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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Bartle Addresses Pitfalls Of Virtual Property 32

Posted by simoniker from the that-darn-property-market dept.
Thanks to GameSpot for its 'Spot On' feature discussing some of the problems inherent in today's MMORPG property-owning systems. It references a paper [PDF link] written by original MUD co-creator Richard Bartle, which "addresses some of the trickier, if not darker, sides of virtual-property ownership." The basic premise of the argument is that "increase in commodification, gamers and the industry... are fast moving toward a breaking point that will likely involve the real-world legal system to sort out the conflicts", citing recent Chinese lawsuits about the loss of virtual items. Bartle concludes, gloomily: "Professors at Yale and Harvard looking into cyber-law, as they call it, are prepared. Unfortunately, they aren't the people who will be approached. The people who will be approached will be the judge... someplace that's never heard of virtual worlds. Working with the unknown, while perhaps exciting for those who enjoy gambling, is nevertheless on the whole bad for business."
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Bartle Addresses Pitfalls Of Virtual Property

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  • By clicking the eula they just need to disclaim yourself as the 'owner' of the virtual property and indemnify anyone from suing, etc. that they hold all rights, etc.

    • Re:IANAL , but I would believe .... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Romothecus ( 553103 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @09:09PM (#9588167)
      That is an incredibly over-simplified analysis of the situation. The fact is that the basic premise of property ownership rights (which are supposed endowed by the Creator according to American legal thought, or, in other words, inalienable) is that you are entitled to that which you acquire or create throw your own effort ("sweat of the brow," or, in this case, the mouse finger.) Some would argue that you are merely manipulating 1's and 0's on the server, which the game company clearly owns or pays for. However, it seems equally clear that you are responsible for the unique configuration of 1's and 0's which you arranged through your gameplay. You can no more "disclaim" your right to own property than you can "disclaim" your right to be alive. Of course the EULA is an all-encompasing document, since it's akin to the corporation's opening position on the issue - their opening position in any kind of legal negotiation. They will, of course, take the strongest position possible. This does not mean that it is air-tight.
      • Joe Schmoe works at Pizza Hut, he makes pizzas. Joe Schmoe does not own the pizzas he makes, Pizza Hut does, until someone pays for it, transfering ownership.

        If you expend your own efforts and make something with SOMEONE ELSES PROPERTY then the end product does not magically become yours.

        If you "make" something in an online world out of "online world property" (read: a bunch of 1's and 0's on the server the company owns) Then you don't own shit unless the company transfers ownership to you.
        • The difference- Joe Shmoe is an AGENT of pizza hut. He's an employee. An MMO comnpany is not paying me to play the game, in fact its the opposite. SO my character and all its gear should be mine
          • I think I have to disagree here. It seems that the ownership has to remain with the company in the case of MMO's. They make this clear in their EULA's.

            If the user 'owns' the item, that means the company would be liable for the 'cost' thereof if the item were lost due to a system crash, terrorist attack, whatever. Granted they should have backups of everything, but they should not legally be required to make backups.

            If it comes to a legal battle, then the game should never officially go out of beta
            • Second Life is more like a webhost, where as a MMORPG is like going to the carnival. The pricing structure for Second Life is totally different, you pay by the amount of space you have to build on.

              The law could easily play on both sides here. EULA says you can't sell on eBay, you did, now you get fined for braking the EULA. Or the law could toss out the EULA and say you do own the stuff. Quite frankly I don't think this is an issue worth using the court system or tax paying money on. We all know how the
              • And as I said before, we know there are loopholes -- especially with the internet. Gambling sites banned in the U.S., then they flourish on some tropical island along with their owner. Too much of a pain to host a MMORPG in the U.S., then they are going to move to another country.

                I wonder what percentage of MMORPGS played are sold via retail stores or mail-order (as opposed to just being downloaded)? (I would guess that it's a pretty high number.)

                Because if a game that runs afoul of U.S. laws is hosted
                • The purpose of being based outside of the US is not to avoid US laws but not to be under their jurisdiction. Major US corporations do this to avoid taxes. Sometimes they lean to far on the edge of the grey area and get in trouble.
                  • The purpose of being based outside of the US is not to avoid US laws but not to be under their jurisdiction.

                    I fail to see the difference between these two terms. Can you please enlighten me? Being unders someone's jurisdiction means Being subject to their laws. Gambling web sites go off-shore, precisely because U.S. law makes running such sites illegal.

