Do People Buy/Sell MPQ Accounts

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

The EU decision afaik also held that all online services that form an integral part of a software package fall under that software's license and are by law sold and transfered together with said license to a new license-holder. The software's producer is not allowed to interfere with these online components when a license is transferred and are expected to treat the new license-holder the same as they did the original license-holder.

This ruling is iirc also the reason the german consumer rights authority is preparing a case against Valve and Steam.

Sea wrote:

Actually, there is a EULA. On the iOS version, it is under License Agreement on the App Store, and you implicitly agree to it by downloading the app. I assume there is something similar for Google Play/Steam.

Whether or not there is a EULA is actually not all that interesting at all. In Europe a EULA, ToS, etc. cannot limit rights granted to you by law. Any clauses attempting to do so are automatically void...

Sorry, I'm much more familiar with US copyright law in which this is not the case and had only a cursory understanding of the EU decision. I've read a bit more on it, and the decision does not extend to maintenance agreements. So even disregarding the EULA, D3 can simply refuse to allow the new licensee access to any updates. If you think about how often the game is updated and how quickly the game becomes unplayable if you don't update, D3 can effectively stop resales that way.

However, I also think the EULA is still important because the EULA states that D3 may modify/eliminate any virtual good/currency for any reason. Thus, just like D3 can do whatever it likes to the account under the original licensee, so it can with the purchaser, including sandboxing the account or deleting their entire roster or whatever.

I think it still remains that while D3 may not be able to stop the sale, it has a wide variety of tools to make any resold account valueless.

Edit: Also, the EULA states that this is a revocable license which I believe puts it outside the scope of the Oracle decision, so D3 may have the right to outright stop the sale.

Unknown

Virtual Currency and Virtual Goods. The Game may include “virtual currency,” consisting of coins, points or similar items that may be earned or obtained through the Game or otherwise purchased by you using actual (‘real world’) currency, subject to applicable law. The Game may also include “virtual goods,” consisting of digital items such as commodities, abilities or other goods that may be earned or obtained through the Game or otherwise purchased by you using actual or virtual currency, subject to applicable law. We can manage, regulate, control, modify or eliminate virtual currency and/or virtual goods, including the price thereof, at our discretion, and will have no liability to you or any third party for any of such actions.

http://www.d3p.us/EULA/MarvelPuzzleQuest/

So yeah, they can do whatever they want to your account whenever they want for any reason.

The sole reason they won't do it randomly is that it would scare people off the game.

Unknown

The armchair lawyers tend to think the EULA is more ironclad than even the company that wrote them. The company is free to write whatever they want in EULA and by clicking 'I agree' explicitly or implicitly doesn't make it any more or less legitmate. The Microsoft EULA used to say you cannot use Microsoft product to criticize Microsoft, so if you post on a board saying Microsoft sucks using IE that'd be against the EULA. That didn't hold up in the court of law. There are some rather ridiculous assumptions in the EULA and most of them boil down to 'you don't own anything' which is no more of a law than 'Microsoft product cannot be used to criticize Microsoft' that Microsoft tried to put in their EULA.

I mean based on the way some of you guys think EULA Is some kind of all encompassing law of the land that'd mean if I was in charge of D3 I can run a 80% off sale and then immediately shut the game down and take all the extra money generated and you would have no recourse whatsoever on this outright scam assuming I don't care about my reputation at all. No, if such a thing happened you will likely be able to recover most of the money because it's blatant thievery. Now generally speaking companies are not in the business of outright scamming and they've a reasonably strong case, and then there's always the fact that most people simply don't care enough to fight for their virtual rights to try to take a company in court. The law considering virtual stuff is out of date, but it's not because judges are stupid and really believe that your roster is totally worthless because the EULA said so. It's that nobody really wants to deal with the idea of guaranteeing some kind of value for virtual goods, because then what happens if a game change destroyed the virtual value of your character? In the past they'll just say 'well nothing has value anyway so we can change this stuff'. If the courts do acknowledge that your virtual good has value (it almost certainly does), then what happens when Sentry gets nerfed? Are they supposed to refund the money of every person who ever purchased Sentry? Most games don't even have an accounting system capable of keeping track of this stuff even if they wanted to. Accounting in virtual world is just a mess which is why nobody wants to mess with it, and it's also why organized crime do money laundering in virtual currency because it is really hard to unwind a transaction like say someone stole $10000 from your credit card, bought 5 zillion gold in WoW, went on an in game splurge and sold some of it back to the RMT companies for cheap for $1000. By then the money has transferred through a dozen entities and it'd be a nightmare to unwind this, and you'd have a case like this every time a character of significant power is nerfed on a much bigger scale.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The armchair lawyers tend to think the EULA is more ironclad than even the company that wrote them. The company is free to write whatever they want in EULA and by clicking 'I agree' explicitly or implicitly doesn't make it any more or less legitmate. The Microsoft EULA used to say you cannot use Microsoft product to criticize Microsoft, so if you post on a board saying Microsoft sucks using IE that'd be against the EULA. That didn't hold up in the court of law. There are some rather ridiculous assumptions in the EULA and most of them boil down to 'you don't own anything' which is no more of a law than 'Microsoft product cannot be used to criticize Microsoft' that Microsoft tried to put in their EULA.

