball cards. I mean, Topps or Upper Deck or whathaveyou own the copyright on those cards, but if I want to sell, say, a Topps Nolan Ryan rookie card for $1000 (or whatever), no one will even question it. Or even more applicable - Magic the Gathering - I can take the easy way and just BUY all the powerful cards rather than suffering through the grind of opening individual packs.
I don't see why these MMORPG houses feel that they have to feed the shark^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers, but instead why don't they just disincentivize item and character farming? There are others in this sub-thread that have proposed EXCELLENT technical, NON-lawyerly solutions, what about it?
I quit EQ after only getting to lvl 14ish because of the damn grind.
Pish tosh? What sort of comment is that? I'd gladly pay if I could be even somewhat certain that I'd not get ripped off / banned, and I'm sure the original poster and others feel the same.
And here's a bigger point you hardcores keep missing: you cost the MMORPG houses more than the causal players do. Figure out how to keep CASUAL players hooked, and you've won the game.
As it stands, I play Diablo 2. As incredibly shallow and short as the game is, it's VASTLY better suited to a casual gamer. If I have an hour to play, I can make siginficant progress. In EQ / DAoC, an hour is the bare minimum to get food, walk to and from the monsters, and camp, not to mention the time spent actually killing the things.
So - given that, EQ gets my money for NO months, and that's where Sony / Verant lose. And here's a bit of reality for you: there's orders of magnitude more of me than there are of you. Figure out how to get us, and you're a rich individual.
A game is not a tool; a game is a creative work of art in and of itself. You are not *creating* anything. You are moving around and manipulating *their* creation.
If I take a book and remove every instance of the word "the," I've violated the author's copyright. I've also created an new derivative work entitled to its own independent copyright. In fact, if the author of the original book siezed it and published it, he'd be violating my copyright! That's the law.
So, your answer is really the question: Does the process of building a character add sufficient creative work to be entitled to seperate copyright? I havn't played DAoC, but if the definition of a character is as flexible as one in UOL then the odds are the character building process adds sufficient creativity that its no longer a mere icon but rather a whole new creative work inside the scope of the larger one.
Then you're faced with: Is it a derivative work or a whole new work? If you define the work as the definitions as stored on the hard disk rather than the character as displayed on the screen then it contains almost entirely information created by the player. Thus, its not a derivative work.
No creative or artistic efforts go in to making a paintbrush, unlike a game. A game is not a tool; a game is a creative work of art in and of itself.
So if I use a barbie doll with hair to paint a painting instead of using a brush, the painting belongs to Mattel? Of course not! The nature of the tool and the intent of its maker really don't matter. The only thing that matters is how I use what I allege to be "only a tool" in the production of my copyrightable property.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Nelsonal hit the main points about the where not mattering, only the who. I want to follow up on the trick question:
You both own the copyright. Of two different things. He owns the copyright on the program, you own the copyright of the video (and NOT the program).
Close. If I type in the program from watching the video tape, I'll end up with an essentially exact copy of the programmer's program, but it'll be a derivative of my work rather than a derivative of his, which I own in its entirety.
Here's another trick question: Suppose I taped him illegally. Broke into his house and installed a hidden camera. In fact, suppose I didn't tape him at all, suppose I installed a keystroke logger on his computer that forwarded his keystrokes to mine and I saved them to my hard disk before he saved them to his. What are his rights with respect to the data I saved on my hard disk?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
what the fuck do you mean define real land mass? dirt? sendiment? LAND? prepare to argue what at length you halfwit?
Fallacy: failure to elucidate. You introduced the terms "real world" and "land mass"; now you have to unambiguously define them. Other than the fact that things in the EQ or DAoC world are modeled in terms of things in the RL world, how is EQ or DAoC any less real than RL?
the definition of what the REAL WORLD is? stop watching the matrix so much
Fallacy: ad hominem. Just because AOL Pictures' The Matrix supports a view doesn't make that view necessarily incorrect.
when I say "real world" I mean "the real world as opposed to a video game fantasy world"
How do you know that God isn't just a college student in some other world and that this universe is his senior project, monotheism being instituted when all his other team members got kicked off?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's nothing at all like typing a book in word. It'd be like you searching for pages on google, and then saying that you can sell those pages because you spent your time searching for them, and you're allowed to sell your time
Actually it would be more like Google having a problem with you using their engine to compile a list of sites based on some topic and then selling the list.
