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PC Games (Games) Government Role Playing (Games) The Courts News

Gamer Slain Over Virtual Property Dispute 145

Posted by Zonk from the it's-just-a-game dept.
cibe writes "A Shanghai online game player has stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword. Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his "dragon sabre", used in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3, the newspaper said a Shanghai court was told yesterday. Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it for 7,200 yuan ($A1,129)." Update: 03/30 21:15 GMT by Z : More commentary available on Game Girl Advance.
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Gamer Slain Over Virtual Property Dispute More

Gamer Slain Over Virtual Property Dispute

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  • Crazy (Score:5, Funny)

    by I_Love_Pocky! ( 751171 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:01PM (#12090508)
    I bet he didn't use his dragon sabre to do the stabbing.
  • Did he read the EULA before selling it? That's violation of the digital property act of Blizzard of whatevr.
  • he's going to spend some time in jail getting 'stabbed' by the 'bum pirates'. Lesson of the day: It's just a fucking game, get over it.

  • however (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:04PM (#12090562) Homepage Journal
    The body was easy to find, as the title 'Zhu Caoyuan's Corpse' mysteriously floated over the dumpster he had been dumped in.

  • Probably killed over the money, not the sword. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:04PM (#12090567) Journal
    I have to wonder if this would have happened if the victim lost the sword, rather than selling it for over $1000. It's one thing to borrow something and then break or loose it. It's another to borrow it and then sell it for a personal profit.
    • It was probably more about "dishonoring" him or something...
    • What is happening to people? Is the radiation from their PCs frying their brains? First off, some complete loser with far more money than brains willingly pays a cool grand for....an IMAGINARY sword--some bits in some corporation's server representing some wigit in a VIDEO GAME.

      To make matters worse, some complete idiot gets so upset about being wronged he KILLS over it. I don't care if it's about the money, or "honour" or whatever, or whether the property in question was imaginary or real--if you serio
      • Computers have nothing to do with it. $800 has been grounds to get the proverbial cap popped in your proverbial ass for years. Wars have been fought over so much.
      • Yeah, I guess I don't understand someone paying $1000 for a virtual sword. However, I wait till most of my games comes down to $30 before I buy them. To me, the game isn't even worth the $70 the originally sell them for. I also don't buy games that require some sort of subscription to play. That just doesn't sit right with me. I liked the old days when we used to run our own servers, and internet play was free. Besides multiplayer is much more fun when you know the person, and you can punch them in th
      • If you'll get your head out of the ass, and pull yourself out of the self-righteous "bah, those delusional nerds" rhetoric, picture the fight as being over those $1000. While the sword may have been virtual, the money was very very real.

        Not everyone is a rich western consultant, you know. For some people even in western countries, $1000 is more than they earn in a month. But here we're talking _China. $1000 is a bloody huge fortune.

        To put things in a more western perspective: imagine that someone sold som
        • ...all these people are wacked out.

          It's the 21st century and it isn't Chairman Mao's China anymore--$1000 might be a fortune to most Chinese but there plenty in China for which $1000 is achievable. The fact that someone would pay that much to buy an imaginary sword he can use to saly virtual beings in a video game makes him either a filthy righ celebrity with more money than he knows what to do with, or someone with a serious video game addiction.

          In any case, if someone sold something I lent to them fo
          • I'm not talking about the one who bought the sword. Anyone who pays real money for an unfair advantage in a multi-player game is not only whacked up in the head, he's also basically a cheater in my book. So that I don't have any sympathy for that one.

            However, he wasn't the one stabbed or stabbing.

            What's left is two guys fighting over a _shitload_ (for them) of very real money, in the very real world. I'd say the real money's not beside the point at all. I'd say the real money was the _whole_ point there.
            • You completely missed my point altogether. It isn't the fact that the property is virtual that boggles my mind...I happen to disagree with the Chinese court ruling that implies there are no rights to virtual property. Generally, the vast majority of cash value to my name exists as a number in a bank's mainframe, and all the software on our machines es essentially virtual property.

