You dont even need to go as far as saying that "If you bought your game/ paid your subscription".
IT DOESNT MATTER
The only thing that matters in universal principles of law is that "IF YOU SPENT TIME AND EFFORT ON SOMETHING, AND IF IT HAS ANY VALUE FOR YOU OR OTHERS, ITS YOURS, PERIOD."
This applies to labor law, consumerist law, propriety law, land law, whatever. Its universal.
Once people start kicking the buckets on courts of law against abusive MMO companies and their one sided regulations, things will change, its the natural course of evolution.
This has happened in history in many other areas. Just by creating topics and discussing it is seeding the source of change.
Doesn't matter because once you break the seal on the software you've agreed to the licensing and the first time you try to log in you have to agree to the EULA to even make a character. If anyone tried to take them to court in any country those two items would make sure it would never make it to trial. Once you've agreed to their terms you don't have any legal legs to stand on. Your only two choices are to agree or to not play their game... period.
Our subscrition fees do not entitle us to part ownership of the game, they give us access to the servers and live product. We are simply renting the technology and intellectual property of said game. We can't turn around and profit from someone else's intelluctual property without including them in the transaction. Its a federal offense to rent a movie from Blockbuster, copy it and sell it. Or just sell it without aquiring the rights to do so. Why should MMOs be any different?
WHen you rent a movie you are paying a fee to owner of the disk and fees to all the persons receiving roaylties from it, you are not paying FULL BUY price. When you BUY a movie you OWN it. When you BUY an MMO you must have own it, as this is a regular practice of the market. So now there is a blur in a regular practice of ownership when you pay a buy price for something, which is created by MMO companies because they feel left out. If this is a special case somehow then there should be clear set out to be and not just an ultimatum that is EULA. EULA can be created with gamers in mind which would profit both and not hurt both
But even if you buy the movie, you don't actually own anything but that DVD. All the intellectual properties contained within the movie are still "owned" by the producers. If I buy a copy of Star Wars IV: A New Hope, I can't go out and create another movie like it and get it put in theaters without everyone involved getting sued. I may own the DVD, but the idea, story, ship designs, characters, etc are still the property of LucasArts. Same thing with MMO's. You own the CD and the box, but none of the IP. If you are selling the game (i.e. your account), you are profiting off of someone else' idea (and, more importantly, someone else' copyrighted idea), and that is technically illegal, EULA or no EULA.
I'm waiting to see someone challenge the concept that a fully formed character is not the intellectual property of the player, but of the game designers, especially in a skill based progression sandbox game like DFO. Everything about that character, from personality, to clothing arrangements, to armor/weapons + skill combos were created by the player, not the developer. The developers can only argue that they designed the tools you used to create, but by that arguement, does Nikon actually "own" the work of Anson Adams because they made the cameras he used to shoot his photographs? (note: I have no idea what brand of camera Anson Adams used to shoot his photo's, if you do know, insert the name of that company for "Nikon", if you don't know then just work with me on that point pretty please ) Personally, I don't think the player has any real claim here, but it does kind of represent a serious gray area that could be argued either way, assuming you can get past the EULA/TOS.
I also am not sure if the creator of EQ Atlas would have been able to do anything legally to SOE/Verant for their copyright infringement (huge gray area here, IMO) of his website. For those who have never heard of it, EQ Atlas was a website where you could go to download and print very well made (and highly accurate) maps of EQ. The creator (as far as I know) created these maps based on his exploration of the game, and not on any "insider" info provided by SOE/Verant. He was making money of advertisements on the website, but SOE didn't (again - as far as I know) take any legal action, but they did release a book titled, oddly enough, EQ Atlas. Their maps looked exactly like the websites', and I do mean exactly. While I would normally side with the company on players selling their accounts, I wonder how SOE got away with this book. While it was their copyrighted intellectual property the book was based on, they were also using someone else' ideas and creations - and profiting from this. The only thing I can figure is he may have actually done the website on some sort of partnership basis with SOE (i.e., they were providing alot of the information, and he was creating the maps - as I said, they were very, very well done maps), or he was at least a volunteer GM or Guide in the game, which helped him acquire the information he used, which would have prolly put him under an even stricter EULA/TOS. Mostly, I just remember seeing that book on the shelf at Best Buy, and wondered what would happen to the website - then trying to get a map for Luclin (for a dungeon where my entire guild had wiped out), and he had written on there that he was no longer making maps for EQ, as SOE/Verant had screwed him over.
