Moral EULAs

For those who just get the RSS feed, there has been lots of buzz in the comment fields on virtual property issues lately: The "GOM Off-line" thread is up to 75 comments as of this post, with Jamie Hale participating, and Richard's post of his "Virtual Property Overview" is up to 41 comments, with lots of wild analogy-slinging. You know, it's almost starting to feel Slashdotty around here.

So in the spirit of comment field ascendancy, Barry Kearns, who commented quite a bit on both threads, has contributed the following discussion fodder regarding the value of blanket "morals clauses" in MMORPGs:

Many high-profile endorsement contracts, as well as employment contracts for many customer-facing job positions, contain a "morals clause". Such a clause allows for the termination of the relationship between the parties, if the employee engages in personal behavior which might reflect poorly on the organization with which they are associated.

Morals clause violations have been upheld in court cases as viable and enforceable contract provisions, and allow organizations to effectively distance themselves from representatives who engage in behavior that is not congruent with the public image that an organization wishes to maintain.

Recent discussions on Terra Nova have touched on the ethics of VW EULA provisions that reference out-of-game behaviors by players. Some players wish to exercise personal freedoms, while at the same time many VW operators wish to maintain full creative control of their environment... which includes the ability to remove any "disruptive elements" from their worlds solely at their discretion.

Is it time for VW EULAs to introduce a "morals clause", making explicit the notion that VW operators consider it "fair game" to cancel a gamer's access if they disagree with the solely "outside world" choices that a player makes?

Would you be more or less likely to patronize VWs that implemented a "morals clause" provision into their EULAs?

Discuss.

Some additional links/thoughts to add to the mix:

1) See Julian's "OWNED!" presentation. (And see TL's comments here.)

2) See the EULA-topia discussion (and the Grimmelmann post) from back in December.

3) Ren notes that some EULAs already have the functional equivalent of these clauses -- vague language such as "violating the spirit of the game" might do the trick. And I'll add that "service can be terminated for any reason" clauses in EULAs are not uncommon for many online services.

4) What percentage of players would ever decide whether to play WoW or COH based on the language in the EULAs that no one seems to read? Isn't it true that designer governance issues are largely tertiary to the motivations of "mainstream" MMORPG gamers?

Comments

[MM]

1.

What percentage of players would ever decide whether to play WoW or COH based on the language in the EULAs that no one seems to read?

This is what I've been saying all along. The devs know you didn't read it, they didn't expect you to read it in the first place. And even if they expected you to read it, they certainly don't expect that you did. That makes the EULA unenforceable, under the law.

I read on this very blog that the devs are assuming that everyone reads the EULA. That ought to be perjury in court. I bet the devs don't even read those things.

Those guys can put whatever they want in the EULA. Eventually, a line is going to get crossed and 'the rules' will be taken out of the hands of the designers completely. This virtual property debate could prove to be just such a line.

I can't speak for everyone, but I agree to nothing. It's just one more click out of thousands of other clicks that I need to perform to get the software to behave the way I want it to. I don't read it just like I don't read a lot of the text that shows up on my screen. And if I argued that in front of a jury, I think most would agree. My conscience is clear.

It's like another poster said in the long thread... if you want to change something in the VW, then change it in the VW. Don't think you can fix things by adding a sentance to a document no one is going to read.

[Tek]

2.

Gregolas>What percentage of players would ever decide whether to play WoW or COH based on the language in the EULAs that no one seems to read?

MM>Don't think you can fix things by adding a sentance to a document no one is going to read.

Word still got around pretty fast for SWG, I'm guessing because they posted their stance somewhere more easily accessible. I think I remember seeing it in the FAQ they had, way back when, but I can't find the stupid thing.

I don't think the idea should be to hide the ruling in the EULA--put it there of course, but post in the the general FAQ, and make a mention of it in some splash screen.

On somewhat of a side note, why aren't companies helping people understand the EULA by attaching a plain-English, synopsis of it to the screen when you are clicking to accept it?

[Richard Bartle]

3.

MM>It's like another poster said in the long thread... if you want to change something in the VW, then change it in the VW. Don't think you can fix things by adding a sentance to a document no one is going to read.