              It boggles my mind because of the nature of this virtual property--it is a prop in a game for cryin' out loud! The real-world
              • The real-world analogue to this situation would be somebody paying $1000 for a litle plastic sword or a card with a picture on it or something..

                It's about the prestigue associated with owning it, rather than the usefulness of the item itself. If little plastic swords or cards with pictures on them were exceedingly rare in the real world (baseball cards come to mind), then people would be paying top dollar for those as well. There's nothing new about that, and if it's crazy, then everybody who keeps up w
              • Let me try being more concise for a change: IMHO you mix two very different issues:

                1. That someone paid good money for a game prop.

                2. That two people fought, and one got killed, for a lot of real money (by Chinese standards.)

                All I'm saying is, basically: they're completely separate issues, so try to judge them as such. Try to judge issue 2 as if issue 1 didn't even exist.

                So Person A ripped Person B off of 1 year's salary or so for them. They fought, Person B got into a homicidal rage and stabbed Person

  • FYI (Score:5, Informative)

    by McKinney83 ( 687821 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:05PM (#12090589)
    Just fyi 7200 Yuan = $869.76 USD

    • $869.76... and hours and hours and hours (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JavaRob ( 28971 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @02:09PM (#12091464) Homepage Journal
      ...and people who are totally innocent of any kind of theft (virtual or otherwise) are killed over *much* less money, every day. For example (quick google...), $15 [geocities.com].

      Yes, it's stupid to kill someone over a virtual sword... just like it's stupid to kill someone over practically anything. But it's *very* easy to understand why the guy might have been furious enough to do something stupid. He was stabbing someone who intentionally ripped him off, and made a lot of money out of it. It's pretty easy to understand why he was mad -- it's not a real sword, but that sure is real money, real entertainment value, and probably a huge time investment getting the sword in the first place that were lost in an instant.

      Virtual worlds are not my cup of tea... but I can imagine the feeling of not having any backups of my hobby programming work for 3 months, foolishly lending my computer to a friend for a day... and finding that he'd sold it. I'm not saying I'd start stabbing... but it wouldn't be the computer value I'd care about. Are you going to tell me all that work is only "virtual" property, and I shouldn't worry about it?

  • Yahoo news link to story (Score:4, Informative)

    by mkop ( 714476 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:05PM (#12090590) Journal
    here is a link to a story with no registration http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/200503 30/od_uk_nm/oukoe_life_china_sabre [yahoo.com]

  • Before we all claim he's nuts... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:06PM (#12090597) Homepage
    Before we all claim he's nuts..

    If one were to attain a physical object of some want but no need, like a TV, it becomes a reward. You do some amount of work, you get the money, you buy it for yourself.

    Some people equate this in vidoe games. Hell, I'm guilty when some consequence outside of my control gets in my way. This could be in my model making, video game playing or athletic life. Yes, I do have one. Unfortunately, this guy took a route that didn't involve a legal system.

    It happens in US life as well. Try something that's not illegal like hitting on a guy's wife. See how fast someone goes above the law and knocks you out. It's not a perfect example, as divorce could be a route. But people will readily go around the law.

    Lesson to be learned? Careful who you annoy. They may break the law. They may not. But they may get back at you.

    • Re:Before we all claim he's nuts... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ayaress ( 662020 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:13PM (#12090703) Journal
      Like I posted above, in this case, the guy may not even have equated the vitual property with real property. He lent somebody else the sword, who then sold it for a large sum of money. $800 is a lot of money, and people have been killed over smaller sums. It'd be nice to know how this would have played out, say, if the sword was lost or looted rather than sold. In that case, the sword is lost, but that's it. The killer may have been angry or annoyed, but I doubt he would have killed for it. But selling it, there's more at stake than just a digital sword. There's been a violation of trust, you lent somebody something and they betrayed you, and there's also now around $800 USD in the mix.
    • Of course, it's not necessarily nuts to murder somebody over money. It's just wrong. However, I think that it's fair to say his actions aren't going to get his 7,200 yuan back. Furthermore, since he's not likely to be playing online games where he's headed, you can't argue he's setting up his friend as an example for his other friends who might be thinking of cheating him. Finally, it's very likely he will be the one serving as an example to others, under the tender ministrations of the PRC justice syst
    • There's a huge difference between physical property and virtual property.

