Player sues MMO… and wins?!

November 27, 2006 on 7:38 pm | In MMO (Live), General Gaming, Industry

Got this from one of my newsfeeds, but I see Slashdot picked it up as well.

Basically, a player sued an MMO company because their account was banned for long enough that their virtual goods depreciated in real world value.

Here's something for you MMORPG players out there. This month, an online gamer won a lawsuit worth thousands of dollars against Chinese game operator Shanda. The lawsuit revolved around devalued virtual game equipment and a damaged reputation.

Here's what happened: According to the report, a player of the MMORPG Legend of MIR II earlier this year logged into the game simultaneously from two accounts on the same IP address in order to transfer equipment from his account and another player's.

This prompted the owner of the second account to complain to Shanda, saying that his account had been looted by the first guy. Shanda then proceeded to suspend the account of the the guy accused of virtual theft.

It didn't end there (if it did then we wouldn't have a story at all). The player whose account had been suspended sued Shanda in Hengyang County, and according to the report the lawsuit included "requiring Shanda to unblock his account, and pay compensation of RMB 45,000 (US$ 5,625) for the depreciation of his game equipment during the suspension period, the damage to his character's reputation in the game, and his travel expenses."

The court evaluated the player's equipment through 5173.com and found his claim to have merit. He was awarded compensation of over RMB 30,000 (US$3,750). This decision was handed down on November 15. Shanda has made no comments on the case, and the company has four days left to make an appeal.

The details don't matter to me much really. Like, why would the player who had the second character complain they were looted when it was supposedly the recipient of nice new goods.

But what I do find interesting is that this 5173.com site (which I can't find an English version of) has such clout a judicial body would reference it to track the real world value of a virtual good. And then to actually require the company pay that player back for it.

There's lots of questions and potential ramifications here, but the biggie for me is this:

If an external company can ascribe real world value to a good, and the government validates that, then the control the developer has over that good is reduced. What happens to game balance then? What if an uber sword was deemed too uber and was nerfed? Suppose that sword was already sold to another player? Would that player be able to sue the company for diminishing the value of their purchase because they decided to better balance the game?

What does this do for mudflation? Can that even happen anymore? Or will a good need to stay the same relative value throughout the life of the game?

I am really hoping this is an isolated exception to the general rule, because otherwise there's big trouble ahead.