Game developers have to consider whether or not it might actually benefit their company to allow RMT - and then take a cut of the virtual transactions. It’s only illegal in the sense that you could land in court if decide to sue you and most of them won’t.”įinding RMT’s place within MMOs gets more complicated than EULAs and lawsuits, though. That’s clearly illegal - but is not criminal. That’s called ‘efficient breach.’ Real money trading is not illegal in the same way that the government says you can’t sneak into someone’s house and steal their stuff. “But some lawyers think that breaching contract in some situations can be socially beneficial. “If the company says you’re not allowed to do this while you’re on our servers and then they do it, they’re liable for contract violation, right?” Lastowka says. This attitude among game developers is where RMT turns into a gray area instead of a clear-cut contract violation. “The can say ‘we don’t care whether or not you trade virtual goods for money’ and in a way with Ultima Online, Electronic Arts basically turned a blind eye to those kinds of trades.” “Many companies decided that they weren’t going to vigorously go out and try to shut down people who are trading real money for virtual property,” he said.
Lastowka sympathizes with game developers’ plight. Even without Blizzard responding to our request for comment on this story, we can just imagine how much of a headache it would be to keep track of every auction site and track back every contract violation to the actual perpetrator and then sue them for breach of contract in whatever country they’re based. Scan eBay auctions right now for Epic Gear in WoW (a game that explicitly bans the sale of in-game items for real money), and you’ll find dozens of in-game things for sale, even fully leveled characters ready to be handed over to the highest bidder. This is apparently quite the pain in the ass. However, as long as there is no criminal law on the books with a country’s government - like the anti-gambling statute that sparked the South Korean case - it’s all on the game companies to go out and find people who violate their EULAs by engaging in RMT. So if players can have property rights and legal claims to their virtual property, I think that scares game companies for the most part.” “If occurs in a virtual world, the game is in the middle, the game company has to be dragged into litigation. “Most game companies are concerned about the trade of real money for virtual property because they see it as a potential way of creating liability for them,” Lastowka tells GamePro. Rutgers University law professor Greg Lastowka explains the legal side of the RMT issue as a case where first, the game developers have to decide how vigorously they want to regulate RMT and second, where players might consider violating the game’s EULA because RMT really pays off. People who violate those pieces of paper may not go to jail - but Blizzard can sue the pants off them for breach of contract (not to mention ban your account altogether).
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In particular, you’ll find that games like WoW frown on RMT within their End User License Agreements (EULA) or Terms of Service documents.
At issue in that case was whether or not the gamers had violated a South Korean law against unsanctioned gambling but by clearing them of the charges, South Korea effectively legitimized RMT in MMOs.ĭon’t quit your day job to take up Epic Gear brokering in World of Warcraft just yet, though RMT is still a sore point for many game developers. If the buying and selling of virtual goods using real money isn’t something actively encouraged by the game itself, you at least hear horror stories about gold farmers causing prices of in-game goods to go up, or find eBay auctions of in-game items for crazy-huge sums of money.Įarlier this month, the topic of real money trading in massively multiplayer online games made some ink when a South Korean Supreme Court acquitted two Lineage gamers of criminal charges related to selling in-game currency for actual money. If it's something you really want, the easiest way to get the item is to simply bid war yourself to cap and you win.Real money trading (RMT) may not be something you read about in your high school economics class, but it’s something every massively multiplayer online (MMO) gamer encounters every day. Hired Goons who enjoy PVP and being bribed to join your team.
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