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

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, kuvasza wrote:

> 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:

Jabbing ice picks into someone's back is an embedded part of the
RealWorld play experience, but few are going to claim I have a
"right" to do that. The ability to do something doesn't translate
into a right, if rights have any meaning at all.

> 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.

Grin, any PvP game where there is enough complexity that no one is
able to formulaicly determine who has an objective advantage is like
that. I sometimes think that every player in Achaea thinks that
every other class besides his is overpowered. Even classes that were
designed to be intentionally weaker in PvP get accused of being
overpowered.
 
> 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.

What? Just because the design is shifting doesn't make an object
doesn't have value. It's not able to be argued that the object has
value. In fact, this entire lawsuit is predicated upon the item
having value. If it didn't have value, Blacksnow wouldn't be in
business, because no one would pay a penny for what they are
selling.

Asserting ownership is the sticky point.
 
> 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.

These decisions have other consequences that may outweight the
benefit of wiping out Blacksnow's business.

> They could assert that all powerful items are attuned to specific
> characters and do not retain their properties when wielded by
> another player.

We do that for the most part with our Artifacts (special items
costing between about $20 and $1500 dollars). Only the owner can
wield the weapons to use, and all the other items reset back into
the owner's inventory once per hour, so they can be loaned out at
best (always good marketing to let other people try out some of the
cool toys like that).

However, Artifacts are also -only- obtainable from us. They aren't
part of the in-game economy per se, whereas Mythic may feel that
since their powerful items are gained mainly via gameplay, they want
those items to be able to be part of the economy.

>   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>

Yeah, I'd certainly want to think on it too. A court case against
the crap lawyers that Black Snow have might be fairly easy to win,
while stopping all trading of items in the game might have serious
financial consequences.

>> 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.

I don't see it happening either, mainly because it's not real
property, and is not amenable to being treated as such.

> 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?

I've always wondered about this myself. It's particularly applicable
to Achaea's business model, becuase people are not explicitly paying
for online time, whereas in a subscription model, a very good
argument can be made that you are paying for your time online there,
and can expect nothing but your time online.

> 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.

I agree with everything you're saying about the ridiculousness of
trying to legislate that kind of thing in the context of online
gaming. I just hope the legal systems will too.

--matt

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