                    If such a company were located in the Grand Caymans, but running off a web hosting service in Texas, you can bet that the Texas webmaster would be in s
        • ... and grow some veggies on that. I pay the landlord either a percentage of my crop or a fixed sum and the resulting crop is all mine, my property, for sale or consumption.

          Work for hire is one thing (Joe Schmoe was hired by the pizza place to make pizzas), renting some other's property for your production is entirely different.

          I believe the real question is if the game server space/cycles is "rented" or not, most probably the EULA contains some language to say that "We are free to dissolve this relation
        • The problem is customers are co-creators of their character, due to the time they put in, and the money they pay.

          A better licencese is needed, where both parties can agree to what is "fair"

          Peace
          --
          "Ideas are dime a dozen. Good ones are a little rarer.
          But the Great ones are ones that were acted upon, proving them Great.
          Don't worry about the guy who never makes any mistakes, he's never done anything."
          - Michaelangelo

      • Re:IANAL , but I would believe .... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by servognome ( 738846 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @11:18PM (#9588930)
        You can no more "disclaim" your right to own property than you can "disclaim" your right to be alive
        There is precidence to signing away your rights [copyright.gov] to intellectual property that you create.
        When you work for a company in an engineering/scientist capacity, you typically sign paperwork stating that all inventions, ideas, derived from your work is the property of the company. [eetimes.com] Also, work for hire [utsystem.edu] situations typically have you sign away rights to the property before you have created it.

  • It's all about the vigilante justice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nadadogg ( 652178 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @10:24PM (#9588644)
    A friend of mine had played EQ for several years, when his account got hacked. He found out that it was a real-life "friend" who did it, and he tracked him down and beat his ass, the way it should be. I know if I ever got a bug up my ass and blew $500 on virtual equipment and got scammed, I'd be making a road trip to beat some dweebs down

  • Assumptions re: judges (Score:4, Funny)

    by mbstone ( 457308 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @10:46PM (#9588755)
    Don't assume your local judge has never heard of MMORPGs. Why do you think they have laptops on the bench? Answer: Most trials are really boring.

  • I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PktLoss ( 647983 ) * on Thursday July 01, 2004 @11:04PM (#9588851) Homepage Journal
    I wonder why the MMO's don't spin off a virtual items divison, or at least an escrow. If the MMO was in charge of selling items revoked payments could have the affected items nullified. They could take the same % as paypal, and make a decent profit since they have most of the infastructure already. Users who wish to take part end up with a far more secure system.

    Getting your ass kicked by some guy who just paid for a level whatever kickass barbarian may suck. But getting your ass kicked by someone who just didn't pay for a level whatever kickass barbarian sucks even more.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)

      by servognome ( 738846 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @11:33PM (#9589019)
      Its a dangerous legal road for the game company to involve itself directly with exchanging real money for virtual items.
      What happens when somebody claims their "uber sword of chopping" disappeared due to a bug? Does the game company have the manpower to investigate all the lost or claimed lost possessions for 200,000 subscribers? Right now the game company can say tough luck, but once they admit there is real value its a much tougher legal arguement.
      You can also have situations where people sue due to devaluation of their property. Imagine they nerf your "uber axe," or make it easier to acquire and now people will only pay $5 instead of $200. You now open yourself up to legal action.
      There a number of other situations like server crashes, hacked characters, or duping, that would have much more legal implications once the company releases their complete ownership over all properties and enters into "contracts" by selling or supporting the sale of the property.

  • Just Say No (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vga_init ( 589198 ) on Thursday July 01, 2004 @11:41PM (#9589056) Journal
    No matter how tempting it is, I think that it would be in the best interests of everyone involved to denounce the mere notion of enforced "virtual property" rights.

    The significance that virtual objects hold are purely social, and, due to the fact that they do not actually exist, they serve no other function than be a drain on the economy. Without any physical form or function, a virtual object--some thing purely imaginary--cannot be made useful for directly (ie in a non-social way) aiding means and satisfying ends that might result in real human productivity and sustenance.

    It is easy to get caught up in materialism, and, while anyone can admit the evils of materialism while not necessarily being inclined to forgo it, one can see clearly that whatever functional benefits that materialism might also provide are completely removed when the attitude is applied towards an object that is inherently immaterial.

