[MUD-Dev] BlackSnow sues Mythic for online property rights

[kuvasza]

"Sellers, Mike" <msellers at origin.ea.com> wrote:

> Or was it?  This is really pushing the question of who owns
> virtual property.  The property --an instance of software and
> art-- is created by Mythic and never leaves Mythic's servers.
> OTOH, there is a clear and consistent expectation that an item
> gained by a player in the course of the game is *theirs*.  Is it
> theirs only within the context of DAoC's game, or is it truly
> theirs?  I'm sure Mythic is going to take the former view, while
> BSI believes the latter.

I think there's a series of interesting points here that intersects
with the DAoC release.

I don't think BSI is contesting ownership.  I think what they are
doing is contesting the right to transfer an item or good or service
to another character.  Which is something that Mythic made possible
in their game engine.

As a preface, I received a six-month membership to DAoC in October
so I've been playing the game off and on since release.  I purchased
the Prima Strategy Guide.  I purchased the game in retail.  That
amounts to, what, $140 invested in a game that I didn't beta-test
over a six-month period.  The six-month membership runs out in May,
I think.


The right to transfer an object is an embedded part of the DAoC play
experience.  In DAoC, an item, once acquired, can be bandied about
in a number of ways:

  - dispose of the item (shift-d)
  - sell the item (shift-s)
  - drop the item and allow the game clock to sweep it up
  - give the item to another player/npc
  - etc.

Items are bandied about non-stop.  Which leaves a battle to ensure
what?  That the transfer of items is properly motivated?  Or to stop
BlackSnow from mediating the exchange?  Or to stop BlackSnow from
profiting off the exchange?

> OTOH, there is a clear and consistent expectation that an item
> gained by a player in the course of the game is *theirs*.  Is it
> theirs only within the context of DAoC's game, or is it truly
> theirs?  I'm sure Mythic is going to take the former view, while
> BSI believes the latter.

Two issues here: ownership and value.  Value as relates to damages.

In the current play environment, BSI can't assert that any item on
the Mythic server has any actual, enduring value.  There's been
significant redesign of the game since release.  Mythic is rapidly
changing objects/characters in their game in order to achieve some
sense of 'balance' which they apparently feel is lacking.  That or
they're catering to whoever is screaming loudest.  Or their
developers are out of control and love one realm and hate another.
Pick your explanation.  Before one patch, armor was +6 to strength,
after the patch it was +9 but net strength went down because they
nerfed all the buffs that rangers rely on (net: rangers got slapped
in the face and their counterparts, the mostly non-magical albion
scouts got a huge boost).  Before this last patch, firing time to
get off a crit shot was 4.0 seconds and after the patch it was 4.6
seconds.

Hibernian rangers have been nerfed every patch since November.
Hibernian Champions got whacked upside the head in the patch before
this last.  The 'Smite Clerics' of Albion are reputed to be 'getting
theirs' next.  Midgaard went on a tear a month back because they
wanted to take as many keeps as possible before their play-style
significantly changed (a change in the rules about instant stuns and
messes).  Pretty much every body gets a turn at the chopping block
and the stretcher on a regular basis.

I have never seen a game where every one was so invested in seeing
to it that every other class was as weak as possible.  It's like the
old parable about the Russian farmer whose cows died: later in the
tale they get a magical wish and rather than wish for more cows they
wish that their neighbor's cows would die, too.

The design of the game is like shifting sand and there is no respec
option.  So good luck asserting that an object has value.  At most
you can assert ownership.  In truth, the DAoC release reminds me
strongly of a beta-test except there is no plan for a
character-wipe.

Asheron's Call saw nothing like this.  The core value of a good held
quite a bit longer but players weren't directly pitted against one
another, there, except on the Darktide server.  The entire
player-base didn't actively scream on a regular basis for another
class to be redesigned because it wasn't a zero-sum game (you win, I
lose).

Anyways...

Fighting a case like this in civil court strikes me as a bit silly.
Assuming that the transfer of items between players is a bad thing,
designers could fight it in-game by making design changes.  They
could make most of their items non-transferrable once they are taken
as loot from a creature.  They could assert that all powerful items
are attuned to specific characters and do not retain their
properties when wielded by another player.  They could assert that
all items decay over a 3-month period.  Or they could assert that
items grow in power only after being wielded for 3 months by the
same player or after a certain number of levels (delayed
gratification).  A sword wakes up only after you kill 100 goblins
with it, single-handedly.

There's any number of creative ways to poison the well if transfer
of items between players is a great evil.

So...

  Option a: I can fight the battle in an arena where I have absolute
  discretion Option b: I can fight it it in an arena where someone
  is charging me $300/hr and the judge and jury are trying to bend
  their minds around the whole concept of an online game.

Hrmm, let me think about that one.  <ponders>

> Virtual property, I believe, will eventually come to be recognized
> as real property by the populace and by the law.  Once this really
> begins to gel, those companies that don't want to toe that line
> will be forced out of the marketplace by those who do.

This takes things on a radical, nasty tangent.  I can't see it
happening.  It lets loose too many nasties lurking in Pandora's Box.

If players owned digital property in an online game environment,
couldn't they seek injunctions against online game companies to
force them to continue a game they were discontinuing?  By ending a
game (say to move from Gemstone I to Gemstone II) does a developer
destroy the property of their customers?  Are character transfers
between versions of a game mandatory?

Is a game responsible for damages to players if they fail to backup
the player database on a regular basis and a crash takes the server
down and a player loses an item they hunted for for a week?  Does
BlackSnow get to make money as expert witnesses on the valuation of
lost goods?  Is my character the virtual equivalent of a Westminster
Dog Show champion housed at a pet kennel?  If you don't feed it, and
it dies, do I get to sue you?

Are players going to be given rights like stockholders, where they
can demand that the management not make certain changes that will
destroy the value of their property?  If you violate the terms of
service, do I have to go through a legal procedure to evict you?

Just imagine pain and suffering damages in the context of an online
game.

It's all rather absurd.  Interesting, but absurd.

Steven

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