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

Uh, guys, hang on..

[matt me]

I know nethack can get competitive, but isn't this taking things too far?

It's game! No-one ever got jailed for "tax evasion" in monopoly, the use of mortar in jenga or tights in truth or dare.

These people need to "get real". Urgently.

Re:Uh, guys, hang on..

[Dragoonmac]

I like to think about it this way... In America's Army if you frag your CO during training you get thrown in jail, effectively losing your account. If WoW, for example, was to implement a policy like this it would fit with their goal to present a sense of realism and demographics. ( http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4946772 for an example of this) Just think about how satisfying it would be if those stupid farmers got brought up on Digital Common Law charges for crimes against the game, their accounts get changed so they autospawn in an Ironforge Prison. And how interesting would the escape attempts be?

costumer?

[The Other White Boy]

so who's getting dressed up as what now?

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:Lawyers aren't needed

[KDR_11k]

Imagine the headline: "Terrorists pilot flying mount into Castle Stormwind, Alliance declares War on Terror"

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

[Kawahee]

I saw a rather interesting graph a few months back, which tracked number of violet crimes in the US since the release of DOOM, and it was steadily decreasing. What we've got here now, are games that are necessarily violent, but get players a little too passionate about the game, and are causing them to go out and do what they'd probably do in the real world if they're going to kill people for selling stuff in a virtual world - that is, kill them.

I'll admit, I have no interest in MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft, or collectables like Warhammer 40 billion thousand, but I see why these people are doing it, and 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.

Depressing, isn't it? You could probably put something about how as children they spent all their time rolling 2d6's and that instead of adjusting to the outside world blah blah blah, but that's just more bullshit for Tack Jhompson.

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!

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

[egburr]

Blizzard, and most of the others, do have a policy against using real money to buy virtual stuff from others in the game. They enforce what they can, which is probably only a small fraction of what's actually occurring.

The problem with that is that Blizzard makes things artificially scarce, which drives up value. People will use whatever method is available to obtain something they want. Almost all will stay within the law, but most do not agree with the prohibition against using real money (and it's NOT illegal).

Between artificial scarcity and extremely hard (impossibe for many people due to contigous time chunk requirements), a lot of people figure it is not possible for them to obtain certain items through the game and have no objection to purchasing it externally.

After all, it's just another "pay to play" option. You're paying Blizzard to play the game. Blizzard intentionally reduces your ability to enjoy it. You're paying someone else for their efforts to get you an item that you think will help you enjoy the game more.

I see nothing wrong with this, either morally or legally, except that it violates a ToS that you don't see until after you have already paid for and cannot return the game.

Like many others, I have not purchased anything externally, primarily because I am not willing to dump even more real money into the game than I already have by the monthly subscription. (I finally woke up and cancelled that even, and went back to other games where I only have to pay once to play as often and long as I want.)

Gold (resource) farmers are only viable because the resource is so ridiculously scarce. I never minded going out to mine resources. What I minded was never being able to find any because they were always cleared out by the farmers.

The solution: reduce artificial scarcity of resources and make similar equivalent items available to people who are willing to put forth similar effort (but who cannot commit to a single large unbroken chunk of time).

Yeah, the power gamers won't like it. Screw them; the rest of us paid the same money they did. Let them power play all they want; I don't care. But when two friends and I play for seven months, getting multiple characters up to high levels, and we only see one rare "purple" item drop in all that time (yes, we did some raids), it's a little ridiculous. Then we regularly see people who are completely equipped with purple items. We didn't want all that; we just wanted some ability to get a few items that had neat powers. Instead of going to spend real money on external purchases, I just lost interest in the game and eventually quit playing.

It all just depends on the person. Prohibiting use of real money for virtual items is not the answer. Adjusting game economy/mechanics so more players are satisfied or even happy will drastically reduce real world value of those virtual items.

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

[brkello]

You have no idea what you are talking about. Even if the companies do not allow exchange of items for money (which most of them don't), there are companies out there that are willing to set up the exchange of real life money. Companies don't have police, but they do have people monitoring to try to prevent this activity. They certainly can't stop real life crime. Only someone who is messed up to begin with would kill somebody over a game. Blame the person, not the game. We have laws for murder. It's as simple as that.

Re:lawyers are finding a new costumer.

[Surt]

Have you seen how lawyers dress? If I were them I'd be looking for a new costumer too.