    In the case of games (which this post mainly refers to), we can agree that games serve no purpose other than to entertain us. Entertainment is only good for the moment; a game is entertaining while you are playing it, and it is therefore counterintuitive to place value on objects "held" in the game that would lose value outside of play (unless you are experiencing loss of sanity). While one might argue that the objects might enhance gameplay and pleasure derived from it, this can only be carried so far; being an experienced gamer myself, it is a long-proven fact that having more goodies in the game does not truly make it more fun to play. If these objects give the player a competetitive edge, they even decrease the value of gameplay (unless one is willing to derive pleasure solely from dominating social interaction--ie "owning" other people).

    In summary, "so what"? You wasted time and money engaging in an activity designed to motivate others to waste more of their time and money in order to show you up in a market-stimulated contest to waste more time and money than anyone else (and therefore be the king of wasting time and money). Wasting on what? Oh--nothing. But it was fun, wasn't it? Wasn't it?

    No, this behavior doesn't need to be insured, rewarded, or compensated in any way by the state. Am I saying that it's wrong or counterproductive? Not necessarily--I would not be so quick to deny that there are no possible real benefits, but in the end the affair is so trifling that it does not warrant the expenditure of more resources in order to be actively preserved by authoritative social institutions (ie the government). That would be counterproductive.

    The best policy a government can adopt is no policy; the whole issue needs to be ignored. It is no place for the government to manage this sort of thing (and, being a bit of a leftist, I have a more liberal opinion on what government ought to manage). Whoever provides the virtual world makes the laws in it, and the management of virtual objects falls under their jurisdiction. If you get screwed, so be it--go cry. Just don't ask for society to make any adjustments on your behalf because you lost what meager virtual reward you got from expending resources engaging in virtual activity in a virtual world.

    Yes, I know what it's like to lose something that I devoted a lot of time and effort to. It hurts a lot, but we have to be more discerning about what we devote ourselves to.

    • The significance that virtual objects hold are purely social...

      One can make the same argument about art, fancy clothing and diamonds, to name a few. Taken to the limit, everything which can not be bartered for the consumable necessities is "purely social".

      Paul B.

      P.S. No, I've never played MMORPGs (maybe I should start? ;-) ) but I've never traded for cash anything but the ones and zeroes drawn by my mouse/clicked by my fingers either. Just felt like participating in a good innocent argument here, after
      • That is a good question! I shall try to answer i to the best of my ability.

        Diamonds actually do have practical uses; you can cut other diamonds with them. ;) In all seriousness, though, the things have interesting properties. However, you are right in that we put high value on them initially because we just liked them; they are pretty, shiny, and amusing to look at. Diamonds, however, are difficult to come by; a lot of labor is expended in finding and extracting them, among other things, and that labor

        • Well, you sure do like long postings! ;-)

          let me answer just some points though...

          Diamonds actually do have practical uses; you can cut other diamonds with them. ;) No, you can not, but you can cut glass ;-), which brings us to the next point.

          We cannot simply wave our hands and magically fabricate diamonds Sure we can! Especially those which can cut glass and other substances, but also ones which decorate a nice girl, see, e.g., here
          http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid= 0 4/02/1 4/2040207&mode

    • "The significance that virtual objects hold are purely social, and, due to the fact that they do not actually exist, they serve no other function than be a drain on the economy."

      The very same could be said of digital photography, or website design, or 3D computer models, or anything digital. Does a digital photograph have any significance other than social? Well you can make a living from photography, but not from games you might be thinking ... but you'd be wrong.

      In games like Second Life you are allo

    • However, a normal person needs time to acquire those items and under law time is valuable. If you ruin ANYTHING that another person spent time on you cause damage equal to the time the person spent. If you crash a server you cause at least as much damage as it costs to send the techie over there and reboot it, probably more (loss of customers, loss of data, etc). That's the whole basis of anti-hacking laws.
      On the other hand I too think it's pointless to involve the court system (and cause damage to the stat
  • In case you are not already aware of it, there is a dedicated collaborative blog on Virtual Worlds to which Bartle is a regular contributor:

    http://terranova.blogs.com

    Very interesting reading!
  • "The people who will be approached will be the judge... someplace that's never heard of virtual worlds." Even if the judge doesn't know much about virtual worlds. There are these people called ...um, lawyers who present the case. They explain their arguments and present evidence. Yeah, judges don't generally issue opinions based on whim anymore.

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