Playing MMORPGs for me is like renting bump cars...
The owner of the bump cars gives you the opportunity to rent one. He tells you that you can decorate it in whatever ways you want and you can use it to bump other bump cars or just use it to roam around the bump car grounds. At the end of the day the owner tells you that you can go back any day to rent your pimped out bump car again.
No matter how much you customize your bump car it is still not yours since you just rented it. The money you cash out is payement for the "bump car experience" that you are having with your bump car. You cannot sell the car to anyone since you are just renting it....
As for the previous camera analogy...
All the prints that were made using the camera is yours since you bought the camera from Nikon (or any other camera manufaturer). You did not rent the camera from them. Same way as for MMORPGs. Unless you bought the whole game (servers and all the characters) you cannot say that your character is yours to keep.
Playing MMORPGs for me is like renting bump cars...
The owner of the bump cars gives you the opportunity to rent one. He tells you that you can decorate it in whatever ways you want and you can use it to bump other bump cars or just use it to roam around the bump car grounds. At the end of the day the owner tells you that you can go back any day to rent your pimped out bump car again.
No matter how much you customize your bump car it is still not yours since you just rented it. The money you cash out is payement for the "bump car experience" that you are having with your bump car. You cannot sell the car to anyone since you are just renting it....
As for the previous camera analogy...
All the prints that were made using the camera is yours since you bought the camera from Nikon (or any other camera manufaturer). You did not rent the camera from them. Same way as for MMORPGs. Unless you bought the whole game (servers and all the characters) you cannot say that your character is yours to keep.
No analogy including this one will work, unless you come up with another product where you BUY and RENT at the same time.
No analogy including this one will work, unless you come up with another product where you BUY and RENT at the same time.
How about buying ski equipment and buying ski passes for the use of the lifts? It doesn't entitle the skier to ownership to anything on the slopes.
The problem with that is you can sell the ski equipment you bought.
When you buy the MMO "box" nobody is going to buy it because the account code was used thus the "box" is now worthless. Outside of if they could access the account that came with the box.
In your example you own the box you paid for just the same as you own the ski equipment. The difference is if I sell my ski's to somebody they can actually go use them on the slopes....
Back in the day when I played Ultima Online they fully supported the use of ebay. Then again things aren't like they are now either. Not saying I support "account rights" one way or the other. When I get sick of a game I just uninstall it and forget about it.
Playing MMORPGs for me is like renting bump cars...
The owner of the bump cars gives you the opportunity to rent one. He tells you that you can decorate it in whatever ways you want and you can use it to bump other bump cars or just use it to roam around the bump car grounds. At the end of the day the owner tells you that you can go back any day to rent your pimped out bump car again.
No matter how much you customize your bump car it is still not yours since you just rented it. The money you cash out is payement for the "bump car experience" that you are having with your bump car. You cannot sell the car to anyone since you are just renting it....
As for the previous camera analogy...
All the prints that were made using the camera is yours since you bought the camera from Nikon (or any other camera manufaturer). You did not rent the camera from them. Same way as for MMORPGs. Unless you bought the whole game (servers and all the characters) you cannot say that your character is yours to keep.
No analogy including this one will work, unless you come up with another product where you BUY and RENT at the same time.
leasing a car.
you are actually renting the car, you do not actually own the car 100% like you would if you bought the car fully. any damage to the car you will have to pay to repair before the dealership will resell/lease the car to other people.
same is true for games. where games have DRM or CDkeys once used it will not allow you to reuse it or access the data again. making resell/trade value next to worthless on the game.
I'll comment here to clear up a legal inaccuracy that's been retyped a few times.
If a person purchases a game box and disk of an MMORPG, they own the physical copy of the game to use in their own home. It is their property, and this is recognized by both American, Canadian, and European law statutes at this time. A game company's claim that a person is Leasing the game itself for the purpose of the account has differing amounts of agreement with the courts, depending on the location where court cases have been heard on it. But the game itself, properly purchased by a customer, is theirs.
What does this mean? It means that a person can use their game client, installed on their computer from their personally owned game disk, to play on a private server where the server host is using server code that is entirely hand written and contains no source code or programming obtained from the game company itself. This is entirely legal, if, and only if, the private server never once changes money from any of their players, via charges or "donations" for goods or services obtained in the game. As long as the players legally own their store bought copy, and the server host uses hand-written code for the server, it's legit and Blizzard, Sony, or any other company that has attempted to sue such a situation fell flat on its face. But once again, money cannot be changing hands between the players and server.
