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Online Gamer Wins Virtual Theft Lawsuit
ThePretender writes "A Reuters article details the story of (what I believe is) the first online-gaming lawsuit won regarding virtual theft, with a Chinese court ordering a game company to 'return hard-won virtual property to a player whose game account was looted by a hacker'. Apparently, the article feels the need to throw in that the RedMoon-playing gamer's looted booty included 'a make-believe stockpile of bio-chemical weapons' for some reason... 'I exchanged the equipment with my labour, time, wisdom and money, and of course they are my belongings,' said Li Hongchen (the gamer) and the courts agreed, ordering the game company to restore his bounty." We've covered earlier stages of this lawsuit in the past.
Not sure if this bodes well, Ultima Online have had a long standing policy of not replacing lost items for any reason. Wonder if this could be legislated ;-)
What kind of loser goes to court over this? Also, the court is stupid for even hearing the case. Granted I don't know much about Chinese law, but I call that an abuse of the court system. I thought it was only in America that the answer for everything was, "Well, I'll see you in court."
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OK, let me get this straight:
Person spends long hours working with computer.
Person creates virtual object.
Person loses virtual object due to crackers exploiting software bug.
Person sues maker of software for restoration of virtual object.
Person wins in court.
OK....
So, can a person sue Microsoft to restore all the word processing documents they have lost due to crashes? Can they sue Microsoft for the files lost when a web site is defaced due to an IIS bug?
Begin RANT:
All these stories of people getting so wrapped up in various online games just indicate to me that some people have
a) Too DAMN much time on their hands, and
b) a complete ABSENCE of a sense of proportion.
Just 200 years ago, most people were too focused on TRYING TO STAY ALIVE.
Now we have people with nothing better to do than to sue other people over make-believe!
Is that progress, or what?
(and that question is asked in all seriousness - I tend toward "or what" myself....)
www.eFax.com are spammers
You'd think that theft of virtual property would already be pretty well established as a crime... it shouldn't make any difference whether the property is redeemable for real money or for entertainment. Theft of amusement fair tokens is the same as theft of vegas chips.
Clever thinking, Chinese government.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
As someone who teaches cyberlaw, I find this case interesting but not unique. After all, what we're really talking about is intangible property--essentially, a contractual right to do certain things in a certain context. Almost like a license. In other words, the company set up the game to allow the player to do X, then messed up its security so that the player was prevented from doing X. Player didn't get the benefit of his agreement to use the game.
What would have been more interesting would be if the game had included a virtual "court," the player had won in that "court," and a real-world court had been used to enforce the "judgment." I'm sure that's coming one of these days. It's a logical outgrowth of situations such as that described by Julian Dibbell in "A Rape In Cyberspace," which I assign to my students each semester. {Professor Ezor}
for one thing this mean a court of law in a country (China) says virtual items are just the same as real. Likewise it means that there is a legitimate claim to such items, ie a person can own a item even if it is intangable.
while not so much a issue now, It COULD be one in the future, one that could become a very serious issue. By making things legitimate now you advoid the issues that could come later
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
When the company gave back all his stuff, did they find out where it went to? And removed it from the offenders account, or simply recreated the items.
If they just recreated them, I can see this being abused, somone hiding an item then "hey someone stole my 10000 point axe of doom, i'm going to call my lawyer!"
China is running statute law system.
:)
:)
While US and UK etc. are running common law system.
This case is very unlikely to be used as a preceding case for common law system.
Save your champagne until someone actually win a simliar case in US, UK...
Well, to gamers in China, save your champagne as well. There's no 'preceding case' mechanism I can tell in China's statute law system. I think you'd better save it til YOU actually win a case.
I personally find this ruling to be terrible and not thought out. When you are paying for an online game, you are paying for a service. Now, if the service states that under the event of bugs, hackers, or whatever, you are entitled to reimbursement and they fail to provide this, fine. Take them to court. They are breathing their end of the agreement. If on the other hand this is not a promised piece of the agreement, then this is utterly ridiculous. For online games to be viable services, they need flexibility to decide how they want to deal with problems like lost virtual property.
As an intelligent consumer you might very well make your decision about what games you play based upon the level of security they are willing to offer. Second Life for instance states that any thing you create is yours. Other games make no such claim. If you like that sort of agreement, then shell out money to Second Life and not SWG or Everquest.
If there was a true breach of contract here, great, the company got what it deserved if it did not live up the services it said it would give. If on the other hand there was no such promise then this sort of decision is a blow the online games (at least in China).
So, my understanding of most of these games is that if you kill someone and take their stuff, well, that's frowned upon, but still "ok" because it is considered part of the game. But apparently, if someone just takes your stuff, that's a different manner. I understand that in one case, it's a bug and the other it's gameplay, but I wonder what courts will make of that distinction down the road when the line becomes more grey.
The guy may have made his(her?) point in a blunt, annoyed manner, but he made a very good point. Where do you draw the line between one set of data that represents a virtual possession, versus another set of data that has real-life value?
This is just ridiculous.
Aside from the victim's general idiocy, aside from the ominous implications of a government (even the Chinese government) interfering with the play of an online game, there's something to be said about the crux of the man's case, the fact that he worked for the items and required compensation at their loss.
It's a game.
He paid that much to play enough to amass those items? Good for him. But that's a dumb move, and no one should be protected for it. He put all his eggs in one basket, a basket that was, no less, in someone else's hands.
He got burned, but it was no one's fault but his own. The company's servers were vulnerable to intrusion? Fine. But that's no justification for compensating this guy for playing a game and losing, no matter how it came about.
Glog!
I'm very much saddened by the responses posted so far.
This is an excellent ruling.
Maybe people think the guy's "sad" or whatever for caring so much about his virtual property, but that is irrelevant in a court case.
I sincerely hope this case will send a message to other games companies that they cannot treat their customers in this way and then hide behind an EULA, not answer telephones, ignore e-mails, etc.
If a company's business is allowing people to play an online game then they have a responsibility (and, it seems now, a legal duty) to conduct that game in a fair and honest manner. It appears that on this occasion, the company's attitude was "it's just a game, go away" and the court has told them that attitude is unacceptable.
Absolutely the right decision.
I hope to God that this doesn't cross over to any other countries because this sets a very bad precedent for online gaming services. Suddenly, the items in a game aren't an aspect of a [i]service[/i]. This is the court in China saying that the items are, for all intents and purposes, real and that players actually own them. God help the developers if they have to roll back a server and players decide to sue for "lost wages", or if a game is no longer profitable for them and they decide to terminate the service, or if they choose to ban anybody and effectively seperate them from their "property". The courts need to understand that the only group that has a legal reason to sue in these hacking cases (assuming that it was actually a hack and not just some idiot giving his password to the wrong person) is the game provider because the servers that belong to them and the network that belongs to them was compromised. The players have every right to quit and certainly could expect good customer service might restore stolen items, but the items are not real and they have no legal right to anything other than network access. This court ruling frightens me if it makes it to the US.
Regards, Ian
So if I join a Tribes server with a Shifter mod, drop a nuke in my *own* base, destroy everything, I could be sued for 'destruction of property'? Or maybe vandalism?
If I shoot a teammate, is this "virtual murder in the first degree"?
Dammnit!
Shazbot!
Ah Crap!