I mean based on the way some of you guys think EULA Is some kind of all encompassing law of the land that'd mean if I was in charge of D3 I can run a 80% off sale and then immediately shut the game down and take all the extra money generated and you would have no recourse whatsoever on this outright scam assuming I don't care about my reputation at all. No, if such a thing happened you will likely be able to recover most of the money because it's blatant thievery.

They can, and it's happened in the past with no legal repercussions. Now that would be straight up stupid because even with a 90% off sale over a month they would still make bank like bandits for the rest of the year, and also because it would tarnish the name of everyone involved in the decision directly or indirectly - and if you think reputation doesn't matter when it comes to app development, you just have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

EULAs and TOS aren't enforced frequently not because it's hard to make them stick in courts of law. They're rarely enforced because in the internet age your reputation is everything you have.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

They can, and it's happened in the past with no legal repercussions. Now that would be straight up stupid because even with a 90% off sale over a month they would still make bank like bandits for the rest of the year, and also because it would tarnish the name of everyone involved in the decision directly or indirectly - and if you think reputation doesn't matter when it comes to app development, you just have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

EULAs and TOS aren't enforced frequently not because it's hard to make them stick in courts of law. They're rarely enforced because in the internet age your reputation is everything you have.

For every game that is successful there are at least 10 that failed with comparable amount of budget. So you really believe that it is completely legal for gaming company to take all your money without any legal repercussion and it just happens that every gaming company are run by good guys who would never think about scamming their playerbase? This is despite the fact that gaming in general has a very high failure rate and requires a ton of capital, but no, all the gaming companies are never tempted with a thought like "Our game is going down the drains, so let's fleece whoever's still left before we go bankrupt?"

The reason why a doomed game offers to refund your recent in game currency purchases (this happens in MMORPG all the time) is because if they try to keep the money they'll have a very good chance of losing all of it and then some more. I was following another F2P called Summoner's War and for a while the hacking is outright blatant, it'd be like if you look up seasons 8 and every top 100 alliances are 100% cheaters because they either have a level 999 or a level 1 character on their entire roster. People were quite successful at getting their money back on the argument that buying in game currency which is supposed to give you an edge is kind of meaningless when top 100 are all cheaters. Oh and by the way you wouldn't go through the company that makes the game. They'd still give you the same old 'nothing has value in this game can't hear you', but talk to Google Play or Apple Store and they'd be far more interested in the integrity of their platform if you can prove your cause.

Unknown

1 - it's not money. items and in-game currency are not protected under the same laws as real world currency.

2 - yes, you're making my point for me. It's doesn't happen because people want to protect their reputations. Part of that is not looking bad on Google Play or the App Store - which are notorious for coming down like a ton of bricks on developers that step out of line.

Unknown

Haha, I'm actually finishing up law school so while I'm not a full lawyer, I wouldn't say I'm an armchair lawyer either.

The reason TOS/EULAs are not always enforceable is because they are so long and boring that no one bothers reading them (except for lawyers/future lawyers) so some courts have voided them for lack of consideration. That's why sometimes you have to go through a convoluted process of scrolling around looking like you're reading it before they let you hit agree. However, while this makes sense for the Microsoft example, they probably wouldn't void something that goes to the heart of the relationship between D3 and the licensee.

Phantron wrote:

The reason why a doomed game offers to refund your recent in game currency purchases (this happens in MMORPG all the time) is because if they try to keep the money they'll have a very good chance of losing all of it and then some more. I was following another F2P called Summoner's War and for a while the hacking is outright blatant, it'd be like if you look up seasons 8 and every top 100 alliances are 100% cheaters because they either have a level 999 or a level 1 character on their entire roster. People were quite successful at getting their money back on the argument that buying in game currency which is supposed to give you an edge is kind of meaningless when top 100 are all cheaters. Oh and by the way you wouldn't go through the company that makes the game. They'd still give you the same old 'nothing has value in this game can't hear you', but talk to Google Play or Apple Store and they'd be far more interested in the integrity of their platform if you can prove your cause.