I don't understand what the basic issue of contention is. After all is said and done, people are exchanging money for other people's time and effort. Sure it changes the game's dynamics a bit (eg. people may and do start camping certain spawns and quests for more than their own personal use) but this occurs anyway and should be addressed by the game designers, not by the lawyers.
Personally, I find it interesting that BSI is going after DAoC, calling Mythic a "software giant," while ignoring the more established compettion in EverQuest producer Sony, Asheron's Call producer Microsoft, and Ultima Online producer Electronic Arts."
It's because the others don't really care and do little to stop people from selling. Right now DAoC is the hot game (even though it's not as good as others like AC) so the sellers are focusing on DAoC items and Mythic is making an effort to stop them.
Personally I don't care if people sell/buy stuff. If you want to spend extra money on it, go ahead. Other than getting a few dumb players buying a high level account and maybe annoying some people, it really doesn't affect the game. Certainly item sales don't.
DAoC currently got normal and roleplay servers. Maybe they need another form of server where they can sell items to players for real money. That way, no sane people would buy from other players. That way, they can get more revenue too.
I'm not sure my argument here will work with characters, but it will with items:
The difference is that you aren't creating. In Photoshop, yes you are using their tool, but you are creating the work. With DAoC, or any other PIG (persistent internet game) most of the actual work is done at the server, by Mythic. They create the item. Therefore it is theirs.
Told you it wouldn't work with characters...
Greg
...Cut...
Depends if players would care. Something tells me that I wouldn't get anything more for "Sycraft's Keen Asterite Hammer" than a normal keen asterite hammer. Remember: What made rare Magic cards form things like Alpha and Beta worth a lot was that people collected Magic cards. Not only did they play magic, but they had cards just ot have them. I don't think this is the case in online games. People buy items/characters because they are good, and they want the abilities. They don't care what it's called so long as it has certian stats.
...Paste...
I agree with the rest, but this is wrong. Played UO lately? All of the items that one could feasibly sell on ebay (and they don't much, other than piles of gold or real-estate) are totally useless within the rule-system. For instance, there's the graphic of "a frying pan" which is identical to the cook's tool known as "a skillet" except that one of them can be crafted by players while the other can only be picked up once a month. The rare version doesn't convey any special ability and only a fool would actually cook something with it - items used as tools wear out over time. So these items are just like your M:tG cards.
Contrast with a useful but slightly-less-than-semi-rare item... Say a very powerful weapon: a Surpassingly Accurate Silver Katana of Vanquishing (katana, +9, +5%, +100% vs Undead). The sword might go for a million gold (and that might cost you $20 on ebay depending on the age of the server) but you won't find the sword itself on ebay except as pot-sweetener from someone selling his whole account.
(Side note: When UO started making all the graphics on the CD available in the game, they made an attempt to preserve the rare item market by relabelling things. I'm split on this: on one hand I think the pixel-crack dealers need to get some fresh air and sunshine - myself included, but the secondary market does keep things lively. Either way, stupidity should be painful, so there's nothing wrong with selling someone anything they're willing to pay for.)
(Moderators: I have +1 and didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.)
Think of it this way:
Someone buys a membership to a gym (these games are memberships to, for all intents and purposes, a service or a club). Said person spends a lot of time working out with the bench press. So much time in fact, that he hogs it up 12 hours a day, during prime time hours.
Eventually, said person doesn't want or need to use it all that time, so, they decide to sell off usage. He figures that he has the potential of using that entire time, so, why not sell some of "his" time to other members?
It's basically the same concept. You are leasing an intellectual property that belongs to someone else. You should not be able to profit from it, without an agreement with the property owner.
Same thing goes for movies, music, books, software and the list goes on.
