I Want My, I Want My IGE

Posted on August 25, 2006 by Scott Jennings| 16 Comments

Simon Carless of Gamasutra gives what, to date, is probably the most even-handed coverage of IGE, asking James Clarke, the company’s Shanghai-based COO, some pointed questions about what it’s like to be a parasite on a growing industry (oh, sorry, did I say that out loud?):

However, it’s obvious that IGE does not share that belief [that RMT is a violation of the rules and EULA of several online games they service], with COO Clarke commenting pointedly: “We very much stand behind the concept of in-game property being owned by the players”, and expressing “exceptionally high confidence” that this belief is true. Of course, U.S. and international courts have not ruled absolutely definitively on the matter, and indeed, Clarke claims that no companies have ever tried to challenge IGE legally over their behavior. But it’s clear that IGE continues to find enough suppliers to allow its business to grow, despite multiple MMOs banning users for ‘gold farming’.

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  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless Gamer
  • =j

    The companies don’t have to challenge IGE legally. The companines can just ban IGE. Challenging them legally would be a waste of time.

  • Naladini

    Isn’t there a rather pointed risk to the gaming industry in losing a virtual property case?

    If a court ruled in favor of property belonging to players, it might introduce all sorts of liability for gaming companies having to provide better protections for the assets of their players, access to those assets, and really tie their hands if they felt they needed to ban someone for other rule violations.

    Add to that the difficulty of trying to legislate these matters across international borders and it really does seem like a decent idea to leave the legal question unanswered so MMO companies are free to ban at will, without worry of being sued b/c an exploiter can’t access and sell off “his” virtual property.

  • http://hgamer.blogspot.com Heartless Gamer

    You are paying for access to a service… how that ever got mixed into the idea that you own something because of that is beyond me.

  • MechaCrash

    Don’t most game EULAs have a legalese version of “don’t sell our shit for real money” these days? That would sort of put the kibosh on any protestations that they aren’t breaking the rules…

  • Sumyung Guy

    I gotta agre with Heartless Gamer there. You pay (in games like WoW, EQ, etc.) a monthly fee for access to a service. The intellectual property in all of these games and every instance therof, like the +9 hackmaster or whatever, belongs to the companies that run that game.

    IGE is profiting off of someone else’s intellectual property. Seems real straightforward to me, might also seem that way to a judge.

  • Toastrider

    You hope.

    Legal action, especially nowadays, is a crapshoot. This is why many companies will settle out of court — to avoid getting nailed with a massive judgement, as well as setting some sort of precedent.

    Just because they’re called ‘Your Honor’ doesn’t make them very bright :)

    –TR

  • http://vengeance.parryfive.com Axecleaver

    Common sense has nothing to do with jurisprudence. There’s also the issue of trying to enforce American laws (or whatever) on Chinese companies.

  • David Taylor

    You are paying for access to a service\’e2\’80\’a6 how that ever got mixed into the idea that you own something because of that is beyond me.

    Maybe because you used the service to create the thing? Take the following statement:

    I used WoW to create gold and now I want to sell it. What business is that of Sony’s?

    Replace \{WoW\} with \{Excel\}, \{gold\} with \{a spreadsheet\} and \{Sony\} with \{Microsoft\} and perhaps you will understand.

    It does not matter that the content does not exist outside the creation vehicle. I made it, and it is therefore mine, by the very same logic that the program authors use to claim they own thier IP because they made it .

  • MechaCrash

    Excel doesn’t have a clause in the Terms of Use specifically stating “we own this, not you; therefore you can’t sell this stuff.” World of Warcraft does. In fact, directly from the Terms of Use which you can see in section 8 here, emphasis mine…

    8. Selling of Items.

    Remember, at the outset of these Terms of Use, where we discussed how you were “licensed” the right to use World of Warcraft, and that your license was “limited”? Well, here is one of the more important areas where these license limitations come into effect. Note that Blizzard Entertainment either owns, or has exclusively licensed, all of the content which appears in World of Warcraft. So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported sale, gift or trade in the “real world” of anything related to World of Warcraft. Accordingly, you may not sell items for “real” money or exchange items outside of World of Warcraft.

  • http://www.corpnews.com Andrew Crystall

    Yes, welcome to the new witch hunt, the new war on drugs.

    Pay no attention to making your game less RMT-friendly, don’t look at what Eve has done with allowing the reselling of timecards for in-game cash (crushing the value of the Eve ISK on ebay by a factor of 12-13!), just take draconian measures which affect individual traders and IGE (which, afaik, are entirely different in scope) and cripple much of game functionality.

    A line in a EULA claiming something, when it has never been upheld in court, of of dubious value. Further, the RIAA do not recognise any second-hand music sales. Do you want to claim that reselling a music CD is illegal?

