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Rights To Virtual Property In Games?
With the rise of MMOs and other persistent environments over the last decade, the trafficking of virtual game property has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Regardless of whether the buying and trading goes on with the blessing of the content provider (or, in many cases, the owner of the account in question), the question of players' rights to virtual goods is coming to the forefront. The Escapist Magazine takes a look at how some companies are structuring their EULA in this regard, and what some countries, such as China, are doing to handle the issue.
"... the differences between China and the West in this case have more to do with scale than cultural norms. So many people play online games in Asia — and play them so intensely — that social problems in meatspace society inevitably emerge in virtual worlds as well. ... The general consensus, therefore, is that paradigm shifts like the ones that have already occurred in Asia will inevitably come to the West, and with them, the need for legislative scaffolding that keeps us all from killing each other."
Hell no. Thats like claiming as a Slashdot subscriber that you "own" your comments, and Slashdot is liable if they delete them.
You pay your monthly fee to be allowed to play with their toys in their sandbox. They have some rules to make it fun, including letting the toy solider you play with "own" toy swords.
Still their toys.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Your bank account it a series of bytes.
Furthering on from my rushed comment earlier:
I used to pay a monthly fee to a chess club I was a member of.
I was never under the delusion that the pieces were "mine".
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Ownership of online content of this is not clear-cut, like ownership of your chair or computer might be. You don't really own your character; the game company does--your character is subject to the alterations and whims of the company as needed, and access is even based upon whether they let you or not. They can kick you off if you are selling gold, selling your account, being a jerk, or because they simply don't like you.
Some of you may have an entitlement complex going on--"But it's mine! I am paying for it!" No, you are paying to RENT it, to have access based on their terms. Remember, they're the one making the game, without the company you couldn't have a game in the first place.
I think user agreement on MMOs are particularly important. If you don't like the terms of ownership or the rules, then don't play. They make no real guarantees. They make no guarantees that the in-game economy will remain just as stable, that they won't nerf rogues in a future patch, or that your character won't receive a huge revamp for balance.
Too often, I think, consumers fist-pound over their rights when they are the ones who signed the contract conceding the terms in the first place.
Can you imagine people suing Blizzard for devaluing their online property because Blizzard nerfed a certain set piece, or introduced better items?
People seriously want to bring the government into this? If you don't like the terms, don't play. You aren't owed. You do not have a special right; you agreed to the transaction upon signing up. You pay to play a game, and nothing beyond that unless you agree otherwise.
Since there is significantly less currency existing than there is money represented in bank computers by series of bytes, what are those goods and actual assets exactly?
Even though I've created a purely browser based online game (Game! - The Witty Online RPG), I'm on the fence on this matter.
On one hand, many people put a lot of real life time into earning said virtual property, and in many cases it clearly holds actual monetary value in the real world.
On the other hand, should I be liable if I accidentally delete a player's data in Game!? I don't think that's realistic, especially when you keep in mind that Game! is completely free of cost. So does that mean they really own the things they've earned, or no? I'm not sure.
Do I own this Slashdot comment? Slashdot says I do, and they don't claim any responsibility for it, but what happens if Slashdot deletes it on me? I've lost something I own, and there's nothing I can do about it. That doesn't seem right.
Ultimately, I think we'll see that virtual property is legally blessed to have real life monetary value, in much the same way that software is.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
For one thing, you aren't paying for the items, you're paying to play the game and to pay the company's bills, and hopefully they will use some of the left over profits to make new content for you to play, so you will keep subscribed and pay them more money.
Technically, your items are nothing more than records in a database, owned by the company. All MMORPG companies likely can legally do whatever they want with this "property", from giving their employee game accounts every "super-rare" item for free, and lots of money for nothing, to messing with random players' items and stats to deleting random accounts to the whole database. Of course these would all upset players, leading to less money income as players leave. It's all about the money, so for now they will protect your virtual goods for you because it's in their best interest... but they're not really yours.
At least, that answers your question of who else could own them. I suppose it's still a matter of perspective, and EULAs.
However can you really "own" something that has no context whatsoever outside of that company's property (the game servers)? The database records in question would just be a bunch of strings and integers. Useless to you on their own without the game giving them context and meaning.
Other examples that come to mind... I can say I own the files on my computer because I own the computer, plus they still are useful when removed from my computer to other computers (note what this says about DRM). I can say that documents I create with Google Docs I own, because although I don't own the servers I created them on, it's trivial for me to print them out or download them in formats I can use locally.
Property - the mapping of resources to individuals, and more recently, to organizations and groups - is just a story: a virtual mapping that most everyone is told and most everyone agrees to. It is an extremely useful story we've come up with that has roots in both biological nature (territory, mating, food gathering) and in legal and social precedent (commerce, deeds, titles, etc). . . and to date there are no other means of organizing scarce resources that reduce conflict more effectively than property. Property makes clear which person or group has control over a thing and most everyone agrees with the story. Modern societies have also extended the concept of property to information in a few ways, and those have worked pretty well too: those IP protections motivate and reward creative expression.
However, when it comes to organizations and companies creating information things that are simulations of physical things, (just database rows existing in virtual environments) - it is not so clear that the benefits of the property story outweigh the costs. Simply put, within virtual worlds, the reason to also have the property story on virtual items is usually to artificially maintain scarcity - so some virtual items have more value to the people who want them, and to make the virtual world have characteristics like the physical world, and not because the virtual "items" are in any real sense scarce.
This disconnect is where the conflict will truly emerge. Even people who understand why we need property in the real world may still not accept or acknowledge or follow the ideas of property regarding virtual items if there is no compelling reason to need the property mapping/story to allocate scarce resources or to motivate and reward creative expression.
Exactly, with fiat currency, the numbers in the bank only mean something because enough people say so.
Inside the crown of one of the kingdoms in the Society for Creative Anachronism (http://www.sca.org/)is the inscription "You rule because they believe".
The medium is a bit retro perhaps, but the message is the same. Money rules because we believe in the accounts. Or at least that ATM dispenses stuff that people believe in, and will probably continue to do so until 1 loaf of bread = 1 wheelbarrow of dollars.
My WoW bank and characters are very real to me for several hours most days.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
The reason for the prohibition on sales of in-game assets is not entirely to keep the gold spammers out (although I find that laudable personally) but to keep the governmental authorities from closely examining the financial transactions that go on in a game. If you buy in-game gold with real-world dollars -- and subsequently sell items you acquire with that in-game gold for real-world valuta, there is a compelling argument for examining such transactions as to whether or not they are a mechanism for laundering money. The EULA prohibitions are to keep any such enquiries from the tax and legal authorities off the game hosting company's back.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
How is a fancy sword in WoW different from a hotel on Broadway in Monopoly?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."