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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."
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.
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.
Are the moderators paying attention today? (yes yes a rhetorical quesiton...) How the fsck did THIS brain damaged ill thought out retort get to +3?
... Well I suppose thats better than spending a books worth of words to make the same mistake as many academics have done.
shepd were you born an idiot or did you have to work at it? Hate to flame but holy crap a 7 year old with the basic understanding of the word COPYRIGHT would get this one right yet you managed to screw it up in a fleeting little sentence.
-- schubert
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.