But in your example, what you have is Google/Apple using their discretionary ability to issue refunds, just like D3 has discretionary ability to do so but isn't obligated to. This doesn't mean that the EULA wouldn't be enforceable if they had chosen not to issue a refund.

In the end, the EULA is meant to be an overly broad, overly protective last resort defense against lawsuits. It is by no means a best (or even normal) practices guideline. In reality, D3 isn't going to sue anyone over the sale of an account just like no one is going to sue D3 for not letting them sell their account. The transaction costs simply outweigh the rewards.

Unknown

What's with people who are always eager to sign their rights away and telling other people they own nothing? It's true it's hard to beat a company in their EULA, but it's hardly impossible. Here's one involving Diablo 3:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... red-refund

Diablo 3, at its launch, had terrible servicves and it's an always-online game. And yes, the EULA absolutely says Blizzard isn't refunding the game once you played it, but South Korean law trumped the EULA. Now South Korea is probably one of the most advanced nation in the world regarding digital stuff, so you might not be finding similar laws in USA but the EULA is not the law.

Now I don't think the right to sell your account is as strong a case as this example above and USA is probably a weaker country for these things compared to South Korea, so it's probably not going to work. But it's not an inherently impossible thing to do.

Unknown

Sea wrote:

Haha, I'm actually finishing up law school so while I'm not a full lawyer, I wouldn't say I'm an armchair lawyer either.

The reason TOS/EULAs are not always enforceable is because they are so long and boring that no one bothers reading them (except for lawyers/future lawyers) so some courts have voided them for lack of consideration. That's why sometimes you have to go through a convoluted process of scrolling around looking like you're reading it before they let you hit agree. However, while this makes sense for the Microsoft example, they probably wouldn't void something that goes to the heart of the relationship between D3 and the licensee.

Phantron wrote:

The reason why a doomed game offers to refund your recent in game currency purchases (this happens in MMORPG all the time) is because if they try to keep the money they'll have a very good chance of losing all of it and then some more. I was following another F2P called Summoner's War and for a while the hacking is outright blatant, it'd be like if you look up seasons 8 and every top 100 alliances are 100% cheaters because they either have a level 999 or a level 1 character on their entire roster. People were quite successful at getting their money back on the argument that buying in game currency which is supposed to give you an edge is kind of meaningless when top 100 are all cheaters. Oh and by the way you wouldn't go through the company that makes the game. They'd still give you the same old 'nothing has value in this game can't hear you', but talk to Google Play or Apple Store and they'd be far more interested in the integrity of their platform if you can prove your cause.

But in your example, what you have is Google/Apple using their discretionary ability to issue refunds, just like D3 has discretionary ability to do so but isn't obligated to. This doesn't mean that the EULA wouldn't be enforceable if they had chosen not to issue a refund.

In the end, the EULA is meant to be an overly broad, overly protective last resort defense against lawsuits. It is by no means a best (or even normal) practices guideline. In reality, D3 isn't going to sue anyone over the sale of an account just like no one is going to sue D3 for not letting them sell their account. The transaction costs simply outweigh the rewards.

I think Apple's EULA says by continuing to use their product you implicitly agree to the EULA, and that's not a particularly unreasonable standard since it'd be pretty annoying to click 'I agree' every time you want to use something. EULA isn't the law but generally there's an incentive to come up with something that'd be reasonable in the court of law. Outside of the 'you don't own anything and we can terminate your stuff for nothing at any time' I don't think there's anything particularly problematic with a generic EULA. Now, the 'you don't own anything' is a really hard issue because games basically try to say they're not some kind of finanical instutition, so they don't have to go through the same scrunity as a regular business. For example if I try to use my credit card in a place I normally don't shop I often get a phone call asking me if this is really me shopping at this location. The store is obliged to report this information and the credit card company is obliged to let me know something is wrong because they don't want to mess this up. Games obviously have none of that, so if there was the "Sentry nerf fraud" event, D3 wouldn't even be able to unwind this even if the Supreme Court ordered them to refund everyone who have bought some HP/Iso for Sentry bombing. What will happen instead is D3 will say, "Screw it, we're undoing the nerf" because there's no possible way their existing system could figure out who they're supposed to refund to even if they don't care about losing money. There will probably be some kind of Federal Gaming Board or whatever that's needed at some point to figure out what is a responsible accounting system for a game, because you can't just pretend that it's not real money flowing through them but you can't just have everyone implement their own financial system either so right now the 'nothing has value' is as good as any.