A developer needs to change nothing in their VW. Part of the coded physics of their VW (ie. the programming) allows a certain class of character (let's call it a "god") to do pretty well anything to other classes of character with no restriction. They can evaporate you on a whim, and there's nothing you can do about it because their powers to do so are embedded in the exact same code that defines the virtual world. Their whims are part of the rules of the VW. They don't need any EULA to zap you, because they can zap you without one!

The EULA is there as a courtesy to players so that people know the bounds of behaviour which, if they exceed them, they can expect to be zapped. Some VWs have more restrictions on them than others, and if you read the EULAs you can discern which developers are more to your liking. If you don't read them, well, that's up to you. The VW's gods don't care, because they can zap you anyway.

Richard

[Luca Girardo]

4.

Richard>The VW's gods don't care, because they can zap you anyway.

Well customers have a control tool too: they can decide to move to a new game service provider. And that is probably the control element for the zapping VW's gods.

[F. Randall Farmer]

5.

MM>I bet the devs don't even read those things [EULAs].

You'd lose that bet. I can assure you that the product managers/designers do read those agreements, and comment on them and revise them at length. I've had to write no less than a dozen of those things (at least the Community Guidelines/Requirements sections) nearly all from scratch.

I've never put in an 'morals clause' as described above, which I think is actually presented here as a kind of red-herring argument.

But, there is always a we-can-kick-yer-ass-out-for-any-reason clause. This is becuase a few bad apples DO read the EULA and try to stretch the behaviour code to the limit for any personal advantage.

It's a voluntary relationship. If the service operator becomes too agressive using that clause they'll quickly lose a portion of their customer base. Likewise, if you don't have a clause like that, and your service quality and revenue may suffer as people see 'cheaters prosper.'

Not all technically achievable play (style) makes for good business. Just read up on The Palace - distributed servers + unmoderated user uploaded avatars = chaos = no revenue.

This isn't a "moral" issue. It isn't a "rights" issue. It's a contract issue, which is entered by mutual consent and lasts as long as both parties find the relationship valuable.

The reason most people don't read the EULA, is that _they don't have to_: Their play styles are completely compatible with the service providers intent.

The only time I've ever run into EULA issues as a player is when I was invited into various systems (usually during beta) with the understanding that I would poke at the edges of what is possible with the platform. Like the time I encased my daughters Second Life house in glass...

To answer the original question:

Sure! I'd play a game with a be-good-or-we'll-kick-you-out clause! In fact, I won't play one without it!

Randy

[Carnildo Greenacre]

6.

>> What percentage of players would ever decide whether to play WoW or COH based on the language in the EULAs that no one seems to read?

I'm one of the few people in the world that actually reads EULAs. There have been a few games (ones that went bankrupt in the dot-com meltdown) that I declined to play based various clauses -- usually things like "we reserve the right to retroactively bill you for gameplay that is currently free", or other clauses I felt were grossly unfair or illegal. I've never refused to play a game based on the presence or absence of a "morals clause".

[Richard Bartle]

7.

Luca Girardo>Well customers have a control tool too: they can decide to move to a new game service provider.

Yes, that's right, they do. This is why developers try to act rationally (rather than zapping people for no good reason), and in accordance with an EULA that feel is as fair as it can be without compromising their abilities to deal with problem players.

If players won't play a virtual world without a morals clause in its EULA, OK, that means those VWs that do have one are at an advantage in recruiting players. However, if few players bother to read EULAs in the first place, the impact of such a clause on player decision-making is probably going to be low.

Richard

[Grant Henninger]

8.

Would you consider putting comments into the RSS feed? Or maybe make a second one that has full text of the posts (including the extended entry) and comments. It would make life wonderful for those of us extremely lazy individuals who don't want to have to keep checking back at the site so see if the conversation has progressed.

I will even help you make it, if you need. Because it sure would be nice. Thanks!

[Staarkhand]

9.

I read a EULA once, when I got a Nostromo n52 gamepad and wanted to know if I could use it without worrying about being banned. I usually don't read them because I assume they're reasonable, and I know that the way I play games is within the scope of the developers intent.

