Author Topic: Real money trading of online game accounts  (Read 6556 times)

Offline brujon

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Re: Real money trading of online game accounts
« Reply #20 on: October 07, 2014, 11:14:19 AM »
So, i finished my end-of-course piece, and i arrived at the following conclusion:

It's undeniable that gamers have a property interest in virtual assets. The relationship gamers have with virtual assets is undeniably that of owner and property. Virtual assets are exclusive, persistent and interconnected. You cannot compare virtual property with traditional intellectual property because it does not have these characteristics. Intellectual property is not exclusive - you can trade away a copy of your IP without losing your own. It is not persistent - it does not continue to exist independently of your presence in the virtual world like virtual property does. And it is not interconnected, meaning there isn't a way for people to interact with intellectual property in the same way they can interact with virtual property.

These are all characteristics reminiscent of traditional property. However, virtual property differs from traditional property significantly, in that it can never exist without a platform in which it is able to express these properties. Without the platform, virtual property cannot exist. And that platform, the online game world, is undeniably the intellectual property of the game's developer. Therefore, while you can argue that users have property right over a virtual asset inside the game world, one can also argue that the game developer's also have an interest on how the users interact with that property, because it is indissociable from the game world, and can affect it in several ways.

The law of contract is not sufficient to guarantee the protection users need against violations of their virtual property. As an example, viewing virtual property as an extension of the IP the game developer has means that the subtraction of that virtual good is not subject to criminal law. Theft is defined as "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it " - if the user is not considered owner of the virtual good, then, by definition, that good can't be stolen from him.

Not considering virtual goods property also denies them any economic value, which they have, not because of the black market interest in that good, but simply in virtue of it's relationship with the owner. Even if we could imagine a situation where there's no secondary market for the virtual good, we still can imagine value being added to that good as a measure of effort an desirability. Denying an economic value to virtual property makes it difficult for those who have that property subtracted from them unwillingly to achieve proper compensation. It also enables companies to be extremely arbitrary with their sanctions, since users have basically zero leverage in order to deal with their arbitrary decisions.

However, you can't protect one right in detriment of another. In this situation, you have two colliding rights - the IP right from the game developer, and the property right from the user.

But the primary goal of the game isn't the selling of virtual property - while the primary goal of the game's developer is making money out of creating an interesting game environment. This means the company has a much higher interest in curbing the secondary market than the user has in engaging in it.

Therefore, i propose that users have their property rights over virtual goods recognized, while also recognizing the right game developers have to contractually limit that property rights, within the bounds of the law. This enables users to have a higher degree of protection both against unlawful actions and arbitrary decisions by the game developer, and allows the game developers to maintain the game environment within their control.
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: Real money trading of online game accounts
« Reply #21 on: October 19, 2014, 10:57:54 PM »
Someone needs to sell me their DDO account, I'll pay up to $20 for a crap ton of Flawless Scales and Large GS ingredients.

Sadly, a lot of loot is BtA which limits account resale value. :(