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Gamer Slain Over Virtual Property Dispute
cibe writes "A Shanghai online game player has stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword. Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his "dragon sabre", used in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3, the newspaper said a Shanghai court was told yesterday. Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it for 7,200 yuan ($A1,129)." Update: 03/30 21:15 GMT by Z : More commentary available on Game Girl Advance.
Sure, but in this case Legend of Mir, Inc. (whoever) owns all the files, and nobody accessed any of those files illegally.
The police can't do anything for the theft victim, because we couldn't even invent laws to make this illegal. The company that owns the game probably wouldn't do anything for the "victim" because he gave away the item.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Remember all those people bitching about people selling items online? Remember how the companies that make the game explicitly say they aren't real?
That's why they aren't real. Because the game companies don't want to be liable if they accidently delete your character. Or if they ban a player for no reason. Or if a player gets hacked and has virtual property destroyed.
So... they aren't considered real, and it's not considered a real crime. Even by the companies themselves. If you lose something in game, the game company won't do anything, and so the police can't really do anything, either.
I fail to see why the idea of gamers being addicted materializes in this situation.
Lets say some guy spends an amount of time equal to that required to obtain the "dragon saber" at a real job. He uses the money he earned to buy something he wants. For argument's sake, lets say an iPod.
His iPod is then stolen. In his rage at having both been violated in his personal effects - regardless of the specific item - and at having lost the time investment, he person goes above the law and beats the hell out of the thief.
The man in question here would never be called a "life addict", a person that takes things too sereously and needs to lighten up because "after all, it was just his time investment that was stolen." Most likely, this man would be told to seek anger counseling.
So, why then is a gamer - having lost an entirely equal time investment to a thief - being called an "addict" who needs to lighten up and realize "its just a game".
Yes, it is a game. However, the time he invests into it is real, and having it taken is infuriating.
(And for the record, I am not promoting stabbing people in anger. I am just refuting that this guy is an addict. He clearly needed to respond differently.)
I could say the same of modern currency. The limits on supply are artificial, dependent only on willingness to produce, not ability. And with so many transactions being electronic these days, the difference between "real" and "perceived" value breaks down further. Regardless of the game designer's capabilities, they chose to make the item "rare," which thus increased its perceived value at the moment.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Often in MMO games, the items/etc are considered property of the game company, not the players. Thus, it would be up to the game company to file any such wrongful claims rather than the individuals. Additionally, most of these kinds of games consider trades/etc as "final" transactions, whether a person was duped or not.
Some games have deviated from this path, so I'm not sure if that's the case in this situation.
I fart in your general direction.
a) any items value is not determined by what it is worth when you get it, but how much a sucker is willign to pay for it.
b) it was NOT given away... I quote the article: "Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it"
it was not given away, but lent to a friend. Suppose I drop by your house when you are on vacation, because you lent it to me. If I sold it, would you be pissed?
What is worse however is also in the article...
"Qui went to the police to report the "theft" but was told the weapon was not real property protected by law."
I think this is an issue that should never be able to arise. I mean, that sword is just as much real property as the latest copy of Quake 3 or Windows XP... just bits, right? just virtual property... not worth the fuzz, not anything to be protected by silly laws or anything.
So ownership established, HIS virtual property was sold by another person without consent, for real money.
But thanks for the heads up. If I show up at your house with a lovely Katana sword, you'll know I'm leaving with the sword, or a shitload of not so virtual cash.
There currently is not solid legal ground here to be certain but clearly there should be and that is the larger issue. After all, technically all legal currency in the United States belongs to the Federal Government but they do not own the value the currency represents. The items and gold/plat/whatever in these games are currency of a sort, they represent real labor and even have exchanged rates to other currencies like US dollars that could be tracked set by a mostly free market.
People just look at this backwards. Everyone wants to think in terms of property, but anything virtual is not property. It must be looked at as currency, since that is what we call a virtual representation of real property/value.
They may not be listed on the international exchange, but clearly virtual items/gold are a form of currency and clearly the property is not the currency itself (which is simply data owned by the game company like a 100 dollar bill is less than a pennies worth of paper and ink owned by the federal government) but rather the value represented by it (the 100 dollars of goods and services that half cent of paper represents).
I will admit that lacking an authority who tracks the market and sets a reference exchange rate/value for these currencies it could be difficult to establish how great a value to place on them, but in this case it should be easy. The exchange value was 7200 Yuan.
This should not be handled as theft, it should be handled in the same manner as me loaning you $5000 US dollars and you attempting to pay me back in EUROs (at some arbitrary exchange rate) and me not finding that currency to be suitable or recognizing it to be of equal value.
This is different than if I were to loan you a TV and you sold it and then tried to give me the money. Trading property for a currency is not the same as exchanging currencies. Either could be a beneficial exchange, but currency does not in itself have any value; a TV does have a value (although we could certainly debate how great that value is).