« Buying Into the Hypeboria | Home | Raid Complexity: The Bane of the Casual Gamer »
Following Up on the Virtual Property Discussion
By Cameron Sorden | April 3, 2008
I had promised to think about this issue and come back in a few days with some fresh perspective, so now I am. The last bit of discussion I had on this topic actually sparked quite a lot of debate in the comments, which was great. While I was mulling things over, both Michael and Grimwell weighed in on the topic with what I thought were particularly compelling arguments. Reading what they wrote really forced me to examine what I was asking for in my post and think about what it was I really want to say about this.
Here’s the deal: I accept that I’m a player in a virtual world, and that I pay for access to entertaining software. I don’t own anything because there is nothing to own (totally negating the idea of personal property). Therefore, it’s ridiculous to think that I could buy or sell anything related to the game with the exception of my account, which is a real thing, but I’m told up front that transferring ownership of it is a bannable offense that the company has every right to act on. As Grimwell said, if you don’t like it, you don’t need to play. These are all good and correct things, and after some reflection, I think that these basic tenets will resonate logically with legislators and will protect us from ever having to pay taxes on our epic drops.
That’s good for everyone. Plus, as Michael points out, as soon as you make property in games real property, we aren’t going to have much to play anymore. He also summed up his argument well with an analogy that Dr. Bartle made:
World of Warcraft is a game, full stop. In objective reality, despite the huge number of differences, it is effectively as much a world with ârightsâ as an instance of the board game Monopoly. Asking for ârightsâ to the data on Blizzardâs servers is like complaining when a personâs fictitious property empire collapses into nothingness at the end of a Monopoly game. Thereâs no there there, and so pining after some misplaced sense of identity or ownership is a foolâs errand.
Okay, great. So, given that I have no beef with all that, I started thinking about where my personal problem comes in. The more I think about it, the more I think that it’s all about gold sales. Whenever I start talking about this issue, I think of buying gold. As a gamer, I don’t care about virtual property rights. I don’t need to own my magical sword of orc-slaying, and I don’t expect a cash settlement if my account gets banned. What bugs me, and what has always bugged me, is that game companies declare that gold or item sales for real money is against the terms of service and is a bannable offense. That’s really what this comes down to for me.
Here’s why. This is an old discussion, but it’s always bugged me that we somehow perceive a friend gifting me with 1000g different from me paying a stranger to give me 1000g. There is no tangible in-game difference between those scenarios. If we agree that there is no such thing as virtual property (and we do), then how can you ban me for my interactions with people outside of the game? What I’m basically doing is buying a friend. Maybe it’s morally sketchy from a societal stand-point, but that’s no business of Blizzard’s. They don’t ban you for kicking puppies or stealing candy from children, so why should they ban you for buying your friends? It seems ridiculous to me that they can argue that there is no such thing as virtual gold while banning “virtual gold sales.” The companies use that very terminology. If there is no such thing as virtual property, then what are you telling me I can’t do, exactly?
I don’t like spam. I don’t like botting. I don’t like hacking. I don’t like aggressive farmers. I don’t like people who purposely disrupt my play experience to send me unsolicited advertisements. But I also don’t like game companies telling me who I can give money to or receive money from in the real world, at the risk of short circuiting my entertainment. How is that fair? If you really want to discourage gold sales, do what Runescape did and make it so that it becomes very hard to make trades that have large value discrepancies (disable gifting). It’s hard to set up, and it hurts community, but it should seriously cut down on that issue. Otherwise, keep your hands off my personal life and focus on fighting the nasty side effects of that business (which, by the way, don’t seem to be having any problem existing with these harsh measures in place).
Looking at my previous post, I now disagree with my prior statements. I don’t think we need legislation on these issues, because there isn’t a whole lot to legislate about (as Eric kept saying). Instead, I think that I’ve properly refocused myself on this gold-sales issue, which I feel is a more relevant and interesting discussion for gamers in general than the far more abstract discussion of virtual property rights. Let the Second Life people worry about that.
So. Gold sales. Given what I’ve said here, how about them apples?
Topics: game design, mmorpg, real money transactions, sociology |
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
“So. Gold sales. Given what Iâve said here, how about them apples?”
Well, Cam, it still boils down to the issue with which you opened this second round:
“I accept that Iâm a player in a virtual world, and that I pay for access to entertaining software. I donât own anything because there is nothing to own (totally negating the idea of personal property). Therefore, itâs ridiculous to think that I could buy or sell anything related to the game with the exception of my account, which is a real thing, but Iâm told up front that transferring ownership of it is a bannable offense that the company has every right to act on. As Grimwell said, if you donât like it, you donât need to play.”
