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Gamer takes gold farmers to court News
MMO PC News by Oli Welsh
According to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a local World of Warcraft player is suing a gold trading firm IGE for damaging the game's economy and ruining the game experience.
Antonio Hernandez, a former assistant manager at a game shop in Orlando, is seeking certification of the case as a federal class action suit. It's thought to be the first case brought by a player seeking to ban real-money trading in an online world, and if certified, it would be the first class-action lawsuit involving MMO gaming.
As such, it could establish precedent in the fledging field of online property rights. "The real significance of this case is, 'What are the rights of the [virtual world] community members when they go online?'" said C. Richard Newsome, the lawyer acting for Hernandez in the suit.
Hernandez has Blizzard's support in the case, at least vocally. Chief operating officer Paul Sams said, "We believe that shutting down gold farming and real-money transfer is in the interest of all World of Warcraft players, and that a victory in this case would have a positive long-term effect on the online gaming industry as a whole."
IGE's lawyers contend that Hernandez has no ownership or property rights within the game, and cannot show actual damages. It was for similar reasons that Minnesota police refused to prosecute a case of gold theft two months ago. Newsome counter-argues that IGE is breaking the game's terms and conditions.
Bizarrely, IGE's attorney, James M. Miller, also told the Sun-Sentinel that IGE is no longer involved in the virtual gold business. The company's website would seem to suggest otherwise, what with it featuring large amounts of virtual gold for sale, but we're sure there's a loophole in there somewhere.
The Florida Attorney General's Office is opening a consumer protection investigation into IGE, but the company is fighting off its subpoena.
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Comments: 1-21 of 21 in total
Poster
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Well, technically it's harassment to get spam inside the game. So I can't really argue there is no case for a legal suit...
And oddly, harassment and invasion of personal privacy may end up providing a far stronger case to get rid of this nasty crap than a company trying to protect it's own online property. |
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Der_tolle_Emil
08/04/08 @ 09:50
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Finally an interesting lawsuit. I have not enough knowledge to predict who might win but it's certainly a lot more interesting than the usual stuff.
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As greedy as it may seem r3n, he's filing it as a class action so it would represent people who have been spammed in an online game.
And as I said, maybe the fact that such spam is invading our personal privacy and free time and counts as harassment will be a far stronger case against this spam than companies defending their online property, because peoples personal rights would probably hold much more weight. edit; Well, I'll explain from the old days of Final Fantasy Online. The economy relies on a guessing-game pricing system (which was a stupid idea). What the goldfarmers did was mass-camp rare mobs all day, work on getting the rarer items, and then sell them at a dramatically high price (300%-1000% more than they're worth). This meant people couldn't farm the gear, and couldn't make 50 million gil by any fair means, so they had to buy the gil from the companies who were making the game hell. It's better in WoW but it most likely does still happen from time to time, and bots do still exist that just grind gold. It's not a simple case of ruin a games economy, these guys ruin the game full stop end of case as far as I'm concerned. True, most of them are now more "responsible" about how they get their in-game currency but they still have to make more than average. So it's a difficult situation. It should just be banned in online games full-stop. There must be a case at some point that will stop it all. Until then, sadly it will continue to be a part of the games we play online, especially MMO's, and even if one person buys from a mass-spam the spam has been justified...
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 08/04/08 @ 11:00
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Der_tolle_Emil
08/04/08 @ 09:59
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Is this a real issue? I don't play WoW, but how can gold farming "ruin" the game economy? Is there a cap of how much gold is in circulation at once?
No there's not. There is unlimited gold. You do quests, you kill monsters, you get gold. If noone spends gold then the amount of gold among the players will get higher and higher. The problem is that people do not need to spend gold. At least not a lot - you have to repair your armor but that's it. There are no fixed ingame costs that would make you spend the money. If you think of it it's an interesting subject. However I don't think that this whole gold farming really affects the single player. But I don't play this game actively so I have no idea. |
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The real meat of the issue is thus.
Would you like to be pestered every 20 minutes in WoW or EQ2 or FFXI or Age of Conan or Warhammer Online by an annoying bot run by some stupid-named currency company telling you how wonderful and cheap their service is? No? Then try having 20-30 different companies in these games vying for your business. It's not much of a future for MMORPG's really... |
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you'll never be able to ban gold selling.
