ebay takes a step in the right direction.

Like it or not is covers their collective asses. They charge for their time and give away the end product. Yes it complete BS but it's legal.

That particular part of (every online game's) EULA is one that no-one's enormously eager to have tested in court. What little courtroom resolution has come up so far has strongly hinted that, even if it allows game manufacturers to "remain" the owners of the digital content, they have obligations towards the consumers that are similar in some ways to a duty of care.

Usual disclaimers:
- I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on a soap opera.
- This pertains much more closely to games where goods are normally paid for with real money, such as Second Life or Magic: The Gathering Online.

Now, that was pathetic, I remember when people got it and were like, omfg waste of money /wrists.

good, but too bad there are still alot of GW gold selling websites out there

My point is that there is no 'distribution' actually taking place. The virtual items remain the property of the game company (ie. "Intellectual Property Owner") before and after the sale. Anet can do whatever they want to your GW characters and items, up to and including deletion and banning. They own all content on their servers. Therefore, any sale of virtual items cannot be a 'sale' in the same sense of a sale of physical goods, or even intellectual property, because both of those involve actual transfer of ownership. If I 'buy' a GW sword, the sword remains on the game servers and remains the property of the game company. If I buy a real sword, the sword actually belongs to me.

The problem with any decision to place legal obligations on the game companies towards their customers is the way in which online games operate. Game companies need to retain full control of the content on their servers in order to properly administer the game service. If players actually had any form of ownership over game content, routine things like shutting down servers for maintenance, or modifications of characters/items, would be legally challengeable, and that's an unacceptable situation for game companies. If Anet shuts down the servers tomorrow, there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it. We all play the game with the understanding that the game content is not under our control.

Well, no. The sites are 'illegal' in every meaning of the word except the one that actually counts: the technical one. Selling virtual items for real-world money may be in violation of the EULA, but doesn't break any actual laws. It is not "unauthorized sale or distribution of intellectual property" because there is no actual sale or transfer of intellectual property rights occuring.

The only precedent that eBay is setting is that they'd just rather not get involved in the virtual item trade and whatever stigma and potential legal issues that might be attached. It says nothing about how viable a 'cease and desist' strategy would work against the gold sellers directly. Frankly, if it were actually possible to take legal action against gold sellers I think the industry would have done so already.

The best we can really do is to strictly monitor in-game activities and ban as necessary.

You'll notice that the loophole is actually working, whether you personally think it does or does not "cut it". Furthermore, the torrent 'loophole' isn't nearly as solid as the one for virtual item selling. It can be argued that providers of torrent files, while not directly responsible for intellectual property theft, are facilitating said theft, and can therefore be held accountable to some degree. In order to apply the same argument to virtual item sellers, you would first have to prove that what they are facilitating (specifically, the account-to-account transfer of online game items and currency) is actually illegal, and that's never been done.

2 years pre law FTW

Gr8 move Ebay <3

people instead using ebay will just need click on some random banner in any MMORPG site to buy gold

I don't think ebay is enforcing this all that well. A search for Guild Wars still brings up a huge list of items and gold. A shield has been bid up to $91 with 2 hours left. What a joke to pay more than the game is worth for a shield.

Not to mention that they're making overseas sweatshop owners rich.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003081.html

Gold selling sites instead? EBayers may be considered dumb but surely they arnt so dumb as to not do a google search and use some of the companies who have several hundred million dollar turn overs.

I would think it wouldnt jump in price as well there are gold selling sites.

Ignorance ftl... Not everyone who is rich ebays. Just because you cannot make gold does not mean others cannot.

A well known gold selling company purchased Allakhazam a popular MMORPG site forum along with Thottbott a WoW info site, OGaming and I believe they purchased some big Japanese auction site recently. I wonder why they are purchasing the fan sites and forums up? Perhaps to slip in gold selling ads one day. Its always a possibility and would be great advertising for them. Wouldnt be suprised if they purchased a few gaming magazines so they can place adverts in them as I believe most if not all have banned gold selling adverts.

Chronic Farmers? Gold Buyers? Greedy?

On another note, its interesting that Ebay has just now taken the opportunity to do this.

There are rumblings going on in Congress about virtual property and what to do about it. There are also other rumblings about Sigil with Vanguard. The creator vows to keep the game gold seller free one way or another. This could probably lead to a ground breaking lawsuit about the legality of professional gold farmers and the virtual property that they lease. Because obviously the EULA in most online games say you don't own that property.

