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General: Goldseller gets Sued
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
Another well known gold selling company in being sued in the wake of Blizzard's announcement earlier this week that they are suing Peons4Hire. A class action lawsuit has been filed against IGE, saying the company diminishes the game experience by depleting in-game resources, devaluing currency and making the game unfair for honest players. This lawsuit was filed independently of Blizzard.
Major MMO gold selling firm IGE has been targeted by a Florida class action lawsuit claiming that the company has impaired users of World Of Warcraft by its in-game gold farming, adding to a recent Blizzard lawsuit against gold-farmers Peons4Hire.
Specifically, the independently filed suit, which is not associated with World Of Warcraft creator Blizzard, claims that IGE is "...reaping substantial profits by knowingly interfering with and substantially impairing the intended use and enjoyment associated with consumer agreements between Blizzard and subscribers to its virtual world called World Of Warcraft."
Some of the specific effects that the suit is claiming to individual World Of Warcraft subscribers include those of time ("IGE gold farmers strip old scarce and limited virtual world resources and materials") and devaluation of currency, while also pointing out destroying of "the subscriber experience" through chat spamming, junk mail, and "honest subscribers [being] competitively disadvantaged."
Get the details of the lawsuit here.
Read more at Gamasutra.
Comments
IGE's being sued by a player not Blizzard. This is probably the best way to go in order to stop or discourage gold selling sites to have groups of player form against them and file class action suits. If game companies did it it could lead to government interference(as in more crappy taxes).
Personally I feel gold sellers are the worst thing that happened to MMOs, because is so freely circulated and some bozo spends 200 bucks on say 5000 gold they suddenly are willing to pay unreal prices for items that go for a whole lot less. Then people that sell these items fairly on the auction house think "Hey we can get more" so they charge more and gold farmers take advantage of this increase and start selling items for even more to get the GOLD back they sold!! Granted most of their gold comes from obliterating entire areas of stuff they're not even going to use for in game purposes.
Down with Gold Sellers!
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Tbh IGE have already won
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This is FANTASTIC news!
I hope and pray the suit is successful!
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Support Independent Game Developers
http://www.productsliability.net/our-firm/press-room/featured-news/class-action-filed-against-ige-gold-farmers/
Where do I sign up??
I can't state what I think of you without getting banned from the site. I hope once they are done suing the farm stands... they start lawsuit hunting people like you.
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Support Independent Game Developers
Absolutely... sue the hell out of them and take them for there last cent. Then maybe the asshats will think twice before doing it.
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Support Independent Game Developers
/me hopes more companies joins up!
Knowledge is Power!
As much as gold sellers disrupt various game worlds, or at very least their economies, it doesn't change the fact that this guy, from a legal standpoint, doesn't really have a case. Because he did and could log in and play the game, he received the service he paid for. IGE did not truly prevent him from playing, however stealing account info would be a good example of stopping someone from using a game they had bought.
Anyway, the point is that Blizzard would have a case against IGE, but they're not the ones suing. A player is. Blizzard, as the one who's property is being sold without their consent, could and perhaps will file suit, but a player doesn't have right arguments or resources to take on a big boy like IGE. As much as you might applaud his efforts, this really needs to be something the MMO companies duke out with the gold sellers, not the playerbase.
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Like someone else said though, I really DO think that if Blizzard was suing them (like they're suing peons4hire) they would definately hae a case. They are purposely trying to profit on the destruction of Blizzard's property by abusing their accounts and intentionally violating the EULA.
I think that they should crack down on gold BUYERS as well. It takes two to tango and the gold sellers would dry up if people weren't buying gold from them. I think buying gold once should be a bannable offence and if you get another account and are caught doing it again then they should threaten legal action.
As a side note, could this almost be a round about way of getting real money for in game items/money? The guy suing IGE is trying to get real cash for something happening in a virtual world that he doesn't like. From a legal standpoint, if he wants to sue someone he should be suing Blizzard for accepting his payment every month and failing to rid the servers of the farmers. Technically it's Blizzard's property, he's just licensed to use it. It's like if someone printed an offensive add in a magazine you wouldn't go after the add designer, you'd go after the magazine for printing it.
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The class action will never see the inside of a court room. That's just how frivilous this suit is. The judge may even develop a hernia from laughing so hard that he may have to counter sue.
You people are so wierd lol.
If they do get into court then that sets a standard that gold sellers can be sued thus lessening the amount of gold selling.
Personally I really don't care about gold sellers or account sellers. I do feel that it should be a company controlled thing however, like SOE did. Make it safe and sanctioned so people don't get accounts/gear/gold stolen. Even if the government has to get involved for taxes etc I would be fine with it. The Sellers should be taxed appropriately for goods/services rendered.
Back onto the whole gold seller argument, who cares? If someone wants to farm for 20hrs straight to get gold thats fine, if someone would rather work for 4hrs then buy the gold from the 20hr player that is fine too. Some people like spending their time in game having FUN (OMG fun in a game?). I think the whole issue is more of a game development issue rather than a gold seller issue. If the developers just made the gold/gear requirements to stay competitive a bit less then people would be having fun.