The big question I have though, how do we know that the majority of said auctioneers are not indeed employees at Verant Interactive - Sony, or whatever the associated software company is?
If I was a manager at VI/Sony and I seen the interest in people buying in game items for real money, I would probably setup auctions as an official, un-written, policy. What better way of making more money with your intellectual property? Heck, they could probably make as much or more on selling items in auction then they do on membership fees. =)
Of course, you would have to have an official policy that stated such things were not allowed, to help defeat competition from members doing the same thing. =)
Laters,
CRT_Leech
If anything they are so "hands off" on matters that most people complain about the LACK OF enforcement .
The issue here is, if trades like this are allowed who is ultimately responsible for their validness?
The fact remains that when trades go sour the scammed person usually goes to the host of the game to get it fixed, even when they know that is wasn't allowed in the first place and heavily warned against.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
As we spend more and more time in virtual worlds issues like this will become more important. It is not inconcievable that, in five or ten years, most communication and interaction will happen in virtual space. Should people interacting in virtual worlds be limited in their rights and choices any more than those operating in the physical world? This question may sound silly, but there are important social and political ramifications as we spend more and more of our lives online.
... and not at all once those markets become dominated by oligarchies or monopolies).
What about communications? Does a private company running a virtual world have the right to tell you what you can and cannot say to another person in that world? Under current law, perhaps. Is this desirable or, if and when we are spending most of our time communicating with one another in that sort of context, acceptable. Probably not, if you really think about it.
The telephone company is a private corporation that owns most of the equipment and infrastructure necessary for one person to talk to another over any but the most trivial distances. For many people, most of their interpersonal communication takes place over the telephone.
We decided early on that, despite the fact that the phone company is a private corporation, they may not deny service to anyone on the basis of what they say, may not in any way limit what one person may say to another using their equipment, and so on. In exchange they were granted "common carrier" status, meaning they bore no liability for the content of communication over their lines.
These game worlds are precursors to a form of virtual reality (I hate the term, but cannot think of a more accurate one, assuming the original, unmarketdroid meaning is used) many of us may be spending much of our lives in down the road. Doubly true when we are extremely elderly and bedridden. As long as we've paid for the service, should we really be subjected to draconian TOS that decide if and how we may interact with others?
Right now it is just a game, and most of us snicker at those who take it so seriously as to buy and sell virtual items with real money. But the precedents being set here will most likely have very far reaching ramifications into our own lives down the road, in contexts that are much more significant than a mere fantasy game. Do we really want non-democratic corporate Terms of Service dictating our rights and limits?
The knee-jerk, libertarian response of "the TOS is paramount," go elsewhere if you don't like it shows that these people really haven't given much deep thought at all to where the technology is going, what the social implications are, and what the consiquences of allowing unfettered and unchecked corporate authority to trump individual liberties (remember those constitutional checks and balances? They don't exist in the corporate context, and only exist minimally in competetive markets
Today it is about buying and selling virtual toys outside of a gaming context, i.e. regulating how consenting players may interact with one another and trade items they value amongst themselves. Tommorow it could be a much more compelling concern, but if so it is likely to be affected in no small part by the precedents we set today. It would be advisable if we thought long and hard on just what we want those precedents to be, rather than simplisticly dismissing the entire debate with "the company's Terms of Service are paramout, all other concerns are irrelevant."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Unless I very much misunderstand how mythic's gameing system is done (which is highly possible) the chracters are probably some kind of object of class Character, and all the wonderous abilities of your character are dependant on what flags are tagged, and what aren't. It's like a filling in the character sheet at the end of a (sorry, first one that came to mind) Dungeons and Dragons players handbook. You might be able to claim the specific arrangement of stats, feats, equip etc. were your Intelectual property, after all, you DID think of doing it in exactly that manner, working out what you felt would work best, but the actual sheet itself would belong to whoever owned the book. Same with your character in this game. The book is the server, the pen is an incredibly elaborate gaming system. You could possibly sue someone who had created a character exactly like yours, but when you get down to it, it's Mythics book.
sounds like your not lvl 25 yet. Even archers start to get money once they hit the mid 20's. Doing tradeskills is not a good way to male money. About the time you start making god money doing it your trade master wont give you tasks anymore.