If you accept that the company has every right to forbid you from buying/selling accounts, you pretty much have to accept that the company also has every right to forbid you from buying/selling gold. What’s the difference? When you get down to it, both are “game elements”. Why are you okay with one but not the other?
Grimwell’s argument does have that ring of inevitability about it, and I think he’s largely correct. You don’t/have/ to play. I’m not saying that dismissively at all. I’m saying that if you decide to play, you will abide by the terms of service, rules, restrictions and rights that the service provider sees fit to enact. If you don’t, you don’t.
I don’t think it’s the end of the world when your game service provider tells you “No, you can’t do that. If you do that, we’re gonna have to suspend you from the game”. The issue is not about gold-selling, simply because I don’t think we even need to reach that point for the arguments to apply.
It boils down to this: The game service provider stated you could not do that. It’s their service, and they can provide it according to their rules. When we disagree, we can vote with our feet and move elsewhere with no restrictions or restrictions more to our liking. I really don’t see any conceptual difference between a company saying “You can’t buy/sell accounts” and “You can’t buy/sell gold”. If there is a difference, I think it’s so minimal that it shouldn’t even matter at all.
If you’re okay with one, you should be okay with the other because they both stem from the same place: The rules the game service provider applies to their service.
“But I also donât like game companies telling me who I can give money to or receive money from in the real world, at the risk of short circuiting my entertainment. How is that fair?”
I think this is the point where you’re getting the most hung up on. Try to see it this way: The game company is not telling you that you categorically CANNOT give $Goldseller real money in exchange for game gold. They are not forbidding you from actually doing it. What they are saying is that, if you do it (which is your right, since it’s your real money), they also have the right to suspend your service because what you did was against their terms and rules. They’re not saying “You can’t”. They’re saying “If you do, this will happen” which is a different beast entirely.
After, you can’t happily go down the street to the shop and buy a couple pounds of refined Plutonium for your warhead because the government has restricted its sale. It doesn’t matter if “it’s your money and you should be able to buy all the plutonium you want with it”. We haven’t reached that point. It doesn’t even get that far. The government said that such purchases are outside the law, and if you do, you’ll go to jail. Don’t like it? Move to a country with more relaxed plutonium sales laws.
If you can understand the rationale behind the government saying people can’t buy plutonium - because we can’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry with a bag of fissile material in the basement since that’d make things bad for /everyone/ - then you can understand why a game company tells you that you can’t buy gold; because if everyone could buy gold, the game would be ruined.(*)
(*) Disclaimer: Some game designs are more tolerant to a massive population of gold buyers than others.
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
That is awesome, Cameron.
“If we agree that there is no such thing as virtual property (and we do), then how can you ban me for my interactions with people outside of the game? What Iâm basically doing is buying a friend.”
That’s a panel discussion at AGDC right there!
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Maybe you’re right, Julian… that’s a damn convincing argument.
That said, I still don’t think that we as players should be okay with that, then. I mean, I still want to play the game, right? So, regardless of what I could do, I effectively have to do what they want me to in order to continuing playing the game. Furthermore, what they want me to do has no direct bearing on the gameplay (as trades for money are indistinguishable on a conceptual level from gifts that players exchange anyway). It’s silly.
From a practical perspective, should we let games dictate terms of service that control any aspect of our life outside of them? Do any other forms of media do that (I can’t think of any off the top of my head)?
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Plus, what they’ve said is that there is no such thing as virtual property, right? To reiterate my point that Michael quoted, if that’s the case, then how can they ban me at all for that? How can they even tell that I’ve engaged in that activity? They can’t even say that I bought or sold anything, so what are they banning me for? Making friends that give me gold (thanks to my generous nature and deep real-world pockets)?
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Although it will sound a little tangential at first, bear with me — I think it’s useful to look at a bit of MMO history here.
The early MUDs *DID* frown on someone else giving you 1000gp, no matter how you got it. That was cheating! By the time of EQ1, this wasn’t as big a deal, but it was still a BANNABLE OFFENSE for you to give money or items from one of your own characters to an alt — that was cheating! EQ1 went out of its way to make it difficult and risky for you to get items between characters, because that was not appropriate behavior. Over time this became a non-issue, too. But it’s still a bannable offense to BUY money… because “that’s cheating!”