      Physical property has a real limit on the supply, thus value is determined by supply and demand.

      With property in video games, the limit of supply is faked, and is subject to change at the game designer's whims. There is no real value in such a product, only percieved value.

      • Re:Before we all claim he's nuts... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by UWC ( 664779 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:38PM (#12091006)
        I could say the same of modern currency. The limits on supply are artificial, dependent only on willingness to produce, not ability. And with so many transactions being electronic these days, the difference between "real" and "perceived" value breaks down further. Regardless of the game designer's capabilities, they chose to make the item "rare," which thus increased its perceived value at the moment.
      • Physical property has a real limit on the supply, thus value is determined by supply and demand.

        You mean like stamp collecting or baseball cards? Those are determined by supply and demand too, and they are artifically limited.
        • Not a bad example, but not great. Stamp collecting and baseball cards still require physical resources to produce. Virtual swords only require changing one line in a configuration file to produce any desired amount.
          • Yes, but the production costs are negligible compared to the design, distribution, etc. Certain cards are "rare" by design of the distributor. Look into CCG's in particular - the best example is the Star Trek CCG, where all cards were of equal value in game (no casting cost) so the only way to control the use of more powerful cards was to increase their rarity (so having Picard just meant you'd spent a wad of real-world cash instead of accumulating X mana in-game).

      • Physical property has a real limit on the supply, thus value is determined by supply and demand.

        Yes, but that's the problem. The perceived value, much like the value of many things on this earth, differs from person to person. My textbooks are worth unspecified amounts to me, because they contain content I have yet to memorize and prolly never will. To someone else, they are worth the cost of the paper.

        What makes this so news-worthy is it involved a video game and silly to a lot of people who don't

  • That gentleman needs help (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stinerman ( 812158 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:07PM (#12090613)
    I think this is a good case that highlights online gaming addiction and how it needs to be classified as a disease. "Detox" clinics, etc. should be set-up in order to prevent this type of behavior. It should be treated similarly to alcoholism.

    When people start getting that upset at things that happen in a fantasy world, then professional counseling should not be far behind.
    • I concur, it's sickening to see how many lives get destroyed by a stupid game. I'm sure this problem is only going to get worse, and unfortunately I'm predicting that the relatives of victims are going to start pointing their fingers to the game producers as the ones responsible. This is, of course, not the right course of action to take, because if a company makes a game "less addicting" then how are they to generate sales? Like you said, it's just like alcoholism and do relatives of alcoholics blame the b
      • I concur, it's sickening to see how many lives get destroyed by a stupid game.

        Zhu Caoyuan's life was not destroyed by a computer game. He was killed by Qiu Chengwei because he believed that Zhu Caoyuan owed him money.

    • maybe. the guy who played everquest until he collapsed may have fit that mold. but I don't see that here yet. people kill others over the dumbest little things.. a lot. and who knows what their relationship was or who else was involved, or what actually transpired at the scene of the crime.
    • Uh, the guy who did the stabbing might have wanted his 7200 yuan. Doesn't have to relate to gaming addiction at all.
    • Thats a rather stupid way to look at it. If you read the article you clearly note that this is not an argument over a game per se, but an argument over a guy who sold something (virtual possesion) that belonged to another guy. This was not just over something lost in a virtual world, this was over what the dead guy gained in the real world from what he borrowed in the virtual one.

      I mean seriously.. consider the money in your bank account. For most people these days, its numbers on a screen. Following your

      • the guy was ROBBED for about $800...

        Lets at least get the facts straight shall we?