Ummm lets see. Native Americans have tried to claim their own country. So has Hawaii, so has Quebec, so have Kurds in Turkey and Iraq etc etc etc. These people have failed to get a country AND ITS WHERE THEY LIVE. They have seperate religions, backgrounds and language and yet cannot seperate form the countries they contain.
And your idea is that A GAME, a series of 1s and 0s will address the UN.
Sometimes people really should be made to study history and the evolution of nationhood. It took a war against the then dominant world power to create the US, then another internal war to get the country that exists today. The UN is _not_ going to recognise a virtual world. Neither is any other country, its a stupid idea for many reasons but of course the most blatent one is
How do you become a citizen you have to either
a) Be born their
b) Be accepted as a national
Now given that you have to have people before you can become a nation then b doesn't apply. And you can't be born their because
IT DOESN'T REALLY EXIST
THOSE AREN'T REAL PEOPLE, its an avatar system, saying that people in these games exist is like claiming that you can declare the nation of "NetMeeting" because lots of people are using that too.
Can people on Slashdot PLEASE go outside sometimes
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
And if the "EverQuest" universe of Norrath were a country, its per-capita gross national product would be $2,266--comparable to the 77th richest country on Earth and ranking it between Russia and Bulgaria. Platinum pieces, the in-game currency known as pp, end up with an exchange rate of about a penny per pp, making "EverQuest" currency more valuable than the Japanese yen and the Spanish peseta.
Which is heavier, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers ?
Its the same damn question. A _single_ Yen is worth less but the CURRENCY is JUST as valuable as the Dollar at any point in time. It can then move up or down and people make money (or defraud it) on those differences, but the Yen currency is worth about 133 Yen to the Dollar. The Currencies are therefore equivalent.
X = n * Y
X is equivalent to Y and in terms of currency the WORTH is calculated on the CURRENCY not on the individual element of that currency.
Is _the_ cent worth less than _the_ dollar ? Of course not _a_ cent is worth less than _a_ dollar.
For the person at CNET who wrote that
1) Get a life
2) Get a clue
3) Get a dictionary
4) Get a degree
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The User's License Agreement may or may not hold up in court, but the fundamental reasons for banning the sale of virtual items are unsupportable.
The argument is that sale of virtual items is damaging to the in game economy, and hurts the other players of the game. If this is true, then the in-game economy is already broken.
People can and will give powerful items and commodities to other players for free, whether they are friends, guildmates, or a second account owned by the same person. To the game, this is exactly the same effect as player A selling some pile of junk to player B for real cash.
Over time the line between 'real' money and virtual money will become increasingly blurred. ULA's like the ones existing game companies enforce are going to fail in the court system eventually.. I suggest game makers start making their economies robust enough to deal with it.
-Zaphod
I think you're reading way too much into the intentions of prosecutors when they go after 'scumbags, Rod. Well, maybe I shouldn't say "go after" because that implies malice. They're just doing what they're paid to do.
They go after kiddie-pornographers first because they want to punish monsters who try to profit from the abuse of children.
They go after terrorists first because they want to prevent terrorists from killing people.
They go after self-confessed promotors of the violation of copyrights first because violating copyright is against the law and they already have a confession, so it's an open-and-shut case.
I get pissed when I see some punk 16 year old with rich parents driving his own BMW, but what are you gonna do about it?
Life's not fair. Some people get what they want in life by working hard, and others have it handed to them.
Welcome to the real world!
But that kid actually drives the robot pretty well. And his is the kind of robot that really needs a good driver, 'cause the weapons are just a ramrod and a wedge. For most of the robots (the Whyachi's are a notable exception) driving is 90% of what it takes to win a battle. Building the thing is the easy part.
I have no problem with someone buying a Battlebot off of eBay, anymore than I'd have a problem with someone buying a modified motocross bike and entering a rally with it.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Suppose I invite you over for chess. I've been inviting you over for chess at my place for ten years. You've invested ten years in playing chess at my house. Yet, after all those years, no matter how many times you've won, and no matter how hard you've worked, do you have any entitlement to my chessboard or its pieces? Hell no!