None of these things particularly affected the game itself — the effects on the economy are statistically irrelevant (shh, that’s not something most companies will admit to). But these rules are reflections on what GAMERS want. They reflect the sensibilities of the target audience the game wants to capture. It’s still true that most gamers think of buying gold as “cheating”, even though they do it. Similarly, players used to think that it was cheating for you to twink out your alts with hand-me-downs, but eventually that just stopped being an issue. Why did it change? Who knows? But it seems that players’ sensibilities are becoming more and more lenient each year.
So the argument the game companies make here regarding gold selling isn’t really grounded in a lot of logic; it’s a reflection of what they think the gaming community wants, enforced by a “our way or the highway” mentality.
I think that until the average MMO gamer’s opinion changes on this topic, that is a very sensible thing to do. Otherwise they run the risk of looking like a “haven for cheaters” as some early games did. The thing is, if your game is too far ahead of player sensibilities, you look “evil.” (SOE’s marketplace servers being a fine example of jumping the gun.)
However, unlike drop-muling, gold selling does have economic impact on game companies, because gold sellers are also usually credit card scammers, spammers, and mail abusers. So companies have a very strong urge to put them out of business. The easiest way to do that will be to pad their own pocketbooks with gold sold by the game company itself. They will be able to out-margin gold sellers and take most of the profit out of it. Even when gold sellers are cheaper, it will make more sense to buy from the game company than from some shady back alley guy.
I do think that player sensibilities are coming around to the notion of buying gold, and when that happens, game companies will be apt to embrace it, and sell gold themselves.
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I draw the comparison to our existing US laws that govern the lease of land.
If you lease a property for five years and build improvements on that land, those improvements belong to the owner of the land once your lease agreement expires.
In other words, if you build a house and swimming pool on leased property, you are not entitled to any type of reimbursement for making those improvments unless the terms of your lease expressly provide for that condition.
In the same way, your subscription entitles you to lease time on their server to play their game. Any virtual property “improvements” belong to the owner of the server when the contract is terminated.
HOWEVER– In the real estate world, we have TENENT LAWS that PROTECT THE TENANT. No such laws exist to protect our virtual property. For example, online companies have no legal requirement to provide notice of eviction and can terminate the contract at will.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Well, before I keep going, an honest question here:
Has anyone (you or anyone you know) been /banned/, account terminated, not allowed to renew with the same CC or info… because of buying gold?
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I lied, I missed this one (while I still wait for a reply):
“From a practical perspective, should we let games dictate terms of service that control any aspect of our life outside of them?”
But that’s just the thing, Cam. They aren’t. Blizzard is not controlling your life, or your money, when they say you can’t buy gold. They are not telling you what you can do with your RL money. They are, however, telling you what is going to happen when your (natural and unquestionable) right to use your money however you wish intersects with their (natural and unquestionable) right to put up any rules they want for the service they provide.
They’re saying “I don’t care if you use your RL money to buy cheese, Ferraris, trips to the north pole or a bottle of antifreeze. BUT… if that money is used for buying our game’s gold, we will suspend the account because that is the only part of our interaction which we can, and should govern, as game service providers.”
And mind you, they’re not even forbidding you from actually doing it. From actually performing the exchange if you so wish. Because they can’t. They’re saying, “If we find out, this will happen”.
So it’s not “They want to control the whole extent of what you can do with your own money”. It’s “They are setting rules regarding the /product/ of your money interactions /only and as far/ as it affects, interacts or intersects with the service they provide, and no further.”
Considering all you can do with your money, Blizzard saying “you can’t buy gold to use in our game” is probably… what… 0.0000000000001% less things you can do with it? Regarding a contract/relation you entered into with them voluntarily? I don’t think that qualifies as “they want to take my right to use my money”, and I don’t even think it qualifies as ‘too much to ask’. Many other service providers in many other industries have far more draconian policies and terms of use.
It’s as if you had a set of pliers and you wanted to climb up a tower belonging to your cell phone provider. It’s not about “$Provider can’t tell me what I can cut or not cut with my own damn pliers”, and they’d be very well justified to say “You may not use pliers to cut any wires belonging to us”. It’s not much to ask.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
In answer to your first question, no. But if they say they will, then it accomplishes the same effect for me.
In response to your second comment… We can go back and forth with analogies all night. I think what it really comes down to is that I don’t think that companies should be allowed to ban people for reasons external to the game, which is exactly what “finding out they bought gold” is.
