Rights To Virtual Property In Games? 167
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."
Re:It is your property! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It is your property! (Score:5, Insightful)
Your bank account it a series of bytes.
Re:It is your property! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
I'm on the fence... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:It is your property! (Score:4, Insightful)
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:I'm on the fence... (Score:3, Insightful)
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. It is just as valuable in a printout as it is on Slashdot, for instance. "Virtual property" however, doesn't work outside sustained reality it was created in. When the hypothetical MMORPG wishes to close its doors, should it simply email each player an inventory list? A database dump? Screenshots?
It's almost like the collapse of a company or country, with the property being the hyperinflated currency or worthless bonds. Does the company or country owe the bondholders anything beside the paper they're printed on? Derived value be damned, they got what they bought. Does the MMORPG owe the player anything besides screenshots and memories?
A proper way for the game-runner might be to frame the issue in terms of "upgrades to the account" as opposed to "property". In-game property, in the greater framework of the real world, is more akin to an enhancement to a service than a physical good. In such a framework, such "upgrades" are sustained at the will and whim of the dependent service provider.
"property" is just a story we made up (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It is your property! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Reason for in-game assets prohibition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It is your property! (Score:4, Insightful)
It is your effort! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Analogy alert! (Golf) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It is your property! (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Permit stealing in the games, within the boundary of the game. No hacking of other people's accounts allowed.
I would rather eat my own eyes than have to read this game's forums.
Re:It is your property! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Another game (Score:4, Insightful)
How is a fancy sword in WoW different from a hotel on Broadway in Monopoly?
Re:Who owns it? Ultimately, the game companies. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, so you bought the game, don't want to accept the agreement. What do you do next? Stores love trampling on the rights of consumers here. "Oh, sorry, we don't take returns on opened computer games or software." Which equates into "Because there are some people out there who like copy the discs and return them for a refund, we believe everyone does this". So what are you left with? It depends. If the store gives you credit, you at the very least have that (although the store keeps their money regardless. However, if you can't even get that, you're stuck with a $50 coaster.
So really, its not particularly as simple as "if you don't like, don't accept the agreement". So my question remains, after not accepting the agreement, what do you do next?
Re:I'm on the fence... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is quite insightful actually. I would agree that "items" in "virtual worlds" are really more like a form of unofficial currency than a form of property. "Virtual property" has no intrinsic value from what I have observed: it cannot be used to increase crops, keep out the rain, store energy, etc. It's more like a piece of currency: you can use it to gain entertainment, but it's useless without some context; which in this case as FLEB noted is the construct of the virtual world. When that world is gone, the virtual goods have no meaning, just as currency has no meaning for nations which no longer exist.
This is vastly different than real property, which has intrinsic value: a hammer is always a hammer regardless of what nations exist. A house is always a house; a piece of land is always a piece of land. I will even admit that intellectual "property" has some intrinsic value, because an idea always contains some bit of information which allows the transformation of physical goods and so enables the creation of wealth.
As far as "rights" go, just like currency, the "rights" should mostly be controlled by the nation whose currency it is: the game companies. The US government, for instance, does not really guarantee anything about the Euro, so why should it (or any national government) be involved with the "rights" associated with the foreign currency of a virtual world? If anything, all I could see happening is something like rules associated with the foreign exchange market - not property rights.
Re:It is your property! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.