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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."
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".
It was brought up when the EQ post came up, but let me repeat my point with some flavor added in to support,
It is just a game. You have no rights to sell a virtual entity which is owned by Mythic without their permission.
I can't believe this community is so outraged in NO having Intelectual property over the characters and items that they creat.. Ironic, you bet.
About the word example, you could only sell it because word allows you unlimited access. Some Compilers don't give you 100% freedom over your code, like Kylix Open Edition. Your code must be GPL. Are you fighting Borland tooth and nail to MAKE them release it under totally free distribution? No.
If you really want ot think about it in a cold work oriented way, You are paying Mythic for the right to use their intellectial property under the restrictions of their EULA.
Personally, I don't care if someone sells items on a web site, or in-game. As long as the financial benefits to the average player are not raised to a viable level, there shouldn't be a disruption in the game itself. People in AC sanctioned or not, have been trading stuff for years out-of-game, and I haven't found any in-game problems related to it. Mind you, EQ and DAOC are more economy based, so I suppose that there might be issues with them.
Bye!
yup, it's real.
"There is a doctrine in law called the "unclean hands" doctrine in which a plaintiff is denied any recovery because it comes into court with unclean hands (i.e., being guilty of some illegal or related misconduct), and the doctrine says (when the doctrine applies at all) that the court will leave the wrongdoers where they are and deny relief to them all in such a situation. "
or more simply:
"An ancient legal principle still in effect is known as the doctrine of unclean hands. The general guiding principle is that judges shouldn't allow courts to be used for improper ends, so only those who have clean hands can invoke the aid of the court. "
thanks Google.
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.
This is not a troll, if you don't agree with my opinion, that doesn't make it "troll", "flamebait" or "offtopic", I metamod accordingly.
I have played both EQ and DaOC.
In DaOC:
Items decay with use to the point where they are no longer useful.
In EQ:
Items don't wear out, that means rare items cannot remain rare for long.
In DaOC:
- You get bonuses by using items closer to your level and penalties for using items too high for you. If you use an item that is too high for your level it decays very fast.
In EQ:
- You can wear mostly anything regardless of level. Twinks love and exploit this, rare items become common as players farm them and the items end up in the hands of players that otherwise would have no chance of aquiring the item on their own.
In DaOC:
The penalty for dying is loosing some exp and having to pay a small amount of cash for getting your constitution restored(no item loss). This is not a big thing which encourages exploring new zones. Clerics also get resurrect spells quite early in the game (lvl 10). Binding to zones is also less restrictive and equal to all classes.
In EQ:
Dying in a bad place carries a big penalty, you have to retreive your corpse or you will loose all your stuff after a few days. If you died in a dangerous area, prepare for a long downtime. Clerics at EQ get rez arround lvl 30ish. My point is that dying in EQ is more traumatic.
In DaOC:
Traveling back and forth between zones is easy, you can use a horse at any level by paying a very small amount of cash. It is also very safe to travel by foot.
In EQ:
No horses unless you are high level, traveling by foot is very time consuming and dangerous as you progress in levels. Zone designers make zones full of hills to make this even more difficult.
Again, this is an opinion based on personal experience. If you feel the urge to respond negatively, I urge you to play DaOC and join the ex-EQ support group.
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?
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Hippie Logger Jock
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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.
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.
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