I assume implicitly that, while it might be a bad idea from a community relations point of view, devs can ultimately deny you access to their service for any reason. Hence there is no motivation to limit themselves by defining certain standards you have to live by.

If Blizzard included "by playing this game you agree to give up your eternal soul" in their WoW EULA it would probably only cost them a few customers.

[Barry Kearns]

10.

F Randall Farmer> I've never put in an 'morals clause' as described above, which I think is actually presented here as a kind of red-herring argument.

It certainly isn't intended as one. I'm trying to explore the boundaries of two sets of competing interests:

1. Players who consider the accumulation of virtual "things" that they may have amassed over time to have value, and tend to view the choice of REASONS for disposition of that value to be "theirs".

2. Game owners who consider it their prerogative to dictate which player out-of-game motivations are acceptable for performing in-game actions... and will enforce their view upon pain of losing any and all accumulated "value" a player may accumulated.

I consider that dynamic tension to be at the very heart of many of the "virtual property" debates. And ultimately, I think it comes down to a question of the morality of a service provider exercising their "access veto" if they consider the choices that a player makes to be incongruent with their own vision... and the game provider making those decisions based on their own judgements about whether it is "right or wrong" for a player to behave in a certain way. In other words, if I think you're bad, you lose everything, too bad. I'm God.

F Randall Farmer> But, there is always a we-can-kick-yer-ass-out-for-any-reason clause. This is becuase a few bad apples DO read the EULA and try to stretch the behaviour code to the limit for any personal advantage.

And that's precisely the sort of thing that illustrates the "going too far" aspect that I'm trying to talk about here.

I recognize that there are certain domains where that concept is applicable. Access to your home, for instance. There are other domains where it is clearly INAPPROPRIATE to apply such a concept.
A bank certainly can't legitimately close an account (and seize all assets within) if they find out the account-holder is a Democrat or posed for Playboy.

I'm trying to find the boundaries between the two cases, and how certain types of VWs land in respect to those boundaries.

I recognize that EULAs are all about "voluntary" contracts, but I also recognize that some contracts are too one-sided, even if agreed to, and the law will (rightfully) step in and nullify provisions that are deemed to cross such a line.

I could put EULA provisions in a game that allowed me to charge your credit card for any "penalty amount" that I deem appropriate, should you violate the spirit and intent of my game. That doesn't make the provisions legitimate, even if you click through.

For heavily commercialized VWs with massive player bases, I'm not sure that there's a solid legal foundation for the "we-can-kick-yer-ass-out-for-any-reason" clause.

IANAL, but aren't there provisions dealing with publicly-accessible enterprises that limit their ability to deny service for certain reasons?

I know that some restaurants, for example, (particularly in the American South) used to try to use the "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" ploy to enforce their bigoted views. They could assert that "reservation of right", but that didn't make it legitimate, and I'm pretty sure that exercise of such a "right" is not legal in all circumstances.

My reason for pointing out the concept of a "morals clause" in EULAs is to more vividly illustrate to potential players the possibility of game providers using their own subjective moral filters to AFTER THE FACT take away the "value" that a player may have accumulated.

Frankly, I think the "we can cancel for any reason" clause clearly can (and quite possibly HAS) been used in some cases as the same sort of "stalking horse" that the "refuse service to anyone" signs have been.

Are there any folks with legal insights that are willing to shed light on what the current contract-law boundaries are with respect to "denying service" to someone in commercial transactions, particularly when one party forfeits some non-trivial value as part of the denial?

[Barry Kearns]

11.

Particularly on-target observations from the "EULA-topia" discussion:

DivineShadow> And I wonder here, just *what* are VWs? Are they an inconsequential game? A perpetrator-safe sexual assault and harassment environment? A tax shelter? A goods laundromat? A mind-control scheme? An interntational trade/embargo/boycott avoidance mechanism? A shelter for racial hatred and violence? A monopoly? Which one of these regulations are we going to shelter VWs from? Which one of these are we going to let VW users and operators get away with?

