Second Life Shuts Down Gambling

Tech.Luver sends us to The Inquirer, which notes the banning of all gambling in Second Life. Here is the Linden Labs blog post about the change in policy, which is, to say the least, not popular. From the article: "[T]he large chunk of users that enjoyed using in-world casinos and betting Linden Dollars on events both inside and outside the game world will now have nothing left to do. Perhaps more to the point for Linden, the move will cut off the revenues earned from those owning Casino-style islands in the game, the owners of which are some of the top contributors to the Linden coffers through currency fees and land rental."

Comments

Casinos in MMOs

[Lemmy Caution]

Other MMOs have (player-run) casinos, because they don't support exchange between their virtual currencies and real-world cash. Now, here's a couple questions.

If Linden introduced a "play money" currency in the game that wasn't officially convertible to cash, but allowed players to decide to accept it for whatever they wanted (including in-game cash), would that also be illegal in the US?

Sony Online games are divided into two, with a minority of servers for games like EQ2 allowing real-money transactions and the majority disallowing it. Is gambling legal on the majority of those servers, but illegal in the minority?

This really does push the question of how virtual these virtual worlds really are.

This is a good thing.

[Rob T Firefly]

To summarize my recent rambling journal post on the subject, there are many SL residents (including myself) who appreciate this move. The casinos really tended to trash the sims in which they set up shop, in both functional and aesthetic ways.

It's worth noting that online gambling has been illegal in the US for a while now, and it's something of a surprise that Linden let things continue for so long.

So is sex for money in Second Life prostitution?

[HeavyDevelopment]

So if logic follows regarding gambling, Linden $ and real world money in Second Life, would virtual sex in Second Life for Linden $ be prostitution?

Re:OK time to start Third Life

[Remus Shepherd]

That's right -- go make your own virtual life, with blackjack, and hookers!

Seriously, the entire economy of SL revolved around gambling, prostitution, and the sale of devices intended to aid gambling and prostitution. I'm having a hard time picturing how this is going to fall out. A flight to an lawless 'third life' might actually happen.

Not ALL gambling banned

[HMKAI]

Also, another mistake in the article is that all gambling is banned.

In fact, only specific types of wagering is banned.

From the Blog:
It is a violation of this policy to wager in games in the Second Life (R) environment operated on Linden Lab servers if such games:

(1) (a) rely on chance or random number generation to determine a winner, OR (b) rely on the outcome of real-life organized sporting events,

AND

(2) provide a payout in

(a) Linden Dollars, OR
(b) any real-world currency or thing of value.


I don't bring this up to split hairs, only to point out that personal contests seem to still be allowed. It seems reasonable, based upon the above, that one could wager on games where the participants compete directly with each other, such as races, tic-tac-toe and so on.

Also, the ban seems to be specific to sporting events, wagers on other events still seem acceptable (elections, the Dow Jones, weather patterns, etc.)

I'm not a lawyer, and stories of Linden Labs capricious application of their rules exist, and I'm not even sure Linden Labs has to actually be accountable to any legal authority about how it administers its TOS, so in the end you have to wager at your own risk.