Slashdot Mirror
eBay Shuts Down Ultima Online Charity Auctions
An Anonymous Reader writes "Numerous players in Ultima Online are donating vitual gold to "Crazy" Joe Harden. Harden started some eBay auctions with the best of intentions, giving all the proceeds to the Red Cross for the tsunami disaster relief. Unfortunately, Ebay has decided to shut him down. Here's a quote from the article over on FileFront: "The auctions were for in-game gold in Ultima Online. What Harden did was set up places within Ultima Online where players could come and either buy 'junk,' as he called it, or simply donate gold to be auctioned off on eBay. After setting up 43 auctions, things were running smoothly until eBay pulled every single one of them off of their site." We reported on this effort yesterday.
I wonder what Crazy Joe is going to do with all the gold. I kind of doubt that he gave receipts for refunds.
Seems straightforward enough:
:(
Ebay doesn't want to set a precedent.
You let him do it, why can't I?
The honorable thing here would be to back this guy up and applaud his efforts. UO obviously is cool with it, but E-bay doesn't want people making a habit of it, so they pull the plug.
I'm sure no one over there is reading this, but listen up...the spirit of your rules were to protect copyright owners against misuse. The letter of your rule states that you can't sell virtual goods.
I don't think the spirit of your rule is being harmed by a charitable giving of those online. Don't shy away simply because the letter of the law forbids it.
It sucks SO BADLY that everyone is afraid of being sued. That's precisely why this is being shut down.
I could go on a huge rant on how I would like to trust people around me and not constantly feel like I must protect myself from litigation. *sigh*
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
A. The charity daonations B. The Ultima Online stuff That caused eBay to sut it down. I hopefully hope it was option B, but it really was silly for eBay to do this.
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
Some important points the Slashdot summary didn't mention:
1) This is because E-bay forbids auctions in the name of a charity as
there have been people in the past who have used this as a con.
2) According to the article, Crazy Joe is in agreement with this
policy and is not upset that the auctions were pulled.
3) He's putting the auctions back up without mention of the Red Cross
or his website so everything should still go smoothly for those who
have donated.
Of course if everybody reads TFA there's no problem, but the way the
write-up puts it makes things seem as though things are a lot more
outrageous than they are. Besides, on slashdot "if everybody reads
TFA" is a pretty laughable suggestion...
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
There are a lot of auctions out there exactly like this, with the profits going to less altruistic causes. Perhaps he should try re-auctioning them, instead of auctioning the gold, auction used pencils or paperclips or something simple and stupid but physical and tangible. Then, throw in XXXX amount of gold with each pencil or paperclip. I mean if a woman can auction her father's ghost via a walker (or cane, I forget which) then sure this can work. If all else fails, there are always those online gold exchange sites, but he probably wouldn't get neary as much cache for it.
Knee-jerk reaction.
:\
eBay doesn't suck in this case I guess. He can still do the auctions, but has to carefully word how he puts it up.
I'd just put up
CrazyJoe UO Ultimae Online Tsunami Gold
That should say plenty there (I think?).
He can't mention the Red Cross.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Now he has to keep the UO gold...
What rat bastard turned him in?
Renember when you were a kid and your house party got out of hand so you called the cops on yourself? Ok ok, it was an episode of growing pains, but still.
Why don't more games take advantage of player's desire to buy virtual goods for real money. They should all be cooperating on creating their own auction sites and making the transactions safe/secure. Of course they could then take a nice cut from the sales.
Personally I don't care if some guy bought instead of earned his +1 sword. If anything it would balance the game between those with lots of time on their hands and those willing to spend some money to avoid the leveling grind.
He could always sell it to MMORPGMoney.com, they pay out $6 for 1M gold (I don't know the eBay price for 1M gold but usually its significantly higher than MMORPGMoney.com)
Then he could at least donate something, considering he probably did not keep a record of who donated
link
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
A remmeber a while ago some body sold the "World Record Winning AIR GUITAR" on ebay...,
m /ws/cache.html/
or http://www.blogsnow.com/cache/ebay/26/cgi.ebay.com /ws/cache.html/
And it went for a about $3000 I think...,
And alot of other people have to; http://www.blogsnow.com/cache/ebay/15/cgi.ebay.co
As mentioned above Crazy Joe is in complete agreement with the eBay policy and is currently listing the available gold auctions without overt reference to the charities. However, he is actively working to gain Red Cross's consent so he can scan it in and be able to relist the auctions to mention the charity drive. As someone who'se donated to the cause I can tell you I trust CJ and am proud of the UO community at large for responding so generously to the Tsunami relief effort. Math facts: - Current common shard price for 1gp == $0.0000085 - $8.50 average per 1,000,000gp on common shards - $15 per mil on Siege, and $35 per mil on Origin - 310,000,000gp donated so far, which will probably fetch around $2635.
