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."

Ummm. this is /.

We don't believe in imaginary property.

Careful there...you're about to make a non-car analogy about intrinsic value of said property and it's redeemable worth in corporeal markets. Aren't you?

Even if your imaginary property is your livelihood, we don't believe in it.

Who owns it? Ultimately, the game companies.

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.

It's a tightrope for both sides of the fence:

For the games companies, this one is a nightmare. Think about some of the points that need addressing: (And I admit I have not RTFA)

If you own the virtual items, things like a rollback causes you loss. You can demand they be returned.
If you own an item, and the developers decide that it is too powerful, and they nerf it. Do you need to be compensated? Should you be?
If you can buy and sell items ingame legally as your own items you are actually selling something that is beyond your control. You are selling data, but in reality you are selling a virtual item - really messy around IP with that from a legal aspect.
If you own the goods in your characters inventory what happens when you find out that the game is really old, no-one plays it and it's going to be scrapped? Do they fax you a printout?
If it's items you own, what about your character itself? What about ingame houses and real estate?

Re:

I think you're mostly missing the point, but this question is half-way reasonable.

If you own an item, and the developers decide that it is too powerful, and they nerf it. Do you need to be compensated? Should you be?

Maybe and no.

How was the item acquired? If you earned the item through painful grinding and doing whatever it was you had to do in-game to achieve it, then you might have a case.

If you bought it, like from an in-game auction house, it's murkier. You speculated on an item and you lost. I do not think any game guarantees that kind of value (nor should it).

In general though, I think the ultimate answer is just plain no. You h

I'm on the fence...

Even though I've created a purely browser based online game (Game! - The Witty Online RPG [wittyrpg.com]), 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.

Re:

I think you hit on the tough point right there. Virtual property is a snarl-- not just as regards legality, but as regards the nature of what possession and even existence mean-- virtual "property" is both a "property" in the sense of a tangible good and a "property" in it being a mere setting state in some database, and who owns that?

Even traditional IP, though, has more groundedness in its meaning than this sort of property. Even things such as this comment have intrinsic value outside their environment.

Re:

Do I own this Slashdot comment? Slashdot says I do

"Ownership" in that case means copyright.

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.

It's not their problem if you're stupid enough to store the only copy of your valuable written insights in something as unsuited to the task as the slashcode system. Save to your local computer, fool.

Now, in the case of online virutual worlds, you didn't create that Godslayer of Hit Points sword your character carries. If you did, you'd have a local copy of the 3D vector file used to draw it. No, the GoHP sword is just an in-game milestone. It doesn't matter that i

"property" is just a story we made up

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.

Analogy alert! (Golf)

This is just like a golf membership. The main difference is that as part of that membership, the golf-club supplies the clubs you can use. In other words, you don't *own* the clubs. But you can still beat the crap out of another golfer to get their borrowed clubs. If you actually owned the clubs, doing that might be considered a felony or something...

Another game

How is a fancy sword in WoW different from a hotel on Broadway in Monopoly?

Re:It is your property!

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.

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"The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way."

Re:It is your property!

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".

Re:It is your property!

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.

Re:

The gamemaker makes the rules. They could...

1. Have the game admins deal with theft such as that.
2. Permit stealing in the games, within the boundary of the game. No hacking of other people's accounts allowed.

Reason for in-game assets prohibition

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.

Re:It is your property!

Then I hope you don't mind when your virtual "property" becomes a taxable asset.

Re:It is your property!

Why virtual game property is never "owned"

1. Virtual property doesn't exist: that's why it is called virtual. Saying that you own a sword in World of Warcraft is as non-sensical as saying that James Earl Jones owns the death star.

2. You never buy a "thing," and you never get a copyright. You're paying for the potential for access to copyrighted material on a server somewhere. That you have to further play a game to get access has no bearing on the fact that you were never actually transferred a copyright.

3. Game makers have structured the interaction carefully to allow themselves freedom to maintain a healthy game experience. If the value of all items within a game needed to remain fixed for sake of a stable economy, no positive balance changes would be possible and the game experience would crumble.

4. If you did "own" virtual propery, you would need to pay american dollar taxes on virtual transactions. If you happened to fight and slave and earn an Amani Warbear, for example, you'd be owe an additional 45 dollars in capital gains taxes.

Re:It is your property!

Your bank account it a series of bytes.

Re:

Indeed. However those are a representation of assets, not your actual assets. Granted the "score keeping" is done digitally, but it is directly related to your estate. The goods are not data.

Re:It is your property!

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?

Re:It is your property!

Exactly, with fiat currency, the numbers in the bank only mean something because enough people say so. Just as the bytes in a game server represent an asset because the people playing the game say so.

Re:It is your property!

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/ [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.

It is your effort!

While effort is a renewable resource. A given effort over time can't be reclaimed for another purpose. e.g. leisure. Also effort scales poorly. e.g. Barter. And last effort can't be stored for future use. e.g. Like in a bank. And since the majority want to enjoy the advantages being a society brings. Money (however it's backed) is the best representation we have for overcoming these disadvantages. Money rules because it's in everyone's best interest to preserve their effort for their use.

Re:It is your property!

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?

The data represents a claim on the bank to be repaid in physical currency. If the computers say you have $100 in your account, you can come in to the bank and withdraw that amount in a marketable form unconnected with the bank itself. Currently that form (barely) retains its value only as a result of stringent anti-counterfeiting laws and the issuer's fears of hyperinflation, but not so long ago it took the shape of high-quality scarce resources deemed valuable in their own right -- and not just for trade.

The amount of currency in existence includes that held in bank accounts, because if there ever was a run on the banks the FDIC is committed to provide nearly the full amount in the form of Federal Reserve Notes. This would imply massive production of new paper currency, but if the reserve requirements were increased accordingly it need not mean massive inflation. Prices already take bank balances into account; trading those balances for paper currency would make little difference, so long as it didn't increase the amount banks can create via loans.