DivineShadow> The issue looks simple on the surface but has such deep ramifications that it seems an insurmountable task... You can't write a law that simply says "VWs are hereby shielded from external economies" without contradicting many previous laws that have kept our modern civilization running for quite a while. What happened to property, to taxes, to liability, to public interest, to international treaties, to fair trade, to false advertising, to consumer safety, to monopolies, to tort, to consumer rights, to embargoed countries, to denied-parties, to export controls, to anti-boycott measures, to information privacy, to freedom of expression, to everything else? To hell with it? Because we want to play a game?... Seriously??

Ultimately, I think it distills down to the concept of whether it is always acceptable to construct contracts where one party can arbitrarily cancel all of the associated interests and investment of the other party, for any reason whatsoever.

I think that there is certainly an argument for allowing that sort of absolute discretionary control in certain VW cases, particularly when talking about things like therapeutic spaces.

On the flip side, I don't think it logically follows that some multi-million-dollar commercial VW enterprise should therefore be free and clear to seize the invested interests of the paying participants, just because they don't like the situation.

There's the argument that "you can always sue", but that's not always practical. Who's going to take the case of someone trying to recover $300 worth of damages from a multinational mega-corporation?

Would it take a class action suit before commercial game providers would consider changes? I'd hope not... but perhaps it's foolish to hope that (in today's world) reasoned discourse could change the course of events without litigation having to come to bear.

I'll have to look into the BlackSnow vs Mythic case a lot more closely... anyone have links to good treatments of the arguments and rulings before the case collapsed?

[Darren]

12.

MM>That makes the EULA unenforceable, under the law.

IANAL either, but I can point you to the court papers that upheld Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot EULA. Part of the story can be read at Unknown Player but the direct links to the relevant court papers are Page 1 and Page 2.

In essence, BlackSnow took Mythic to court over "various anti-trust, copyright, and anti-competitive issues" related to Mythic's impairing their ability to sell in-game items. However, Mythic argued that the EULA stated that disputes arising out of the agreement would be subject to binding arbitration (ie NOT court). The judge agreed, and bumped the case to arbitration. Unfortunately, BlackSnow disappeared into the woodwork shortly after that. Still, the precedent is there.

[Jeff Freeman]

13.

In other words, if I think you're bad, you lose everything, too bad. I'm God.

If I think what you're doing is bad for the game - the health of said game being my responsibility - then I have to kick you out of it.

I've read your arguments in the other threads regarding out-of-game item sales being no different than twinking in general, but I think that is bullocky.

Similarly, I dismiss the argument that a game MUST be designed to support out of game item sales. You can design a game any way you like.

Comparisons of this sort of enforcement to racism and anti-Semitism are laughable, and insulting.

[John Arras]

14.

Barry Kearns > 2. Game owners who consider it their prerogative to dictate which player out-of-game motivations are acceptable for performing in-game actions... and will enforce their view upon pain of losing any and all accumulated "value" a player may accumulated.

Do you believe that players using real money as a motivation to transfer items impacts the way other players can play the game? Do you think this makes it more difficult for those other players to experience the game and enjoy the content in the game, say, for example because the eBayers are camping the best loot spots 24/7?

[kelly boudreau]

15.

MM> I can't speak for everyone, but I agree to nothing. It's just one more click out of thousands of other clicks that I need to perform to get the software to behave the way I want it to. I don't read it just like I don't read a lot of the text that shows up on my screen. And if I argued that in front of a jury, I think most would agree. My conscience is clear.

It was always my understanding that ignorance to the law was no excuse for breaking it. Not that I personally agree with absolutely everything written in most EULA’s, but I cannot complain if I willingly ‘sign a contract’ without reading the fine print.

F. Randall Farmer>Likewise, if you don't have a clause like that, and your service quality and revenue may suffer as people see 'cheaters prosper.

Lineage2 NA release is a perfect example of this. User outrage at the rampant use of ‘bots, adena farmers etc’ and NC Soft’s unwillingness to enforce anti-cheating clauses found in the fine print. (among other issues that surround the game) Player dissatisfaction has been massive, and can be read on the official boards. I personally left the game for this very reason. (as well as a fistful of friends who all started playing the game together)

F. Randall Farmer>If the service operator becomes too aggressive using that clause they'll quickly lose a portion of their customer base.