        The guy _gave away_ a virtual thing that he obtained by chance. The guy he gave it to then sold it for ~$800.

        So, a) the item had no value when it was first obtained and b) it was given away. You'd be hard pressed to find a court that would jump to the conclusion you did.

        Let's focus on the ownership part, ignoring the virtual worth of the item in question. Suppose you drop by my house with a lovely Katana sword. You the

        • I fart in your general direction.

          a) any items value is not determined by what it is worth when you get it, but how much a sucker is willign to pay for it.

          b) it was NOT given away... I quote the article: "Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it"

          it was not given away, but lent to a friend. Suppose I drop by your house when you are on vacation, because you lent it to me. If I sold it, would you be pissed?

          What is worse however is also in the article...

          "Q
          • it was not given away, but lent to a friend.

            WoW people - see, Blizzard invented Bind on Pickup to stop situations like this! They had your best interests in mind, really!

            -- YLFI
            • I don't think Bliz invented the idea. I'm quite positive I've heard about similar systems for high end loot in EQ. (forgot the terminology they used, but it amounted to the same thing. Bound to the character who looted it)
        • "So, a) the item had no value when it was first obtained and b) it was given away."

          A. An item is always worth what one could sell it for, if someone is willing to pay you for something it has value whether you choose to sell it or not. If the friend sold it, Qiu could have sold it as well and therefore it always had value.

          B. It was lent, not given away.

          "Let's focus on the ownership part, ignoring the virtual worth of the item in question. Suppose you drop by my house with a lovely Katana sword. You then
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • "I've heard this fallacious line of "reasoning" way too many times. If your car gets stolen, do you think that the insurance company will give you $100,000 for it just because you find some rich lunatic that says he would have paid you that much for it? Of course not. Value is based on what a reasonable person would pay, not what some deranged mental midget would pay."

              Of course you can not choose an arbitrary value for the object. The value is set by the market and is not what a reasonable person would pay
              • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                • "There are people who collect Ford Pintos and pay a premium for ones in very good condition. But that does not mean that your insurance company will pay you as much for the car as a collector would. That's because the insurance company realizes that only a small percentage of people who own Ford Pintos are going to find a sucker, I mean "collector", who will pay them more than a couple of hundred dollars for a Ford Pinto."

                  Most insurance companies do insure collectables. I realize this is Slashdot but in th
                  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                    • "And those policies are written to an "agreed-upon value," not the fair market value. You said that what collectors pay for things sets the value -- and that's blatantly wrong, as I showed with the aforementioned insurance/Ford Pinto example. The fair market value of something is not the highest amount that anyone would, or ever did, pay for one of them."

                      The "fair market value" is just what some organization that has become recognized as authoritive has set the value at. Those organizations do so in respon
                    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • The virtual weapon was no less an intangible asset than is a computer password. It too is just bits in a computer. And like a password, a gaming object can give access to places on a server otherwise inaccessible.

              What are their laws like in other information crime? Is the taking of an impression of a key for the purpose of making a copy and gaining unauthorized access to a locked room illegal, or only the act of gaining unauthorized access? The impression is also only information.
    • I fail to see why the idea of gamers being addicted materializes in this situation.

      Lets say some guy spends an amount of time equal to that required to obtain the "dragon saber" at a real job. He uses the money he earned to buy something he wants. For argument's sake, lets say an iPod.

      His iPod is then stolen. In his rage at having both been violated in his personal effects - regardless of the specific item - and at having lost the time investment, he person goes above the law and beats the hell out of the
    • Give me a break. Just because there was a gaming related item as the catalyst doesn't mean that we now need to setup special clinics to help these "poor souls who cannot distinguish fantasy from reality". The guy obviously needs counseling alright....but for his lack of self-control and anger management issues, not for his so-called "gaming addiction". Or are you of the belief that people aren't responsible for their own actions and that there must be a reason (read: scapegoat) for those actions other th

    • Re:That gentleman needs help (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:57PM (#12091277) Homepage Journal
      I think this is a good case that highlights online gaming addiction and how it needs to be classified as a disease.
      I agree that gaming addiction is out of control. But this has nothing to do with that. People kill each other for all kinds of stupid reasons. Hundreds of people (mostly women) die every year at the hands of a current or former domestic partner. People die because somebody thought they were rude, or objected to their style of dress. Homicidal rage is a pathology looking for an excuse.