I've known this guy for a few years now, he's good on his word and won't be keeping the gold to himself, it will all be sold on ebay (auctions are re-listed with different wording) and the donation to the red cross has already been made. He's one of the few people left on the internet you can actually trust their word on.
--J. R. Cook
When my coworker saw the posting yesterday he mentioned something about CrazyJoe being "one of the most popular thiefs" in UO (I suppose he was referring to "thief" as a role in the game? I don't know). Any chance he *knew* the auction would likely get cancelled? I don't doubt he would give any money he collected to the Red Cross, but shucks, if eBay shuts you down and you didn't keep receipts of who gave you the gold... sounds like a masterpiece in in-game robbery to me: get people to willingly hand over their gold and be glad they did!
I'll admit I'm being tongue-in-cheek in the above, but I also know there are real dirt-bags out there collecting tsunami money for themselves and not for anyone in Asia -- we'll begin hearing about it on the news soon I am sure...
And, doesn't this guy live in the USA?
I don't work for H&R Block, but I smell tax fraud. As long as he doesn't claim the "Unearned Income" of his reimbursement, he can just claim the nice fat $3000 tax deduction (charitable donation) instead.
Sure it's less than a standard deduction, but after the deductions from a morgage or student loan payments kick in, that's a nice chunk of change.
It's like being paid back from the government *and* the gaming public at large. Not fair.
There's a very good legal reason for this: liability if the game goes down.
Suppose a game says they'll give you a hard exchange rate of $1 for 1 gold piece. You have a stockpile of 1000 gold pieces, plus a Sword of Ultimate Stabbing +4 worth 1500 gold pieces.
Then the unfortunate happens: the game shuts down. Suddenly your $2500 ingame property is worthless. It's well within the realm of probability, then, that you could sue the game maker for the loss of your $2500, and win.
Oh, but it gets better. You know why every MMORPG company, with only one exception that I know of (Project Entropia), comes out against EBay sales of their ingame money and items? Same reason: if you can define an exchange rate from USD to ingame gold pieces, you can claim that by shutting the game down, you have lost money, and that they should be liable for it.
This is my sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
I don't see the problem. You can just include in the EULA that they are not liable for the cost of virtual goods.
As you mentioned there are already some games doing this such as Project Entropia, and I'd add Second Life, There and Magic Online to that list and they don't seem to be worried about liability.
Here's an alternate solution when they want to end-of-life a game. The company could transform it to a co-op owned by the players and where players pay the full maintenace costs to keep it going. Thus, in the end it would be the players that shut down their own world once they can't afford to keep it going.
There's a very good legal reason for this: liability if the game goes down.
That is not a very good legal reason. Devaluation of any currency is an economic issue, not a legal one. Whether it's a bar of metal, a piece of paper, or a bunch of bits, it could all be essentially worthless tomorrow for any number of reasons. The only legal issue is if the people involved were inappropriately manipulating the system for their own gain.
It's well within the realm of probability, then, that you could sue the game maker for the loss of your $2500, and win.
Whee, a judgment against a (likely) bankrupt company! Look, the only value is in the exchange, not in the items themselves. On Gilligan's Island, Thurston Howell's millions wouldn't even make a good toilet paper, but it's not the fault of the US that a dollar bill is just paper to some people. Same goes with any currency, including game money and items. I would hope that a judge would look at the case and simply say, "You should have bought low and sold high, not bought high and sold low."
Same reason: if you can define an exchange rate from USD to ingame gold pieces, you can claim that by shutting the game down, you have lost money, and that they should be liable for it.
Just plain wrong. There isn't a single game I know of that claims it is an investment plan with a guaranteed return. Plus, an exchange rate can already be defined for any game you have to pay to play. If a starter account costs $9.95 and comes with 200 gold (or whatever), then you have defined at least one base exchange rate. If there are ways to earn money in the game that you can pay someone to "work", you have at least another exchange rate. What is the material difference of me paying someone minimum wage to play my character for a while vs. paying someone else who has played their own character to get the same item?