I remember back when Naxx came out in WoW. As a mage I had to farm flasks, Frost power potions, Fire power potions, Greater arcane elixirs, Night fin soup, repair bots, bandages, and repair money. That was just for myself, I also had to pitch into the healer/guild fund. Not fun dropping 200g+ and several hours of farming a week just to wipe on some bosses(Curse you Thaddius!). If you didn't farm, you didn't raid, so most of my "fun" time playing games was spent farming things till my mind went numb. I quit shortly afterwards because of that so if you want to know why gold farmers exist, it is because Blizzard made a game that required so much farming. They may have fixed this in the new TBC patch but the damage is already done.
I am hoping that Warhammer doesn't require so much farmer if any at all. I want to log in and play the game not farm to then play the game.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this could be the start of something big. Could Blizzard possibly jump on the band wagon? Could this lone person have more cash than we might imagine? Could he really prove a major thorn in IGE's side? I hope so.
The day that the gold selling, cheating scum leave MMOs will be a grand day.
IGE earn their money out of someone elses work; the hard work of the developers that make these games for us to enjoy. Every penny that they earn degrades the game just that little bit more for the honest gamer. They are theives as the currency they sell is not theirs to sell. It's the same as if you just wrote a book that had taken 3 years; you sent it to the publisher and he published that book with himself as the author. He gets the credit, you did the work. It's wrong; it's stealing.
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Would be nice if this lawsuit turns up some free WoW time to compinsate for the time we waste dealing (or trying to ignore) gold spammers.
Tenbwen
It is not a Developer suing IGE, it is a paying customer.
And that's a huge difference.
If it was a Developer to sue, they would have to demonstrate that the virtual assets are their property.
Because there is not such a law that cover Virtual assets, they would have lost.
The Judge would have ruled that because there is not such Law that expressively mention that Virtual assets in a game are property of the Developer, therefore anyone is entitled of use them and sell them as they wish (And that s what happened before).
Because the Class act has been filed by a paying customer the issue is completely different.
He doesn't have to prove that the Virtual assets are his or the developers property, because it is irrelevant to the complaint.
This Class act is about customer protection rather than economic damages.
What the Class is saying is that IGE, with his behaviour is infringing the right for the paying customer to enjoy the game as originally intended by Blizzard and its EULA, which is what the customer is paying for.
IGE is modifying this experience in a way that is not allowed by the game design (falsifying the economy and giving unfair advantages to others who buy items from them), therefore damaging the honest customers who pay for the game and for the subscription, therefore making it bad value for money for the honest customer.
I think this time IGE will have very hard time.
It was about time.
A noble gesture, but a pointless one. To succeed in a lawsuit this guy would have to demonstrate some kind of significant financial loss which could be monetarily compensated. Since he's only paying fifteen bucks a month to play the game to begin with, and only a certain proportion of this play can be said to be being disrupted by farmers, the actual values we're dealing here are so negligible that no court would waste its time hearing such a case. It's like suing the person next to you in the movie theatre for disrupting your enjoyment of the film by chewing too loudly... pointless. But hey, obviously this guy has money to burn on spurious litigation. Too bad he's not choosing to spend it on some of the more worthy legal issues alive today.
Also keep in mind, before you all choke on your outrage at the despicable evils of gold farming, that it's other players who are funding this industry by buying the gold/items/pre-levelled toons/whatever... obviously everyone doesn't feel the way you do about it. And even if by some miracle lawsuits like this became successful, all it would do is push these companies offshore to the (many MANY) countries in the world with more `relaxed' legal systems. Supply will always grow to fulfil demand. Learn to live with it or go play something less popular... the farmers are here to stay.
Suit will be tossed, and no clas action will be certified. Remember that you can file for class action status but you must show a couple things: first you must show that there is a class out there that all share substantially the same harm; that the person suing can adequately represent the class fairly; and that monetary damages are adequate and appropirate rememdy. Here they need both an injunction to stop the gold selling and that money damages are enough, they're going to lose.
The hardest part of a suit of this type is to show actual damages and MMO's make it virtually impossible to prove this point simply by the statement on each box sold. The statement "game experience may change during online play" points out that your gaming experience changes every time you play, there is no set "style" of play, and you accept the changing online world. The plaintiff has to set out a standard for game play experience that the gold farmers ruin. T hey can't due to that simple phrase printed on every online game sold and usually in the terms of service. While you may wish the suit to succeed, it won't.
The other problem your going to have is the fact that other paying player's purchase the gold. Gold farmers simply harvest the gold, they don't use it themselves to ruin an economy, other playing players do. So now you have a huge intervening cause of damage that cannot be pinned on the gold farmers.
I don't see this case going anywhere at all, much less gaining class action status. Moreover, if the plaintiff continues to try and sue when it is all but virtually assured that they won't win, then under most state laws, IGE will be able to counter sue for their attorney fees because the plaintiff's case wholly lacks merit, or is not suppored by law or fact.