Game Worlds and The Law Collide

jnguy writes "Forbes points out another business boom due to video games: lawsuits. With all of the crimes being committed both over and within video games, lawyers are finding a new customer. Incidents cited include a man in Shanghai who was sentenced to life after killing someone for selling his 'dragon sabre.'" Update: 11/07 22:42 GMT by Z : Fixed hilarious dress-up typo.

Comments

Lawyers aren't needed

[matt me]

Wouldn't the easiest, most suiting and certainly most interesting way to settle such mattles as these between players be in a duel?

Re:M.M.O.R.P.G. = B.A.D.?

[Starsmore]

...I think that if we're going to decrease MMORPG-related killings, we're going to have to get Blizzard and all them out there to put up a ToS where no real money is involved for the purpose of buying/purchasing, and they have an online police for sorting these things out.

I don't have the exact legalese handy, but in the EULA/ToS of the major MMORPGs there is a blurb saying that using real life funds to purchase in-game items/gold/etc is illegal.

That's a slippery slope, there, though. Blizzard more than likely has the means to ban every single gold farmer from connecting to the game, but then they lose ($15/mo x # of gold farmers) for doing it... something that the accounting department probably doesn't like. Or they could ban all the gold buyers, but the same thing, all those monthly fees go bye-bye.

Or they can turn around and try and sue the people that are buying and selling the gold... but they aren't buying/selling the gold, they are simply exchanging funds for the work done, not the actual item. Or if they do sue a gold farming operation (IGE, for instance), and the judge rules in IGE's favor, that it is perfectly legal by the letter of US law to be making money by selling gold, then that'll be a dangerous legal precedent, which Blizzard's legal team probably does not want to be the one to set.

But people (in the US, anyway) aren't going out and killing each other for being loot-stealing ninja's and such, so it's a moot point. Jack Thompson knows that the real killers are playing GTA & killing hookers!