To have my account ‘terminated’ without just cause, would also violate what I would expect in return from the company. But as mentioned earlier in this thread, the EULA contract is, unfortunately, a one sided one. There is no space for the player to tell the owners their terms and condition of usage – there is no negotiation.

If there was a way to implement a user-side agreement within the structure of the a game's EULA, perhaps some of these issues could be dealt with in a more equitable fashion.

[Barry Kearns]

16.

John Arras> Do you believe that players using real money as a motivation to transfer items impacts the way other players can play the game?

CAN play the game? Generally, no. DO play the game? Sometimes.

I think precisely the same situations of "impact" can and do occur without money ever entering into it. Large control-hungry guilds "monopolize" attractive and design-limited content in precisely the same way that eBayers do.

Money being involved is not a necessary condition for what you're describing.

Instead, I contend that money entering into the equation is often a RESPONSE to these sorts of impacts arising when large groups of "socially motivated" players start monopolizing access to particularly limited in-game resources... especially when such in-game resources give a decided competitive advantage to those who acquire them, and who seek to maintain that competitive edge by denying access to others who are not a part of their clique.

Fundamentally, I see this as a symptom of game design/implementation issues, and balancing the competitive landscape should be addressed through making changes to the in-game environment.

John Arras> Do you think this makes it more difficult for those other players to experience the game and enjoy the content in the game, say, for example because the eBayers are camping the best loot spots 24/7?

I think eBaying makes it more difficult in precisely the same way that large, aggressively controlling guilds/clans do... and both tend to be symptoms of the same underlying game issues.

In many MMO games, a competitive landscape is created wherein acquisition of rare and powerful items leads to significant competitive advantages for those that hold the items... and to the extent that those advantages are readily transferrable to those whose achievements did not warrant the advantage, we see problems. This is the essence of twinking.

eBaying is, IMO, largely a response to those who twink like mad and thereby "make it more difficult for" more casual players who aren't part of a huge social network to reasonably compete. To the extent that such twinking is not possible, I contend that you don't see significant commodification and eBaying.

Does it tend to impact the sense of achievement that someone has, if a new game character wields power that they clearly did not earn, when viewed from the perspective of a person who worked to achieve that power within the spirit of the game?

Yes. Absolutely. I fully understand that. What I wish more people would recognize is that making "guild twinking" so tremendously advantageous CREATES precisely that impact. When new well-connected guildies are heaped with presents galore, and advance through the game five times faster with their unearned equipment than those who have only a friend or two in the game and play it "the right way", that is when the concept of a "fair" competitive game is shattered.

I find it utterly unremarkable that a subset of the population would then substitute cash for a large social network in that case... by designing the game to allow characters to have unearned power (if another character will simply give it to them), the game makers encourage people to convince others to do precisely that: give them unearned power. That should surprise no one.

Friendship can be a motivator, and so can money.

The fact that money is infinitely more fungible that friendship might frustrate some people, but that doesn't make money or its influence somehow inherently evil.

The entry of commodification will tend to be more EFFICIENT in bringing the inherent problems of unearned power to light... but that's precisely because it is so fungible and so omnipresent.

The "camping the best spots" argument is not really about commodification. It's about poor game design. Commodification is possible in situations where no meaningful impact at all is generated on the accessibility of content, and nice-spot-camping is commonly done by a vast number of guilds.

Take "Earth and Beyond" as an example. You could go out in the middle of nowhere, mine asteroids until your eyes bled with no one else in sight for hours, and then sell off the ore for credits. Someone selling the credits on eBay is clearly commoditizing the game, but they haven't stopped anyone from accessing content.

Meanwhile, powerful guilds would monopolize access to content that spawned once a day, and would literally tell others that they would only be ALLOWED to ever access it on that guild's terms.

Once established, the competitive advantages of the loot dropped tended to perpetuate the monopoly.

There are a variety of solutions to the problem of "unearned power", but the best ones tend to involve making changes to the landscape itself...
making certain items non-tradable, setting level requirements or character certifications for use of other objects, limiting the selection or purchasing power of lower level characters, etc.