      An imaginary sword is a stupid thing to get killed over -- but it's glib to dismiss it as unimportant because it's imaginary. The guy put a lot of effort into winning it, and somebody was willing to pay a lot of money to "possess" it. Absurd, if you're not a gamer, but not more absurd than paying six figures for some obscure collectible -- and that happens every day.

  • Whole slew of legal issues. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dubiousx99 ( 857639 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:08PM (#12090643)
    They also have an article about this over at Yahoo. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=58 3&e=5&u=/nm/20050330/od_nm/life_china_sabre_dc [yahoo.com] The article states that the police refused to do anything for the theft victim because the item wasn't real. Why don't we consider these things real? You can be assured that of a hacker deletes/steals files from a corporation or government entity the police would consider this a real crime. Where do you draw the line?
    • Sure, but in this case Legend of Mir, Inc. (whoever) owns all the files, and nobody accessed any of those files illegally.

      The police can't do anything for the theft victim, because we couldn't even invent laws to make this illegal. The company that owns the game probably wouldn't do anything for the "victim" because he gave away the item.
      • Actually, I'm surprised that anyone's even looking at this in terms of property theft. The only property involved belongs to the game company. How this should have been looked at, and how the guy could have gotten legal compensation, is to view this as a matter of a breach of contract between the two players. Player 1 had an implied agreement with player 2 that player 1's in game character would lend ... blah blah blah, you see how it goes. The idea is that player 2 had agreed to have his in game charac
        • There currently is not solid legal ground here to be certain but clearly there should be and that is the larger issue. After all, technically all legal currency in the United States belongs to the Federal Government but they do not own the value the currency represents. The items and gold/plat/whatever in these games are currency of a sort, they represent real labor and even have exchanged rates to other currencies like US dollars that could be tracked set by a mostly free market.

          People just look at this b

    • Re:Whole slew of legal issues. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:20PM (#12090791)
      Remember all those people bitching about people selling items online? Remember how the companies that make the game explicitly say they aren't real?

      That's why they aren't real. Because the game companies don't want to be liable if they accidently delete your character. Or if they ban a player for no reason [killvoid.com]. Or if a player gets hacked [allakhazam.com] and has virtual property destroyed.

      So... they aren't considered real, and it's not considered a real crime. Even by the companies themselves. If you lose something in game, the game company won't do anything, and so the police can't really do anything, either.

    • Re:Whole slew of legal issues. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by keyne9 ( 567528 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:39PM (#12091017)
      Often in MMO games, the items/etc are considered property of the game company, not the players. Thus, it would be up to the game company to file any such wrongful claims rather than the individuals. Additionally, most of these kinds of games consider trades/etc as "final" transactions, whether a person was duped or not.

      Some games have deviated from this path, so I'm not sure if that's the case in this situation.
    • You also have to keep in mind this is the Chinese police. You frequently have to PAY them to take up your case. I was shocked when my Chinese roommate had a police officer over to discuss how his bank account was robbed and he asked, "How much do I have to pay for this?" to the officer. So, this case will not really have any legal issues, open and shut, and the murderer may very well end up getting the death penalty.
    • because if it was considered real, then the company who made the game would need a special licence because they are printing money.

      what kind of bastard sells something their friend lent them anyway?

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by SunFan ( 845761 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:11PM (#12090673)

    "Qiu Chengwei, 41..."

    Stop. There's the problem right there.