It isn't possible to keep gold farmers out though. It's not like they can screen you before you are allowed to install the game. Noble guesture by the Vanguard team but it will prove fruitless.

m3h. There are alot of virtual items that don't have anything to do with MMO's and that already have a cash value. A decision like this may hamper peoples ability to sell those items freely. Example, Magic The Gathering Online cards. People buy MTGO singles on eBay all the time and while WoTC doesn't condone the sale of MTGO cards online they know the cards become the property of whomever packed it. The real problem companies have with the selling of online commodities is that they make no money on the secondary market.

won't really stop much, most of the buying/selling happens on sites like IGE.

While it may not be as well known as eBay, if eBay does stop allowing those things to be sold/bought then the alternatives will start to get more popular, so unfortunatly it probably will be a temporary, small bit of help, but not much or permenant.

That is why Ebay's policy states that you cannot sell virtual items there unless the owner of that intellectual property allows it. Which usually means most games with in-game currency/items. I won't pretend to know the MTGO situation but is sounds similar. It all depends on how Wizard's agreements are worded.

The issue is that a lot of companies that generate virtual items like MMOs, does not want the secondary market in the game period. They don't care whether or not that they can earn something on the secondary market. As far as they are concerned, Gold Selling/item selling for real cash cheapens the experience for the gamers and surely robs them of the sense of achieving things fairly like everyone else.

I don't expect the Ebay policy change to fix the problems with the secondary market invading online games. But this does take away one less exposure point for this gray area.

And it probably will stay that way until a new law comes along to change it. Which is probably only a matter of time.

Changing the Law in the US won't affect those who run their operations from Asia or other parts of the world.

Just look at what a hard job the RIAA is having closing down torrent sites, and they have WAAAYYY more money and lawyers.

Correct. Last time I checked American doesn't equal the world. Chaning the law in American, only effects things in America.

And since the Internet is a global network which isn't owned by anyone, chaging laws in one place makes no difference.

While it is a good move on eBay, I think its worthless in the end. Its like pebble in an Ocean.

Gold sellers will continue to sell from sites directly (Just google Guild Wars Gold to see proof) and go more "Underground" so to speak.

eBay was only a single means of them selling gold to the masses.

Anything against them would be better than nothing at all.

gg on Ebay!!! Finally theyre doing something

Hi,

I really hope that this will make the life of those who want to make profit out of GW much harder, as ebay was such a convenience to them. They are like parasites trying to take some share in the profit that Anet is doing, trying to extend the virtual world into the real one to their very own benefit.

I hope this will not go to the next level, as for WoW where the army of lawyers jumped in, even automating their work! This is real madness and a true corruption of the GW spirit.

It is unclear to me what eBay's policy actually states. A quick look at eBay's list of "Prohibited and Restricted Items" (url here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html ) doesn't give me an obvious category for virtual item sales. The initial inclination is to put virtual sales under "Digitally Delivered Goods", but that's not technically accurate, because no goods are actually delivered - again, the crux of the entire virtual item issue. The products that traditionally fall into this category are things like eBooks, downloadable software, etc. where actual transfer of ownership takes place. A virtual item sale is *not* an analogous situation for reasons I have already stated in previous posts.

The most accurate category actually appears to be "Prohibited Services", but eBay's description for exactly what constitutes a prohibited service excludes virtual items: "Sellers are not permitted to offer or solicit services on the eBay site that are illegal, sexual in nature or that violate eBay’s User Agreement". Virtual items are not illegal, sexual in nature (well, in general. you could argue that selling an account with scantily-clad characters is sexual in nature, but I doubt anybody finds a GW platinum piece sexy), and do not explicitly violate the User Agreement.

What's more interesting about this list, however, is that many of the prohibited items are common listings on eBay, including pornographic materials, modchips, counterfeit software, etc. They are so common, in fact, that I wasn't even sure that those items were explicitly prohibited on eBay until reading the list.

The decision that needs to be made is whether EULAs can be considered legally-binding documents. Frankly, I would prefer that they were not, so that people can continue clicking "I Accept" and "Next" without worrying that they are signing over their house or their firstborn to a software company, but there are pros and cons on both sides.

Not really, it just proves how weak game companies are when it comes to these matters. Granted Ebay caved in but after how many years?? and I feel it was because of the bad press they were getting from certain corners and not the game companies whispering in their ear pleading with them to stop.

