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Chinese Lawsuit Seeks Return of Virtual Weapons

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the not-getting-what-you-play-for dept.

Howzer writes "In breaking news from behind the Great Firewall of China, an online gamer is suing JC Entertainment to force them to restore all of his Redmoon 'biological weapons' (his words) and compensate him for emotional damage. Some heavy hitters are lining up on both sides, as it appears the gamer has already had at least one day in court and may have several more. Now, this isn't the world's first by any means, but it's China's first, and China's fledgeling legal system often favours the little guy against big, faceless multinationals, especially when the law isn't clear. And if he wins, it will certainly put a dent in the fastest growing online gaming market on the planet." We've previously covered the early stages of this lawsuit.

2 of 18 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by setzman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article doesn't say how SHUILIU0011 stole the items. Did the guy use a decent password on his account, or was it some kind of crack that the thief used? However, you'd think they have some method of restoring the items if he could prove they were stolen by another user.

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  2. No economic value? by nodwick · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Zhang Qingsong explains that these "weapons", or points, represent a right that the player can get to a certain level and play with a certain degree of ease or excitement. Even though they may have economic value among players, current law does not specify its legality.
    If the Gaming Open Market (reported in an earlier story) takes off, then they'll be able to prove exactly how much economic value lost items have.

    I think people are starting to recognize that the time and effort (not to mention subscription dollars) that go into the levelling treadmill for MMORPGs means that your resulting character and items do have economic value, just like if you'd spent the time building model sailboats or writing software code. Whether it should be enough of a basis for suing people I don't know, but companies should put more of an effort into security for MMORPGs than just to say, "Ho hum, guess we got hacked again. Let's just reboot and pretend it didn't happen. Good thing our EULA denies all liability!"