Likewise, programmatic solutions to highly contested content are also available (instancing, wider distribution of content access points, etc.

In the end, we often see an "unfair" game where some of the population is being punished/banned for using the unfair advantages (because they use money) and others who perpetuate the disparity by using their social connections, and do so with impunity.

Or, put another way: Some wreck the game with personal motivations that the providers consider "good", and others wreck it in exactly the same way with personal motivations that are "bad", and should therefore be banned.

I would vastly prefer to play in a game where all significant competitive advantages for a given character are EARNED advantages. I know of no major commercial game with significant commodification of in-game items or currency that comes close to passing that test.

Account sales are another matter entirely. I fully support the concept that a non-transferrable user account is a highly desirable and appropriate concept in many games. I embrace the concept that such accounts should therefore be treated as "do not sell"... but that also implies that accounts cannot be given away, either, so you wouldn't see cases of guilds full of previously-leveled characters given as gifts to buddies who don't have the first idea of how to use them. Those are "unearned" characters in the same sense that a character bought on eBay would be.

[John Arras]

17.

In response to Barry, I think we will have to disagree on this. I don't believe it's ok to break the rules of a system just because you don't like the system. I think it's better to just not be involved with the system if you can't agree with it. There are serious situations where you have to break the rules because a system is so important and so unjust, but I don't think an MMO where people twink each other is enough of a reason.

[Barry Kearns]

18.

I'm not saying it's OK to break the rules because you don't like them... I'm questioning whether certain rules should be in place in certain circumstances.

There's a difference. I'd like to see systems and standards on some of the more heavily commercialized MMOs change... to strike what I consider to be a better balance between the interests of the players and the VW operators. Many of today's MMO EULAs are particularly one-sided. I think that there's a case to be made that some EULAs go too far, and I'd hope that it wouldn't take a major lawsuit to get people thinking seriously about more equitable solutions.

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time that such a hope would be dashed, nor would it be the last. =/

Things tend to remain the same until and unless people "do something about it". Sometimes debating the concepts can help to get people to reconsider their positions, and that might lead to people doing something about it.

Lawsuits seem (to me) like swinging a bloody club to try to get your way. That strikes me as inelegant (at best).

[Mike Rozak]

19.

(This post could conceivably be in the "Virtual property thread" or "GOM offline" too, but I'll post it here since this is a more recent thread.)

Lets say I put a phrase into my EULA... "Thou shalt not buy/sell items/chars/etc. for real money. Offenders will be kicked off." I can even bring up a warning when users trade items just to make sure they are aware of the issue.

How do I identify and track down real-money sales? How do I modify my software design to make sales more difficult? Is there a writeup with such tips?

I can come up with a number of solutions off the top of my head, which involve things like monitoring the item-sale web sites, logging and heuristics to look for unusual item trades, splitting the world into more shards to make cross-shard trade difficult, etc. I could probably list 10 techniques off the top of my head, and many more if I applied the brainpower.

They all seem to have flaws that buyers will eventually work around. I'd be interested to see someone's real-life solutions to these problems.

[Richard Bartle]

20.

Barry Kearns>Friendship can be a motivator, and so can money

OK, so buy your friends.

Richard

[Brask Mumei]

21.

Richard> OK, so buy your friends.

Future ebay advertisement:
"Level 50 Warrior willing to be your friend! I am well known to be generous with my friends. Indeed, I have a Sword Of Demonslaying that I no longer need, but wish to pass on to someone special. Bidding starts at $50."

- Brask Mumei

[Tek]

22.

Brask>Future ebay advertisement

Heh, nice. Though, Ebay stops those auctions on there own, right? I think they don't allow anything purely intangible to be sold. There was an auction for someone's "soul" a while back, which they cancelled

[Barry Kearns]

23.

