The power of the multitudes

[zhai]

I have an Escapist feature up this week, "Someone Stole My Magic Sword", with many thanks to Dave Weinstein and, of course, to Michelle, for coming forward and sharing her story. There was a lot to compress here -- my interviews with Michelle alone totaled over 5,000 words -- but hopefully we got the meat of the story across. I know I say it for

Comments

[zhai]

Glad you liked it. We've been closer to legislative decisions than you'd think. A few of them have been made already; probably the most significant impacting US law was Bragg v. Linden, though its impact on MMOs specifically was viewed with skepticism at first. There have been several cases in China (synopsized here, though sadly without specific footnoting -- though Chinese case law seems to be hard to track down online documentation for), where they've made several steps forward in validating virtual property as real property on the grounds that players spend significant time and money acquiring it -- they've ordered a game to give back items from a player that got hacked. In Taiwan virtual property is considered "movable property" and protected by theft laws. In 2007 South Korea passed a law banning RMT. So there has already been legislative activity. By far Asia is way ahead of the west in terms of courts putting in the time to publish opinions on the subject, though -- see comment above in response to lumi21 about Ung-Gi Yoon's contributions.

The problem with Michelle having gotten a lawyer who would take her case is that she almost certainly would have lost Mali entirely. That and the process would have taken much, much longer. This is actually part of the problem with the whole space -- the people who have the most at risk are, very reasonably, going to be the least likely to want to stick their necks out for fear of losing it all. And there are fewer lawyers who'd want to touch this than you'd think. They'd have to have the prospect of winning a major prize from Square Enix. But I think you're right that based on their previous behavior they'd be susceptible to a class action lawsuit on the basis of promised customer service and loss of investment if there were a player group inclined to pay for it. It would probably be very protracted and very expensive, though -- see the comment someone left on the Escapist about requiring an eccentric billionaire.

[anguirel]

I actually meant for tracking down and suing the hackers for damages, not the company failing to return the character. If there are auction sites where stolen characters and items are being sold, it should be, in some sense, possible to trace that and potentially pursue criminal and civil trials against those who are actually responsible for the loss.

[zhai]

Yeah, that would actually be harder for her to do than to sue the company, because of the way the EULAs are written to specifically exclude third party beneficiary effects. Basically because MMOs are a service where you (player) are contracted with a company (developer), you have no contractual relationship from player-to-player.

It seems rational that the hacker is who caused the damage and so the player ought to have rights against the hacker, but within the current legal structure they don't. There is a case going on right now where a player is suing IGE, the goldfarmer, but the general consensus in the game law community is that the suit won't last long because of that EULA third party beneficiary clause.

Within the current legal structure the only way for that to work would be for SquareEnix to track down the hacker and sue them for breach of EULA. This may be happening -- it's happened in Asia -- but I haven't heard of any cases of it happening here specifically with hacking (Blizzard has gone after bot people and goldfarmers, which they seem to consider a bigger problem).

[zhai]

It occurs to me specifically in the case of hackers that this might not be true, sorry, since the hackers aren't contracted to SE, either. So the analog is more closely to someone breaking into your house. I wonder how personal victims of hacking can pursue recourse currently... normally it's just the institution that insures or warrants correction.