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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."
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?
You're missing the point.
They are not creating anything. All the action happens on mythic's servers. Mythic can decide what can and cannot be done on their servers.
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.
While you can sell your time, you can't sell something that doesn't belong to you.
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?
... (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
How much power is an EULA actually allowed to provide? If I pay to participate in something, and during my participation I acquire some item of worth, what restraints are there on the overseeing entity telling me what I can and can't do with my acquisition?
Bear in mind that your items of worth are merely records in Mythic's servers. In the absence of any agreement to the contrary, they would have every right to alter their records to show that you have no gold. Since the only thing preventing them from doing this is the agreement you made when you started paying for it, if said agreement disallows the sale of in-game items, that is absolutely enforceable.
What usually gets people riled up about EULAs is when they prohibit something that would be allowed in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, such as reverse engineering software. You can complain that the EULA is void because you never agreed to it, and that you therefore have the right to reverse engineer some piece of software. If you complain to Mythic that you never agreed to their Terms of Use/EULA/whatever, they can simply delete your account. What are you going to do, sue them for breaching the contract you argue doesn't exist?
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.
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