This is possible due to previous litigations that drew upon a customer's rights of owned media and the private use and even the private back up copies that can be made within the privacy of their own home. One last time - a Game Company may STATE FLATLY in a EULA what terms and conditions are to apply to a player using their purchased product, but the reality is a hell of a lot different in the eyes of the court for what will actually be enforced.
All of that said, I'm not horribly conversant on the current state of legality of buying and selling character accounts. At one point it was viewed (and upheld) as legal as the defendants claimed that what was being purchased was the Working Man Hours used to accumulate virtual goods or character levels as a purchased service. But in other cases it was viewed as an unlawful transaction where the virtual goods were clearly stated as owned by the game company at all times, etc.
Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass about buying or selling accounts or gold. I sold my Blizzard WoW account a while back when I discovered WoTLK endgame play sucked, pocketed the money, and moved on.
I'll comment here to clear up a legal inaccuracy that's been retyped a few times.
If a person purchases a game box and disk of an MMORPG, they own the physical copy of the game to use in their own home. It is their property, and this is recognized by both American, Canadian, and European law statutes at this time. A game company's claim that a person is Leasing the game itself for the purpose of the account has differing amounts of agreement with the courts, depending on the location where court cases have been heard on it. But the game itself, properly purchased by a customer, is theirs.
What does this mean? It means that a person can use their game client, installed on their computer from their personally owned game disk, to play on a private server where the server host is using server code that is entirely hand written and contains no source code or programming obtained from the game company itself. This is entirely legal, if, and only if, the private server never once changes money from any of their players, via charges or "donations" for goods or services obtained in the game. As long as the players legally own their store bought copy, and the server host uses hand-written code for the server, it's legit and Blizzard, Sony, or any other company that has attempted to sue such a situation fell flat on its face. But once again, money cannot be changing hands between the players and server.
This is possible due to previous litigations that drew upon a customer's rights of owned media and the private use and even the private back up copies that can be made within the privacy of their own home. One last time - a Game Company may STATE FLATLY in a EULA what terms and conditions are to apply to a player using their purchased product, but the reality is a hell of a lot different in the eyes of the court for what will actually be enforced.
All of that said, I'm not horribly conversant on the current state of legality of buying and selling character accounts. At one point it was viewed (and upheld) as legal as the defendants claimed that what was being purchased was the Working Man Hours used to accumulate virtual goods or character levels as a purchased service. But in other cases it was viewed as an unlawful transaction where the virtual goods were clearly stated as owned by the game company at all times, etc.
Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass about buying or selling accounts or gold. I sold my Blizzard WoW account a while back when I discovered WoTLK endgame play sucked, pocketed the money, and moved on.
Good post, interesting bit about the hand written private servers, I never knew that.
I go to an all you can eat restaurant. I eat all that I can. Then I leave and let someone else take my place, expecting that between the two of us, we should only have to pay for one. After all, there was only one of us there eating at a time, and I merely sold him my spot. See why the restaurant will not allow that?
See why online game companies won't allow account transfers without both players having to pay separately for everything?
It's legal to sell your account in the sense that you won't be punished by the criminal justice system if you get caught. But for the legal system to step in and say what games can and cannot make into a bannable offense would invite all sorts of mischief, and ultimately make running a game more expensive without much benefit to anyone. That would mean fewer games, and likely more expensive to play. Let's not go there.
And the game company can refuse to extend the service contract for access to the character (ie ban the account).
The legal ambiguity is the reason why game companies do not sue players sellign accounts but it also means that the players cannot prevent the company from shutting down any account that violated the ToS.
When you buy an online game you are not actually buying a game but a license to play the game. If you don't agree with the terms and conditions you have the right to return it for a refund but businesses do have the right to set conditions on how you get to use their products and services.
If you join a gym you don't get the right to take equipment home and keep it or the right to allow others to go into the gym on days you don't feel like going.
Gaming companies can put anything they want in a EULA but as has been stated it does not mean that everything they put in will stand up to scrutiny in court as they don't have the ability to remove many legal protections that have been granted to consumers. Simply adding fine print to an agreement does not relieve a company of the obligation to follow existing consumer laws. Having said that the current EULAs in use with in the MMO genre have stood up in most courts around the world with some aspects of them being curtailed or negated.