Well, in the end it's about an industry against another one, and it's not always in A's interest to satisfy B's interests. It's a shame because overall this kind of thing does harm a lot of businesses, directly or indirectly, and in the short or long run. Not to mention the users that are usually the last ones to be consulted on these matters, left to "fight" between those who consume and those who offer.

But I think that most companies misunderstood the benefit of the virtual, thinking that bringing it back to the real world to make money would work easily as most people do not care so much about virtual things. Well, they don't, as long as they stay virtual! (it's a bit like spam, it makes 70% of the email traffic but no one complains as long as they don't get too much ...)

actually if you look to the left side of Guildwiki's page you will see "ads" by google - gold sellers, power leveling, etc.

I love wiki, but that is a bit much.

All I have to say is, "so will begin the E-bay black market v1.0, to the end of E-bay's ethics stance." Also noted is the idea of what will happen with those Goggle ads carry a significant amount of Spy-Ware; and will cause future problems with Goggle, unfortunately.

Well, obviously. That's why I said nobody's too eager to test this in court, as a single questionable decision could undermine every MMO's business model and send them all instantly offline in legal self-defense. In practice, however, this means that online gaming will follow the de facto terms set by the corporations that produce online content, which historically hasn't exactly led to the protection of the consumer.

...Having said all that, I'm pretty sure that if ANet had closed down all the servers and run off with the cash a couple of days after the release of Nightfall (say) they'd've been hit with a pretty meritorious class action suit, EULA or no EULA.

(again, IANAL&etc)

Oh, and regarding EBay's policies - they're determined entirely by what they can get away with + public perception. There's no internal consistency whatsoever - they'll just pull down whatever gets complained about. For instance, you can't sell freeloader discs that allow you to play (legit) games on consoles from other regions, but you can put up thousands of pirated Game Boy Advance cartridges without any fear of reprisal. The former is legal, the latter illegal; the former got complained about by corporate interests, the latter hasn't been.

Correct me if im wrong but GWguru once had a banner/advertisement to another site on its homepage about buying gold?

That isn't GuildWiki fault, that is Google ads just putting them on there.

And GuildWiki needs money from those ads to keep online.

I more or less agree, and let's be honest with each other. Ebay is a business you are in business to do one thing, make money. I truly do not see how this action promotes ebay business whatsoever. Yet I am somewhat thankful, maybe people will stop accusing me of Ebaying my FoW armor and realize I ran Sanctum Cay + Desert missions for hours on end.

Isn't all armor customized? Or are people buying whole accounts to get lvl 20 chars + armor?

He/she meant they were accused of buying the gold to pay for the armor. You can buy whole accounts with FoW armor or ranked PvP chars.

Is the display pic that awkward? I'm a guy.
... for real...
... maybe I should change that picture...
... nah Chun Li is amazing

Too bad the bulk of gold bought in games doesn't go through Ebay at all...But through indepenent sellers and communities.

I can see why banning the sale of GW items is a good thing... but "all virtual items" in general? There are a lot of other games out there where people are actually spending money for these "virtual items".

For instance... in GW you can farm gold/items/etc. and sell them for money. Didn't cost you anything except for time and effort.

Other games (Magic Online comes to mind) actually has people using real money to buy virtual items (packs of virtual magic cards). eBay should really allow these items to continue listing.

I highly doubt that.

Google has a lot of control over its ads business. And anyone can report an ad for distributing spyware.

Matter of fact, the Guildwiki people could filter out those gold ads if they really wanted to.

Yeap what a shame people may actually have to do something(put effort) in game to get the goods. Or we'll see people start whining for Anet to sell gold in the online-store so they dont have to put any effort in the game.

Well where am I gonna get an Eth BotD now?



Nice move, eBay. Btw, eBay still gets paid for the listings that you list and they close.

Oh yes, this will exponentially change the game for everyone. Although somewhat noteworthy, big deal.

The WHOLE reason AND ONLY reason ebay banned virtual items was the gold sellers from mainly China. I had first hand knowledge and knew about the upcoming ban on items back in October. Ebays problem with the market was...the gold sellers were listing say 1 mil gold at 8 cents, but actually selling it for say $50. Doing this allowed them to skirt ebays final value fees. So back in October the lead programmer from ebay contacted me and said that they DID NOT have a problem with legit sellers of virtual items, but that since the gold sellers continued to skirt the rules they decided to block the entire market.

So it sucks that the actions of a few ruined the marketplace for all. Ebay was a good way to sell say a godly sword at a fair market price. Since GWs doesn't have an auction house.

So this is why I see bots spamming adds for in-game gold again?