I don't support people trying to take on the EULA because it is generally fairly reasonable but I feel compelled to point out it is not the law when people always act like it is. Every game has a 'can terminate anyone for a good, bad, or no reason' clause. Now if D3 terminated the account of everyone that ever posted on this board that'd still be a valid reason (it'd be a bad one, but the EULA surely covered that). They don't do this not just because of our incredible legal expertise or even reputation, but rather such an arbitary decision has a very good chance of losing in the court of law if we can indeed prove D3 simply terminated the accounts of every guy on the forum for the lolz. Of course since most credible companies aren't going to do anything that amounts to blatant thievery of course their EULA will usually hold too.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

What's with people who are always eager to sign their rights away and telling other people they own nothing? It's true it's hard to beat a company in their EULA, but it's hardly impossible. Here's one involving Diablo 3:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... red-refund

Diablo 3, at its launch, had terrible servicves and it's an always-online game. And yes, the EULA absolutely says Blizzard isn't refunding the game once you played it, but South Korean law trumped the EULA. Now South Korea is probably one of the most advanced nation in the world regarding digital stuff, so you might not be finding similar laws in USA but the EULA is not the law.

Now I don't think the right to sell your account is as strong a case as this example above and USA is probably a weaker country for these things compared to South Korea, so it's probably not going to work. But it's not an inherently impossible thing to do.

It's obviously different when there's a real money market place involved.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I think Apple's EULA says by continuing to use their product you implicitly agree to the EULA, and that's not a particularly unreasonable standard since it'd be pretty annoying to click 'I agree' every time you want to use something. EULA isn't the law but generally there's an incentive to come up with something that'd be reasonable in the court of law. Outside of the 'you don't own anything and we can terminate your stuff for nothing at any time' I don't think there's anything particularly problematic with a generic EULA. Now, the 'you don't own anything' is a really hard issue because games basically try to say they're not some kind of finanical instutition, so they don't have to go through the same scrunity as a regular business. For example if I try to use my credit card in a place I normally don't shop I often get a phone call asking me if this is really me shopping at this location. The store is obliged to report this information and the credit card company is obliged to let me know something is wrong because they don't want to mess this up. Games obviously have none of that, so if there was the "Sentry nerf fraud" event, D3 wouldn't even be able to unwind this even if the Supreme Court ordered them to refund everyone who have bought some HP/Iso for Sentry bombing. What will happen instead is D3 will say, "Screw it, we're undoing the nerf" because there's no possible way their existing system could figure out who they're supposed to refund to even if they don't care about losing money. There will probably be some kind of Federal Gaming Board or whatever that's needed at some point to figure out what is a responsible accounting system for a game, because you can't just pretend that it's not real money flowing through them but you can't just have everyone implement their own financial system either so right now the 'nothing has value' is as good as any.

I don't support people trying to take on the EULA because it is generally fairly reasonable but I feel compelled to point out it is not the law when people always act like it is. Every game has a 'can terminate anyone for a good, bad, or no reason' clause. Now if D3 terminated the account of everyone that ever posted on this board that'd still be a valid reason (it'd be a bad one, but the EULA surely covered that). They don't do this not just because of our incredible legal expertise or even reputation, but rather such an arbitary decision has a very good chance of losing in the court of law if we can indeed prove D3 simply terminated the accounts of every guy on the forum for the lolz. Of course since most credible companies aren't going to do anything that amounts to blatant thievery of course their EULA will usually hold too.

The EULA is not law; it's a contract. Contracts are enforceable by law, but they're also subject to a range of contract law/common law/just general law restrictions and interpretations. They are not, however, subject to a reasonableness test (outside of it being a factor in a consideration objection). That's why you can have a contract to sell a mansion for a $1 and have it be perfectly enforceable.

If D3 started terminating all forum accounts for the lolz and we can prove it, there is a probably a case for consumer fraud which indeed can void a contract. But of course, D3 is not a capricious individual but a for-profit company whose decision should be based on maximizing profit. What the "for any reason" clause is really protecting is the case when D3 may not want to disclose the reason for termination for whatever reason. This would probably only happen very rarely on an individual basis and not warrant consumer fraud. In this situation, I think courts would uphold D3's right to terminate the account under the EULA even if it seemed arbitrary.

Overall, I think there is a conflation here between what you have a right to under law and what you can reasonably expect. If you think D3 unfairly screwed you, legally there's probably not much you can do. But the law is not your only recourse. But beyond that, the people at D3 seem perfectly reasonable and quite willing to help their player base so maybe, you know, PM them first instead of suing of them.