Honestly, I’ve been a big fan of the scenario that Eric describes for a while. I also agree that players are getting closer to accepting gold sales. If the company itself handles RMT, they eliminate most of the things that make RMT undesirable in the first place.
The biggest barrier to that happening is that there’s still a stigma associated with gold sales. I’d also guess that there are a lot more people who are okay with it than are willing to say so publicly.
April 4th, 2008 at 7:35 am
I think Julian is doing a good job regarding the actual sales themselves.
However, you’ve raised the point a few times here regarding “I don’t think that companies should be allowed to ban people for reasons external to the game.”
Even the smallest companies have the right to refuse service to anyone, at any time, for pretty much no reason at all. I learned this working the corner grocer at 10th and 14th in South Minneapolis years ago.
If someone was in the store and they became abusive in my presence, I’d refuse them service. I wouldn’t sell to them. I’d ask them to leave. If they continued to refuse, I’d hit the button under the counter that summoned security (yeah, it was that kind of neighborhood) and security would show and escort the person from the premise.
I once refused service in the store to someone because they were threatening toward me on my walk home. I decided that it wasn’t behavior I wanted to reward. My manager agreed. When he walked in the next day to buy some snacks, we refused him service and told him that his business was no longer welcomed there.
Realize, we refused him for nothing he’d done within the store. It was completely external to the context of the store.
I can see banning individuals for 3rd party transactions. I could see banning individuals for threatening developers on 3rd party sites. I could see banning individuals for posting detailed exploit instructions on 3rd party forums. I could see any number of reasons why studios can and should refuse service to customers and tell them they no longer want their business.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Right now, that’s fine. But banning people who aren’t disruptive is poor customer service. It’s all the stuff surrounding gold sales that’s disruptive– not gold sales themselves.
You can’t tell me that asking players not to buy gold is curbing those activities, so how does it do any good to wave a ban stick at your players who don’t have time to progress and keep up with players who have significantly more time?
April 4th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Recently, one of my guild’s members was hacked. We found out that it was likely a worm/keylogger used through a hotmail account he was using which was attached to his account. He’d never purchased gold online, and certainly wasn’t a fan of gold sellers. Yet, one day he logged in to find out his account’s password no longer worked, and when he mentioned it in our Teamspeak channel, found that he’d logged in earlier and cleared out a large portion of our guild bank.
Once he finally got his account password back, he was able to ascertain that each of his characters had been stripped, all goods sold/traded to vendors (including character housing) and the coin moved off his account. Customer service was very patient and worked quite a bit with our member over the course of three separate days. It was a time intesive process to regain the items he was able to - both on his part, and the part of the CS agents involved. CS was even able to tell our member that they’d managed to track some/most of the transactions and managed to ban those involved, but that there was little legally that they could do, since the IP’s involved originated in countries that the U.S. does not have extradition treaties with.
Anyone want to take a wild guess at why his account was hacked in the first place? Because it’s easier to fish/farm player accounts than it is to spend umpteen hours botting for cash in some obscure location. The gold sellers in this case made off with a couple hundred platinum from our member…platinum which wasn’t completely accounted for, which had to be recreated for our member anyway by CS, AFTER they’d spent hours of time tracking down whether or not his story was legitimate.
Now, while that was going on, I’m pretty sure petitions were coming in regarding stuck characters, lost loot, reset raid targets, disruptive channel spam, griefing, etc. Unfortunately, CS agents were tied up for hours worrying about our member’s information and data, so while they did that, they couldn’t assist with other issues.
Now, this is where you tell me that it’s the fault of the gold seller…not the innocent gold buyers. However, I’d love to hear the argument on how gold sellers would exist if there were no market for their goods. If there are no buyers, how can there be sellers? Who would sellers sell to if no one was buying?
You can’t wash your hands clean of the “disruption” argument, not while buyers enable the system in the first place. It’s because people buy gold in the first place that my member’s account was hacked at all. You think there’d be a reason to get into that account if there was no market for the goods?
All this talk about the poor gold buyers being victimized by poor game mechanics and a need to keep up with other players who have more time is just a smokescreen. Buyers enable the system. Buyers are just as much to blame.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Gee, I wonder what would fix that? If the company regulated the RMT market or designed around it instead of wishing it away, those problems could be avoided much more easily than trying to launch a “lets not buy gold” campaign, which (again) clearly does not work!