    If I'm ever this worked up about a video game at 41, then please just put me into an institution somewhere.
    • That's one thing they will do.
    • How about if you get worked up for a helluva lot of money at 41? We're talking _China_, ffs. That's a _lot_ of money for them.

      It doesn't even have anything to do with games.

      Let's say you wrote a piece of program, or a short novel, or composed some cool piece of music, or painted something funny in Photoshop. (Whatever fits your abilities and hobbies.) It's equally just bits and bytes on a hard drive, right? Nothing to get worked up about, right?

      Now let's say you gave it to me, dunno, for review or whatev
  • Oh no, I hear Hillary Clinton now, it's not just the youth anymore, its the 45 year old men living in their parent's basement.
  • So, if convicted can he transfer his real world experience points to any online games? Does he get a +5 hit bonus when he uses a virtual knife from now on?

  • We all know who to blame (Score:3, Funny)

    by ded_guy ( 698956 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:20PM (#12090788)
    I bet he plays Dungeons and Dragons [slashdot.org].
  • Lots of stabbing over virtual problems nowadays. If video games really did induce violence, why, you could tell what type of gamer the criminal was based on his method of attack:

    Pistol shot, shotgun blast - fpser
    knife attack- *RPGer
    +1 knife attack- NWNer, or other D&D v3er
    sword slash- rich RPGer
    hit&runner- racer
    drive-by shooting - GTAer

    Just watch the news tonight and see all the havok games have done ;)

  • Finally.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rolan ( 20257 ) * on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:25PM (#12090860) Homepage Journal
    A case where a video game actually had something to do with a murder...
    • ;) being probably quite well known on the slashdot games section for my rants on "Games are not the cause" I have to say , um doh .
      Well actualy i will say more ;)
      first , i have played a couple of MMORPGS and stoped shortly after for one simple reason , Some people take these games way way way too seriously . I mean this is a scary extreme example , i do know someone who got alot of hatemail due to acidently killing another guys horse in Ultima online ( i mean thousands of mails , he eventualy had to report
  • the suspect was caught while searching for an altar to sacrifice the body at....
  • You need a contract. If you're loaning something worth more than $20 to someone you wouldn't trust with your life, write it down. IANAL, but as I understand it, if the court can interpret the meaning of your contract, it's valid. So: I, XXX, loan YYY to ZZZ on DATE. ZZZ agrees to return it, undamaged, on OTHER DATE. If YYY is damaged, ZZZ agrees to purchase a new one, keep the loaned YYY, and give me the new YYY. Signed: XXX, ZZZ, DATE What's happened is not theft, but breach of contract. Without a cont
    • Verbal contracts are legally binding, but it's harder to prove in court. If XXX says that they lentt YYY to ZZZ, and then ZZZ says that YYY was a gift, then the judge has a hard time sorting out the circumstances of the exchange. If no other evidence comes to light, the judge will side with the defendant (plaintiff must win by preponderance of evidence in civil court). Then again, that's all US law, not Chinese. Contract law is pretty daunting stuff just if you go from one state to the other in the US, let
    • Call me crazy, but I'd be more incline to trust somebody with my life than with $20. As an example, compare the number of times you've been murdered against the number of times you've been robbed or scammed.
    • Excuse me, but we're talking about a person who stabbed to death another person over a sword that doesn't really exist. It's obvious that respect for contract law is pretty far down the perp's list of priorities. I doubt a contract would have saved the other guy's life.
    • In China there is still a notion of honor, so contracts are seldom written.

  • But so is money (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pg133 ( 307365 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @01:34PM (#12090974)
    The 'assets' of one player could mean nothing to others as they are by nature just data created by game providers," a lawyer for a Shanghai-based Internet game company was quoted as saying.

    So is money, which for the most part is just data in computer systems.

    • The 'assets' of one player could mean nothing to others as they are by nature just data created by game providers," a lawyer for a Shanghai-based Internet game company was quoted as saying. So is money, which for the most part is just data in computer systems.

      When's the last time you walked into a cutlery store and exchanged a virtual sword for a real one? There's a big difference.