Tek> Heh, nice. Though, Ebay stops those auctions on there own, right? I think they don't allow anything purely intangible to be sold. There was an auction for someone's "soul" a while back, which they cancelled

Nope, intangibility is definitely not the deciding factor, as a great many intangible items are sold on eBay. Services are intangible, but are sold all the time on eBay. (See http://pages.ebay.com/professional_services/index.html )

The page that indexes what's allowed or not allowed is at http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/item_allowed.html

Intangible items are not eligible for eBay's buyer protection programs ( http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/purchase-protection.html ), but they are certainly not forbidden.

eBay does use a "Verified Rights Ownership" program where any organization associated with the contents of a listing can simply ASSERT that an item infringes on their rights, and eBay will take the listing down. They make no attempts whatsoever to determine whether the assertion is (in fact) legitimate, and they make it quite clear that they don't want to get involved in such a fight.

The VeRO program was the crux of the ongoing takedowns of the Everquest listings. Sony just had to assert that the listings were infringements, and eBay yanked 'em.

The "soul" auctions are more in line with the eBay prohibitions on listings for "human parts and remains". =)

[Zorak]

24.

Barry:

The eBay issue gets clouded when you try to define intangible. It seems to me that we need to be more specific in our definitions.

How about tangible, non-tangible, and conceptual?

Conceptual is something like a soul, which I cannot PROVE exists, but we both have a basic concept of. You can never actually sell me something conceptual, as it is only ever pure information that cannot be acted upon or have a direct effect upon other things.

Non-tangible applies to assets in VWs as well as services and other "things" that can be produced, in one form or another, at the request of a purchaser. You can, and people obviously do, sell non-tangible things, like services and VW assets. The legal and moral details of such a sale are what we are examining in this discussion.

I think tangible is agreed upon and needs no definition here.

Now, when it comes to the issue of selling assets from within a VW for real world money, there are two basic economic factors that motivate the owner/provider:

Maintaining subscriptions, which no one seems to have an argument against. In order to stay in business, they need to keep their player base happy, and stopping percieved cheaters is high on the list of things they are expected by their customers to do.

Protecting their investment! I don't want anyone but me to make money off my game. It was my idea, I built it, sold it, and maintain it. If a customer starts to make money off of my service, either I should hire him or get him the hell out of the system. Otherwise, I encourage the rest of the player base to try to profit from my work by selling their assets in the real world, and pretty soon, the entire community/economy is in shambles.

[Richard Bartle]

25.

Brask Mumei>Level 50 Warrior willing to be your friend! I am well known to be generous with my friends.

I don't doubt it. People could sell pickled onions on eBay "with free Sword of Demonslaying" if they wanted to get around it.

My rather obscure point was: if (as Barry says) giving stuff away in a virtual world is supposed to be morally equivalent to selling stuff, why is it that people regard buying friendship as distasteful whereas they regard giving to a friend as worthy of praise?

Richard

[Will Leverett]

26.

Just throwing a couple thoughts out there as per the original question...

MMO world development and service is so time-consuming and costly that it is unlikely that we will see any significant movement towards truly "moral clauses" by the larger providers. The legal ground here is so unknown, and the investments into the games so large, that it's just not a wise idea to be implementing anything but the run-of-the-mill agreement. Plus, you sadly cannot rely on the moral filters of all of the people, because some of them do not have your best interests at heart.

Having said that, the City of Heroes EULA was specifically written with the standard user in mind. It was designed so that someone can actually read and understand it. While still containing a good amount of legal-ese in it, the average user should be able to .

The decision to take this route was done because we have found that yes, people actually in fact _do_ read the EULA and will challenge you on it from time to time.

As usual however, a very interesting discussion.

[Tobold]

27.

The EULA is just words. What is infinitely more important is how the game company actually enforces the rules. Players who want to know what is allowed and what is forbidden do not read the EULA, they read the message boards to find out who has been punished for what.

Nowhere in the EQ EULA does it say "you are not allowed to trade platinum pieces on EBay, but you can trade them on a number of other sites". But most players are aware that this is the actual policy, and they behave accordingly.

Why do people ignore the EULA? Because experience shows that EULA and ToS are very one-sided documents. No player ever managed to reverse a ban of his character by argueing about paragraphs of the EULA. So players of virtual worlds behave like anybody who lives in a country where you can be executed at the whim of a group of all-powerful dictators behaves: They keep their head low, they don't trust the written word, and they only feel safe when they do what everybody else is doing.