    Further, most counties have laws which recognise that peoples time have value, it itself. This is the basis for the laws which force people to y’know, pay you if you work for them. Most of those laws are fuzzy enough that a MMO could VERY easily be argued to be covered by them.

    Naladini’s right. It’s better that this ISN’T tested.

    PS,

    “international money laundering”

    Rubbish. Bullshit, even. Not one shread of proof beyond the claim of someone who once fell for an Eve scam. He also believes in little green men, incidentally… and it’s spread from there.

  • MechaCrash

    The drug metaphor is quite apt. You can argue the validity of the rule, you can argue if it’s needed, you can complain that the root causes are not being tackled. And no matter how you feel, it doesn’t change one major thing: there is a rule in place saying you can’t do that. So no matter what you think of the rule, it’s there and you have to follow it or deal with the consequences of getting caught.

    Speaking of which, http://www.BroGame.com needs to be added to the filter for the Google ads, because they’re a WoW gold selling business and one of their ads just popped up.

  • http://www.corpnews.com Andrew Crystall

    No, there is a claim saying you can’t do that. Now, this claim is untested, and currently people are kicked out for doing it. It it was to come to test, who knows what might happen.

    An uncontested EULA clause is very much a claim, not a rule.

    The drug metaphore is quite apt…for the damage it does. It empowers IGE, if anything. IGE is the enemy, not Ebay.

    I personally won’t use google adverts because they’re impossible to filter adequately, shrug.

  • David Taylor

    So Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize any property claims outside of World of Warcraft or the purported sale,

    And I don’t recognize Blizzard’s claim to own any items that I create in the game. I don’t need anyone’s permission to keep what I own by virtue of creation.

    It seems extremely odd to me that software companies, who normally have a very keen idea of who created and who owns what, more often than not try to assert that end users do not own what they create or bought.

    The lost concept is simple reciprocity. The idea that what-applies-to-you-applies-to-me. Blizzard created some assets, so they say they own them. I can accept that. I create some assets, and Blizzard says I don’t own them. That’s rank hogwash. Either we both own what we create, or neither of us do.

    Reciprocity applies to the EULA as well. Companies can claim anything they want in their EULAs. That doesn’t make the claims valid.

    What is valid is the sale contract. Once they have accepted my money, Blizzard is now legally on the hook to deliver the service.

    Much seems to be made of the fact that the user accepts the EULA. What should be made much of is that after-the-sale restrictions often cannot be binding.

    Again, reciprocity. It’s just not there in the whole EULA schema. I should be able to present my counter-EULA that the company has to accept to have me as a law abiding customer. Then we would have a foundation of agreement when they claim that I’ve ‘done wrong’.

    As it is, there is no meeting point.

  • MechaCrash

    That’s just it: you didn’t “create” anything, all the numbers were in Blizzard’s databases the entire time.

  • Alex Crydel

    This discussion seems to have died down.

    The question beneath the true motives of publishers nailing the secondary market.

    So the secondary market affects the in-game economy? Violates intellectual property rights? Provides cheating for players?

    How about the loss of publishers monthly income that publishers fear because secondary market companies are providing a service for players who do not have the time to grind the MMO.

    Not every gamer has the time to play 20 plus hours a day to get their character from level 58 to level 58.1 in a week.

    Not every gamer has the time to play 20 plus hours a day in-game skinning animal, then tanning, tailoring and so on just to get some armor.

    The term gameplay is really out of the question when playing (enjoying) a game becomes so tedious that some are willing to pay hard earned cash to skip it. But why are game designers still doing this?

    If we are to talk about fairness in playing the game. Do you think it is fair for the average player to go up against fanatics who play 20 hours a day? You can say that people who are willing to spend more time and effort in the game deserves to have better items, better stats, more gold. But does this mean players with less time on their hands do not deserve to enjoy the full features of the game as much as the hardcore gamers do?

    For those who still do not understand, take my friends who are in the army for instance. They only get a few hours a day with us via a satellite link in their bunker. Their only entertainment is WoW while they are off duty. They choose to defend their country with their lives yet they do not deserve to use their hard earned money to buy a better gaming experience?

    Does anyone still think buying virtual currency and items as lame or stupid?

    Why publishers claiming that they would eliminate the secondary market yet they have not done so? What would happen if such services are not available? We can clearly see many players who choose to purchase this service leaving the game for good.

    Who’d really have the time to repeatedly kill the same bunch of monsters for a weeks time just to raise a level and still consider that fun?

    Why would one still play the game when his friends, who gets more time to play, are at a much higher level then himself?

    WoW boasts a 6 million players population. That is roughly 6,000,000 x $15 USD = 90 Million USD a month. Do you really think maintaining the servers, creating patches and new developements really need so much?

    With the upcoming expansion and future expansions opening more classes, expensive flying mounts and new items to craft. Doesn’t this fishy at all the game?

    More time playing = more money for publishers secondary markets = less time playing in game = less money for publishers.