Disagreeing to small part of Guild Wars agreement

I was quite shocked by reading a certain detail of the user agreement that Guild Wars presented my yesterday. The agreement is basicly denying ownership of our accounts and all virtual characters / items where we invested so much time in. Because thye disagree button completely denied access to the account I wrote this e-mail to ArenaNet's community e-mail address:

I wonder what you (Guild Wars players) think about the agreement.

this is to prevent selling something that you "own" as a virtual thing.

completely normal to me. O:

You don't "own" anything.

Your characters, items and titles are just figures in a database.

Nothing in that database is yours.



The only thing you have is the privilege (by no means the right) to play their game, which happens to rely upon you acquiring certain in-game assets.



On the other hand, relax, it's legal mumbo-jumbo to protect them (and us) from the scourge known as gold farming and botting.

They'd be pretty damn daft to delete our characters and items.

I suppose that even in the extremely unlikely eventuality that Anet has to close up shop, they'd release an offline version of the game and the ability to download your characters.



Remember that they're a commercial company.

Any good business has customer satisfaction as their primary goal (along with making money).

You read it? oO

I just click 'accept'

this is pretty standard with most MMO's and i knew it was the case when i got GW originally, especially that i was kind of renting the use of the game, rather than buying full rights to it, like a normal offline game... so yeah, doesn't bother me in the slightest

Yeah all games are like this. All yours chars, items and whatnots are just little bits of data stored in their database. They own all code related to their game.

As Mokone said its normal.

And if they want to they can sue your butt for selling there stuff.

The reality is that what you pay for is the right to use the account, characters, servers, etc.. and as long as you do it the right way (I'm NOT going into this, we all know right from wrong, we're not 5 year olds), they won't bother you. That's basically the agreement for all games. Play fair and enjoy yourself.

This is always so with computer data: The 'owner' is the creator/developer or the company who pays for developing the data. You pay for using it. A user areement should make this clear and also provide guarentees for the usage. The only problem I have with user agreements is that you never can say 'no' after purchasing and installing the game. Because you won't get your money back.

Normal for games, though I don't like that we don't own the account. But what can we do? Nothing illegal or anything about that agreement.

it's actually normal for all commercial software. if you look carefully at your microsoft window's EULA, it will mention the same thing. you do not OWN that copy of windows, you've merely bought the PRIVILEGE of using it.

I think it should be worded differently, to properly protect the interests of the player and state the intent of the rule. Anet and NCsoft can't afford to have the legal status of a virtual stock exchange put upon them.

Otherwise, it makes sense.

Its basically there to stop sale of items/accounts for reall money (you can sell what you dont have.)

As pointet out already, anet would be pretty bad at moneymaking if they ever acted upon this part of agreement without good reason (duping bans, etc...)

Besides, there are way worse things in EULAs generally. (BTW: this is NOT legal binding, its just worthles piece of paper at court in civilized world, dont worry about it)

LoL why do u want to own something that is pure fantasy anyways? Wouldn't that mean you have a problem...

Yeah, I know it's not an agreement counting for law, at least not in my country (NL). I also understand for the need to protect against gold sellers. But I think there is a better way than this.

This kind of agreement is not only in online games, but in a lot of business to business applications as well.
The thing is, by playing guildwars, you are using a service. You are not the owner of the game.

This has not only to do with gold / item selling, but with account ownership in general.
When you are the owner of an account, you have more rights than when you are the user of a service.
Granting access to a service while denying user ownership prevents a lot of legal liability.

And may I remind you the end-user agreement does count in The Netherlands, but there have not been many court cases about them (yet).

If you become owner of this, then you need to handle the taxes that come from it as well.

Investing hundreds, or even thousands of hours into something could by regulation be considered a craft.

If online services were to transfer ownership to players, players would be required to be eligible to own property (goodbye under 16/18/21 demographic), and you'd need to file acquisition of property with IRS (or whatever the tax collection agency you oblige to), and you'd need to pay tax for every single item you obtain this way in a game.

Even if it were loot, people are required to pay taxes on lottery and other gambling winnings.

Needless to say - property in MMOs is a thing governments are itching to tax, since they are looking at billions upon billions of revenue per year.

eBaying or trading in-game items would then become subject to trade laws - scam someone in game (sell items under the market price) - go to jail. Real one, not a virtual one.

This is a topic nobody wants to touch with ten foot pole, since it has so many ugly sides, that it would instantly kill online gaming.

Be careful what you wish for.

Second-life is pioneering this area, and serves as poster child for legal aspects of virtual property. So far, whenever government pressed on them, they removed that part from the game. Recently, this involved gambling. Could you play guild wars without loot? Would you want to play GW, where someone files a lawsuit against you for selling items for 100k, when their market price is 5k?

Go look at SL - it's happening daily.

This isn't you're game, It's no ones game, it is Anets game, and they can do whatever they want with it. You have payed and agreed to use *their* service.

It's really easy enough to understand that, when you look at it logically, if you break their terms of service or disagree with it, then you cant use it.

*No player owns guild wars, they just have the right to access the service and use it, under the terms and conditions of the EULA*

Every program agreement I can recall reading always states that you do not own it - you are simply paying for the right to use the software. This is standard procedure.

Drop it, or don't agree and stop playing.

EDIT-
Thought I would mention that agreeing to the EULA does give you the right (not privilage) of using the software, as long as you abide by all terms of the agreement. However, as soon as you break it, the contract is void and you forgo this right. And the EULA almost always includes a We can change this when we want - in which case, if it is changed, you must agree to the new EULA to retain your right of use.

Although the text previous to this sounds like a logistical nightmare if it is anywhere near true, I wanted to clarify one thing with the quote.

The above quote requires the seller to be directly or indirectly fabricating (read: lying) the market price to the buyer. In other words, I tell you that Item X is worth 100k or more, and that is what everyone else is buying/selling it at, when in actuality it is around 10k.

Otherwise, to use a real-world example, the re-sale of used cars (or anything used) would be an entirely illegal process if we just followed the quote as is.

The Market Price is determined by (drum roll!) the Market, in other words, the people buying and selling. The "price" of an item is only how much the buyer is willing to pay. The encompasses persons buying for higher and lower than the "market price." Since market prices don't magically change when we go to sleep, it requires the buy/sell variance to push it either up or down.

So if I offer an item for 100k (or $100 for real-world examples) and you pay it, but in reality its only worth 5k (or $5), that's fine so long as I didn't attempt to deceive you into believing my price is what everyone else is currently paying.

Remember the old Adage, buyer beware.

And as to the EULA statement, if we "owned" our characters we would have the ability to modify them, as in direct code changes, which opens up a big can of worms as to trying to maintain a uniform game.

If it makes you feel any better, remember, the EULA is non-binding. It is essentially a tissue-paper agreement, since clicking "ok" is not a signature (yet, see Apple for current attempts at new laws), so you are not entering a contract.

If you want to feel that you own the character, go right ahead and feel that way.