If I were a judge, I'd dump the case like a cheating boyfriend.
What is it about MMORPGs that brings about this sort of thing? Has anyone ever heard of buying and selling, say, a MUD character or item? It seems to me that back in the day, a god or even a wiz on this or that MUD should have gone for a pretty penny. (Remember, those puzzles and quests weren't designed by professionals, and frequently required the most radical leaps of illogic to solve.)
So what's different?
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
"do you have the right to auction off that gold for real money?"
...), there will be players who place a higher value on the improved state then on the money the control in the real world. There is _no way_ to prevent those people from hiring someone to improve their lot.
No, the question is, does anyone honestly think they can stop it?
Different people have different goals for games. In any game where players compete for improvements in persistant state (levels, resources,
Anyone against "rich people buying their way into the game" is a cry baby who needs to get over their jealousy and focus more on themselves than other people.
Yes, I am cranky, thanks for noticing.
Yes, but in a gym you are typically allowed to use the machine for 20-30 minutes max. So there are restrictions and limitaions that come with your membership (TOS). A better analogy would be instead of spending all that time on the bench you go out and by some steriods. Having Sony(whoever) setting up the auction and controlling it makes good buisness sense, they get a cut.
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
In fact, Slashdot recently featured a story on such a game.
This is not the case for DAoC. The players specifcally agreed to a ruleset prohibiting such transactions (While allowing sale of characters which strikes me as odd).
A better analogy: In competitive fencing, it is an unfortunately all too common practice for competitors to allow teammates (or sometimes paying "clients") to score against them. This would occur in a situation where one fencer is assured of making the next round, and the other in close competition to make the cut.
Now fencing is far from a spectator sport in the my country (U.S.A.), yet I've seen this take place on many an occasion myself. There are specific rules prohibiting this behaviour, and those who wish to compete strictly on the basis of physical performance have the right to maintain a format in which to do so.
Since those that are buying the characters don't really care about the development, let them pay Sony or whomever a small fee ($20?) and get a fully decked out level 40 Tiger-Werewolf-Money with the Sword of the Eunuchs. Said character will be very basic looking, armor will be dull gray as will the SotE. A quest SotE will be flashy but act the same as the gray one. Do the same for the other items. A buck or two here and there for a Helmet of Truancy, Breastplate of Huh-Huh, and Boots of Nike. And up dries the market for stuff and characters. Meanwhile, the character development player will want the flesh toned SotE, instead of the gray one. The Power Gamer is happy because he can walk through the adventure and feel big, while the Character Development Gamer gets his way too.
Each to their own hobies Tom. I think the point is that if I *do* decide to play a game touted at $40 + a monthly cost, I am not expecting to have to routinely go and bid on objects on eBay just to ensure that I'm experiencing a level playing field. I think the guy who posted that the farmers should be class actioned by all "normal" players for their "denial of service" (denial of access to the fair game you paid to play in the first place) was spot on. As was stated, its a game. Games have rules. If you don't want to follow the rules, you don't have to play the game. But if you deliberately take part in the game and not follow the rules, then you're going to ruin it for the other players. And if they're paying for the *privilege* of playing ...
I suspect this is exactly how the farmers are seen by Mythic, but they can't come up with some way of limiting their access to the spawning areas.
I submitted this story 2 days ago when it occured and was rejected. I guess I am not cool enough to submit good stories...
I can't see where the court would rule in favor of the auctioners/eers. However, if it happens, it puts things much closer to a potentially very bad situation. Say someone has "legally" purchased a $1000USD item. Now something happens to Mythics servers and they have to restore to an earlier time, such that the buyer no longer has the item. If the purchase was 'legal', the buyer might sue Mythic for loss of the item. Granted this is extreme, but it would be one step closer.
I have no problem with someone buying a Battlebot off of eBay, anymore than I'd have a problem with someone buying a modified motocross bike and entering a rally with it.