Unknown

Sea wrote:

The EULA is not law; it's a contract. Contracts are enforceable by law, but they're also subject to a range of contract law/common law/just general law restrictions and interpretations. They are not, however, subject to a reasonableness test (outside of it being a factor in a consideration objection). That's why you can have a contract to sell a mansion for a $1 and have it be perfectly enforceable.

If D3 started terminating all forum accounts for the lolz and we can prove it, there is a probably a case for consumer fraud which indeed can void a contract. But of course, D3 is not a capricious individual but a for-profit company whose decision should be based on maximizing profit. What the "for any reason" clause is really protecting is the case when D3 may not want to disclose the reason for termination for whatever reason. This would probably only happen very rarely on an individual basis and not warrant consumer fraud. In this situation, I think courts would uphold D3's right to terminate the account under the EULA even if it seemed arbitrary.

Overall, I think there is a conflation here between what you have a right to under law and what you can reasonably expect. If you think D3 unfairly screwed you, legally there's probably not much you can do. But the law is not your only recourse. But beyond that, the people at D3 seem perfectly reasonable and quite willing to help their player base so maybe, you know, PM them first instead of suing of them.

The 'for any reason' clause is probably for something like say IceIX is checking out Colo's roster to figure out how to build his roster, and then his cat landed on the secret admin only hotkey that deletes an account permanently. In this case D3 probably isn't liable for some kind of punitive punishment even though it is totally their fault, but that doesn't mean they can just arbitarily terminate anyone's account when they feel like it. You're right EULAs aren't subject to a 'reasonableness' test but there is still the law and the law is generally reasonable. Blizzard ended up refunding Diablo 3 in South Korea due to poor service even though their EULA says no refunds, because the laws says refunds are expected for a product that doesn't deliver as promised (Diablo 3 was pretty much unplayable in the initial launch due to lack of server capacity). I think USA doesn't have particular strong laws in favor of the user though, which is why you're indeed pretty screwed, but in any monetary dispute you do have the credit card company on your side via chargeback and the 'can't afford to fight them' issue is reversed. That is, it's rarely worth the money for the said company to deal with the credit card company to prove you're a liar and get your $20 compared to just give you $20 back. This is sort of the 'nuclear' option for user which is also why companies will indeed listen to reasonable requests so that you won't have to resort to that option.

There's a theory that instead of trying to screw the users, you could work with them not unlike a retailer of physical goods would. I remember seeing studies on games that offered refund and they found that most people are too lazy to remember to fund the game even though it means you can totally play the game for whatever period of time you've before the refund period expires and get it all back. After all, if someone's going through all that trouble he could just pirate the game too. I hope more companies take that kind of attitude instead of just saying 'nope the EULA said no'. Physical retailers offer you refunds and a lot of protection not because they're all nice guys, but rather making your users feel like they got a safety net is proven to increase sales and it outweighs the cost of the relatively few that tries to game the system. If there's some assurance that you own your virtual stuff, perhaps people will be more willing to spend on the game.

_RiO_

Sea wrote:

The EULA is not law; it's a contract. Contracts are enforceable by law, but they're also subject to a range of contract law/common law/just general law restrictions and interpretations. They are not, however, subject to a reasonableness test (outside of it being a factor in a consideration objection). That's why you can have a contract to sell a mansion for a $1 and have it be perfectly enforceable.

They actually are subject to a reasonableness test in the EU. EU directive 93/13/EEC has a (non-exhaustive) list of clauses which are always considered unreasonable/unfair. Among those clauses are a few interesting ones which basically blow holes a mile wide in just about every current videogame EULA or ToS:

[...]
(f) authorizing the seller or supplier to dissolve the contract on a discretionary basis where the same facility is not granted to the consumer, or permitting the seller or supplier to retain the sums paid for services not yet supplied by him where it is the seller or supplier himself who dissolves the contract;
(g) enabling the seller or supplier to terminate a contract of indeterminate duration without reasonable notice except where there are serious grounds for doing so;
[...]
(j) enabling the seller or supplier to alter the terms of the contract unilaterally without a valid reason which is specified in the contract;
(k) enabling the seller or supplier to alter unilaterally without a valid reason any characteristics of the product or service to be provided;
[...]
(q) excluding or hindering the consumer's right to take legal action or exercise any other legal remedy, particularly by requiring the consumer to take disputes exclusively to arbitration not covered by legal provisions, unduly restricting the evidence available to him or imposing on him a burden of proof which, according to the applicable law, should lie with another party to the contract.

Through several EU rulings a special working group was created that is aimed at expunging unfair/unreasonable clauses that do not yet fit this list.