How would a company be able to differentiate between someone transferring gold between characters, and someone depositing purchased gold into the buyers account. The problem isn't with the gold sellers, its with the greedy players who charge as much as they can on the auction houses etc. You want to stop gold buying and selling, take charge of the economy. At the far end of the scale, set hardcaps on price for auction houses, and make them the only way to transfer items between characters (excepting food/drink). On the other end, publish a price guide, so that people now exactly how much an item is worth and will know to avoid a rip off. Basic point really, players are greedy, greedy bastards |
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I think that everything that happens outside the game should be at least controlled if not banned. When the game was designed this was not taken into account and this has indeed the potential to at least affect the balance of a game. Whatever happens with trading, it should be on such a scale that you don't have to pay taxes on it, kind of like ebay for private persons.
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As stated several times before gold sellers are responsible for a lot of identity theft - look at that UK bank that stopped its customers using it's credit cards to pay for World of Warcraft because of the number of fraudulent cases.
Gold sellers use hacked accounts and stolen credit card information because they need to create level 1 characters to advertise their services and transfer gold in game. The cheapest way to do this is to use someone else's account, and preferably payment details too. Gold farmers on the other hand do not use stolen data, they need to level their farming characters without attracting attention. They use cheap labour to run the characters, which you can view as a good or bad thing for the people involved (being exploited versus relatively easy job). The farmers interfere with "real" players since they take the kills and keep resources scarce and expensive. Once the gold is farmed they sell it to the gold selling company, who then add a 50% mark-up before passing it on to the customer. |
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login_name
08/04/08 @ 11:25
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set hardcaps on price for auction houses, and make them the only way to transfer items between characters
Bad idea. SWG had hard caps on the bazaar (AH) and it was mostly filled with junk and adverts, of course they also had player run shops with no limits. I never bought from the bazaar, just used it to search for the real vendors. As for no transfer of items except food, what if you looted something or wanted to buy something for a friend or guildie? You'd have to sell it to them via the AH, that's dumb. No more handing down of old items to newbies. Takes a lot of the social aspect out of it imo. On the other end, publish a price guide, so that people now exactly how much an item is worth and will know to avoid a rip off This, is actually a very good idea. For the new player, knowing what is junk and what isn't is very important. It's useful to help them price their items on the AH and especially useful in stopping scammers from tricking them out of expensive items for a low price (such as collector's edition items or rare loot). On a personal note, I found it very easy to earn money in WoW and find it hard to understand why anyone would feel the need to pay for virtual cash. Other games can be a pain, with lots of farming required, but WoW basically gives you money from the word go thanks to the harvester profs and the lack of AH price cap. Selling ore/skins/herbs can net you quite a bit, more than enough to survive, buy skills and mounts. Combine that with playing the markets, looking for bargains (tip - use Auctioneer addon as a guide) and you can make tons of cash. Heck my wife started playing about a week ago and has 350 gold at lvl14. She is most definitely not a hard core/power gamer. |
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People will always want to try and cheat, its a sad fact that hurts all online gaming. In my eyes paying a company for money or leveling a character counts as cheating. Every online game I've played (or at least most) has had cheating in some form, be it Gears of War, WoW or CounterStrike.
I do think in this case it does effect a game as AH prices are effected, its like someone with limitless funds having power over Ebay... but of course, in a game. Now I'm not of the mindset to lawyer up on this arguments behalf, I still wont think badly of a guy who takes this game seriously enough to do so. Hey, its some people's lives as sad as that may be for them. |
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Anyone questioning why Blizzard themselfs havn't done this? Why is it always the players that end up trying to sort these things? IMO Blizzard should prevent the problem at it medium (ie WoW itself) just a simple level limit to golbal chat and time limits to amount of text per level over time would be a simple soultion, they're alreadying limiting trial accounts, but more must be done
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FortysixterUK
08/04/08 @ 17:59
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Best buy all your wow gold before a court decision is made.
On a serious note, wow will be gone in another 3-5 years, then people will wonder what all the agro was about. ...and someone will be taking a new gold mining company to court for mining gold for the sony/blizz combined MMO epic WowQuestRfConanhammer online..... |
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A lot of the gold sold is also the result of exploits/bugs like item duplication and the like. Getting money from that is very risky since Blizzard probably can track it. Star Wars Galaxies also had this problem, but worse...
Basically, the game had (has?) a /tip command which lets you give money to other players, intended for the social ascpects of the game (dancing, music playing). What the dupe exploiters did was to /tip other characters, so when SOE went after the characters with duped money they also banned several accounts with characters who had received tips. So: Just say no to gold farmer services and the like: A deal that sounds too good to be true in a MMO is just like in real life: it probably is.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 08/04/08 @ 19:41
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MightyMouse
09/04/08 @ 00:17
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He certainly does have a valid complaint that gold-selling damages the online experience in notable ways such as inflation at the AH, though no idea whether he'll win.
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Comments: 1-21 of 21 in total
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