But there is a huge gap between your examples and characters in a game. Purchasing a 'bot or a bike does not increase the abilities of the purchaser. If you can't drive a bot, you'll still lose the competition, if you can't can ride the bike, ditto.
If you purchase a high level character, it allows you do things that you would otherwise be unable to do. It offers an unfair advantage over those who work within the rules of the game. (You can stomp through the less dangerous area's, essentially robbing spawn and treasure from lower level characters.)
Note: for background info on what "Wild-Cat Dollars" are, go get a U.S. history book that covers the 1800's and look for Wild Cat Banks.
Basically, all these different banks all over the US were issuing their own currency, so there were hundreds of different currencies around the country, and they were only worth something as long as the bank that issued them was still solvent. Some of these Wild Cat banks issued more money than they could back (because at the time, you were supposed to be able to exchange these 'dollars' for gold at the bank). Obviously this isn't a good situation.
Well, as you say, if you allow people to trade 'real' money for 'fake' money, that 'fake' money starts to become 'real' in as much as there is an actual (though perhaps inconsistent) valuation for that 'fake' money. And, since Mythic, EA, Microsoft, Verant/Sony, etc are not Governments, they have no right to issue currency. Now, of course, they aren't trying to create "Wild-Cat" Dollars, but if people are allowed to pay real money for the in-game money, then you have that problem. So, from the US Government's standpoint, disallowing the sale/purchase of in-game currency is the only sensible thing to do in order to prevent the arising of wild-cat money.
Of course, the truth is that this probably doesn't even register on the radar as being a problem with the feds because it is so small scale, and probably always will be. But, there is a philosophical/historical argument for you to back up the idea that the courts should disallow the sale of this stuff.
They do - if you die and release (don't get resurrected by another pc) - you lose points of constitution and have to pay to get them back...It gets very expensive at high levels
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
just build that into the game itself? Sure it would kinda break some of the realism, but skimming off of the top would ensure that Mystic had their coffers filled. They could even put it into the TOS that you can only sell/buy items in-game.
It could be like the auction house in FF3(English Version) only with virtual or real bucks, depending on the auction house.
i played asherons call for about 2 weeks
its the easiest mmog out there, and its boring as hell because of it.
easy = boring
It's their game, they can make up any rules they want. You don't have to play if you don't like them...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And currently the one man is overworked and banned off ebay because of Mythic.
Mythic says it bans ebay use, but at the same time leaves other people's auctions go through... Doesn't make sense. At least resolve the double standard, or people will think Mythic secretly sells stuff online using ebay itself.
God spoke to me
hey, I know Slashdot isn't terribly interested in validation of stories, but can't the editors at least make sure each story points to further information (or provide it as an article)?
the only links in this story are to the companies mentioned, NOT the alleged lawsuit. so much for journalistic integrity...
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
of MMORPEGS
Now, if I offer my 12 yr old cousin a candy bar in exchange for not having to pay rent on Park Place, at least the other players KNOW I am stretching the rules, and a lively debate will often resolve one way or another, but at least we will all know the new rules.
Once, while playing Monopoly, I negotiated "free rides", then when the property sold, I claimed (successfully) that my "free rides" was an easement, which meant that they transferred to the new owner. This sort of flexibility and ability to find loopholes is one of the things that makes dungeon-master driven games so much fun ("I cast ball-of-fire against the tarpits"). The issue is not whether the rule is designed to control the play (as in, "you cannot jump 50 feet because people cannot jump 50 feet") or to control the game (as in "taking two turns in a row is against the rules"). It is whether the game developer can deliver the game they promised to the people who may pay to play. People who do not follw the rules of a game, no matter how arbitrary those rules are, are cheaters.
I think that the people are going to start scanning the TOS before they buy. It's time the game developers started EMBRACING the out-of-game activities, as I think we're going to see the lines blur soon.
Neverwinter Nights is going to be revolutionary from that perspective I think: where a large majority of the game is going to take place OUTSIDE the game server.
Lastly, games like Project Entropia are already embracing this. I'm pretty sure that's the one, but PE is BUILT on the premise of players being able to pay money to the game company or to other gamers for better equipment, etc.