That whole “there would be no market without buyers argument” is great, but it’s pure wishful thinking. Any time where you have a game open to RMT and a community large enough to handle it, people are going to engage in it. Especially when you look at how games are becoming increasingly solo-oriented… it’s all about individual satisfaction instead of group advancement. If you can’t keep up time-wise and you’re jealous of those who can, what are you going to do? Buy gold. Why? Because you don’t care about people getting their accounts hacked or the negative effects of gold-spam. It’s not like you can personally prevent that stuff anyway… you see it all around you whether you buy gold or not.
Gamers have been resisting RMT since people started engaging in it, and what do we have to show for it? Only 10+ years of futile efforts to fight the gold sellers and an increasingly hostile and CS-intensive gaming environment.
I hate when people use that argument. Sure, if no one bought gold, then there would be no gold sellers. But clearly, people buy gold. If you try to stop them, threaten them, ban them, track them, warn them, educate them, or beg them not to, they still buy gold. Doesn’t that say something about gamer preferences? Look how many companies stay in business doing this!
April 4th, 2008 at 11:39 am
[…] one started at Cameron Soderan’s “Random-Battle” blog, where an excellent discussion on virtual property evolved into a series of back and forth […]
April 4th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I’m sorry, Cameron, but I don’t buy into the idea that the only way to beat the system is to become the system you want to beat.
Keep in mind that even on SOE’s exchange servers (which ARE regulated RMT), hacked accounts exist. Your utopian ideal that regulated RMT “would fix that” is simply not working in reality. It’s a great idea on paper…with nothing factual to back up the assertion. You’re working on a theory that’s flawed.
The fact that there will always be buyers isn’t something I’m arguing. I accept that. The fact that there will always be sellers for the buyers isn’t something I’m arguing. I accept that. The fact that buyers can be and should be banned right alongside the sellers is the point of contention. You seem to feel it’s somehow wrong for studios to decide that players who can’t or won’t follow the rules they agreed to should be allowed to keep playing, all in the interests of “good customer service”.
I disagree.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Agree to disagree.
Oh, but if we were in England, I would SO drive-by argument you!
April 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Quick twist on logic:
I hate when people use that argument. Sure, if no one botted, then there would be no bot programs. But clearly, people do bot. If you try to stop them, threaten them, ban them, track them, warn them, educate them, or beg them not to, they still bot. Doesnât that say something about gamer preferences? Look how many companies stay in business doing this!
Does the argument still work for botting? Why not? Don’t the same arguments about player jealousy work here?
April 4th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I don’t really care if people bot, as long as they don’t mess with my game experience.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Ebay bans auctions of digital property.
They’ve banned all the gold seller and account auctions!
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/684169/eBay_Bans_Auctions_of_Digital_Property.html
April 4th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Games could shift from a “physical” currency such as gold to buying only from reputation you’ve earned on that character. Or a similar system. That would eliminate the gold-farming bots and sellers.
However, the market (and in-game spam) would *surge* for power-leveling services, so we’re right back in the same boat, different body of water.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:55 am
“I think this is the point where youâre getting the most hung up on. Try to see it this way: The game company is not telling you that you categorically CANNOT give $Goldseller real money in exchange for game gold. They are not forbidding you from actually doing it. What they are saying is that, if you do it (which is your right, since itâs your real money), they also have the right to suspend your service because what you did was against their terms and rules.”
The issue is about in-game gold selling! Why? They said so! They said you couldn’t use real money to bribe a player, so that that player makes their character give you their in-game money, because they owned the in-game currency! They say that in their terms of service you don’t own the gold so you can’t use real money to convince another player to give gold. They should just get rid of gifting, or limit it, like the Blog post said. You’re the one who is misunderstanding the point.
“Theyâre not saying âYou canâtâ. Theyâre saying âIf you do, this will happenâ which is a different beast entirely.”
Now that’s a sticky situation. The problem is that they are banning someone from using their money to make a friend. The issue being that the developers are now trying to put their morals onto the player. I understand that they could ban you if they changed their terms of service to say specifically that ‘there will be no Real-money transactions performed to bribe players’… most likely adding ‘to perform certain in-game actions for RM or IGM gain on the side of the briber.’
June 21st, 2008 at 5:58 am
Oops, forgot the point on my first paragraph. You’re not actually buying the gold. You’re buying the player to be a pal for you. It’s not against the terms of service. They have their stinkin’ in-game currency. It’ll ‘always’ be ‘there’ lol.