      Money is not "data," it is "value." That value is REPRESENTED by data, but that doesn't mean they are the same thing.

  • The selling of virtual objects is a good reason that all MMO* should have some mechanism, in game, for the unwilling transfer of equipment and unwilling permanent destruction of equipment.

    Take MUME [pvv.org] as an example, in it you can be pickpocketed, have your corpse looted, fall into a death trap where there is no reasonable way to recover any of your equipment, just plain break things from over use, hide things pretty much anywhere that persist... as long as no one else looks for them, give equipment to powerfu
  • Here are some links for the weapon... I believe

    http://www.rpgplanet.com/mir/uber/uber7.asp/ [rpgplanet.com]

    http://www.geocities.com/ultimatemir/weapons.html/ [geocities.com]

    Never played Mir before but 30-40+ Million of any game currency is a lot of farming, or botting.

  • I keep reading this 'capitalism' thing inspiring people to fight or hurt others. We should really ban it before it influences our children!

    -----------
    Sarcasm is a way of life
  • Well I guess this makes it official! If people are willing to kill over the assets of or money obtained from video games, I guess that makes them as mainstream as sports, movies, or anything else people may have a murderous passion for! I wonder how long it will be before Gov Rod B. in Illinois or Senator Clinton picks up on this story? Actually, the worst case for them would be if China decides to unleash a new crack down on cybercafes and video games. I'd love to see the politicians start to squirm at bei
  • Doesn't "Mir" mean peace?

  • Its not property! It is currency! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Wednesday March 30, 2005 @03:26PM (#12092631) Journal
    There currently is not solid legal ground here to be certain but clearly there should be and that is the larger issue. After all, technically all legal currency in the United States belongs to the Federal Government but they do not own the value the currency represents. The items and gold/plat/whatever in these games are currency of a sort, they represent real labor and even have exchanged rates to other currencies like US dollars that could be tracked set by a mostly free market.

    People just look at this backwards. Everyone wants to think in terms of property, but anything virtual is not property. It must be looked at as currency, since that is what we call a virtual representation of real property/value.

    They may not be listed on the international exchange, but clearly virtual items/gold are a form of currency and clearly the property is not the currency itself (which is simply data owned by the game company like a 100 dollar bill is less than a pennies worth of paper and ink owned by the federal government) but rather the value represented by it (the 100 dollars of goods and services that half cent of paper represents).

    I will admit that lacking an authority who tracks the market and sets a reference exchange rate/value for these currencies it could be difficult to establish how great a value to place on them, but in this case it should be easy. The exchange value was 7200 Yuan.

    This should not be handled as theft, it should be handled in the same manner as me loaning you $5000 US dollars and you attempting to pay me back in EUROs (at some arbitrary exchange rate) and me not finding that currency to be suitable or recognizing it to be of equal value.

    This is different than if I were to loan you a TV and you sold it and then tried to give me the money. Trading property for a currency is not the same as exchanging currencies. Either could be a beneficial exchange, but currency does not in itself have any value; a TV does have a value (although we could certainly debate how great that value is).
  • Was this 'dragon sword' the best sword in the game? If it was well, then ya, its ok to kill the guy. Im mean, after it, it WAS the best sword ever. Thats huge when your trying to pick up chicks.
  • He's a total nerd with no social life AND he's a murderer! I'm sure the ladies are all over him.
    • Third link: can one of the lawyers in the crowd tell me why that's a defense? "We find the defendent not guilty by reason of Grand Theft Auto." If you're put on trial for a crime, and it's proven you did it, aside from self-defense, who gives a damn why you did it?

      As I see it, there should be two ways out of a guilty verdict: jail, if you were in your right mind; and a psych ward, if you weren't.
  • My life savings are just a few entries in some financial institution's database. Their value is a matter of convention and law.

    If someone stole my money and the police told me to get lost, I would probably grab a shotgun and start looking for the bastard that stole my "virtual property".

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