As to the comment that was made that anyone can reverse engineer a game and put up a server and not be at risk to the original company as long as they don't charge for it is mistaken. In general private servers that have no assets aren't worth the time and expense to go after but ones that do charge or do anything enough to annoy the rights holder to the game will be taken down generally due to copyright and trademark infringment issues. Imagine what would happen if someone made a Star Wars film with all the same graphics, sounds, music, special effects but with different actors and said oh but we aren't charging for it.
To the original posters questions it would seem in the long run to be in the interest of the gaming company to allow for greater flexibility in how accounts are handled but all the current gaming companies seem to disagree so that is what we are stuck with until someone else feels like trying to be different.
" As to the comment that was made that anyone can reverse engineer a game and put up a server and not be at risk to the original company as long as they don't charge for it is mistaken. "
No, this is correct. Again, you need to look at the specifics of what I had written as to how things remain on a legal footing. First, the private server must run on hand-written code that does not have any vestiges of the game company's programming. And second, the players playing on the private server must have their own properly purchased physical copies of the game client being used. Finally, money cannot be changing hands through any step of the game play.
The law that was successfully defended involving the above, which defeated Sony's first two lawsuit attempts with Everquest and a few attempts by both NC Soft and Blizzard revolves around media ownership and use. It is currently illegal for a company to sell a movie, a piece of music, or a piece of computer software and enforce that it can only be used or run on a specific piece of hardware. If you purchase a music CD, decide to rip the music files into MP3 format and play the music copy you have generated on either your Ipod or on a player in your car, you are *protected by law* for having done so.
The format being followed here is that 1) you legally own the media in question 2) the copy made was for your own personal use 3) no sharing or profit or resale is being made involving your action with the media.
Sony and the other companies lost their initial lawsuits on certain servers as the courts ruled that the gaming companies could *NOT* expect a judgement to be found in their favor that the purchased game client could only EVER be run by their provided server hosts. It violated the owners' rights of personal use as it was viewed as a form of purchased media property.
Now, more recent lawsuits have been won by Blizzard and NC Soft for going after private servers that violate 2 things (and many of them do both of these things). The first is that the server hosts accept money. The second is that the server has some form of forum traffic or postings that inform perspective players how to illegally download or obtain client software, thus being an accomplice to a player using non-personally purchased game copies.
If a private server accepts no money, and keeps any forum boards or websites completely clear of links or information on how to obtain the client software, this leaves the game company with a compelling problem. They have to PROVE that one or more players is playing on the server without legally owned copies.
A recent ruling in America came down on Blizzard's side that private servers that do not have a means of validating the fact that a player's client software copy is legitimate (such as checking for a game CD code) are operating illegally was a shot in the arm for the gaming companies. This is under appeal at last check and will probably have a reverted ruling, as it is will be viewed as unreasonable for a private party to demand purchase information of a piece of media from another private party. European trade laws would have a spasm if that kind of ruling was sought after over there.
You dont even need to go as far as saying that "If you bought your game/ paid your subscription".
IT DOESNT MATTER
The only thing that matters in universal principles of law is that "IF YOU SPENT TIME AND EFFORT ON SOMETHING, AND IF IT HAS ANY VALUE FOR YOU OR OTHERS, ITS YOURS, PERIOD."
This applies to labor law, consumerist law, propriety law, land law, whatever. Its universal.
Once people start kicking the buckets on courts of law against abusive MMO companies and their one sided regulations, things will change, its the natural course of evolution.
This has happened in history in many other areas. Just by creating topics and discussing it is seeding the source of change.
Doesn't matter because once you break the seal on the software you've agreed to the licensing and the first time you try to log in you have to agree to the EULA to even make a character. If anyone tried to take them to court in any country those two items would make sure it would never make it to trial. Once you've agreed to their terms you don't have any legal legs to stand on. Your only two choices are to agree or to not play their game... period.
Bren
Actually, EULA's are rarely enforced in a court of law. They are not a negotiated contract. click through EULA's are even more wortless in court.
Comments
Doesn't matter because once you break the seal on the software you've agreed to the licensing and the first time you try to log in you have to agree to the EULA to even make a character. If anyone tried to take them to court in any country those two items would make sure it would never make it to trial. Once you've agreed to their terms you don't have any legal legs to stand on. Your only two choices are to agree or to not play their game... period.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
I'm waiting to see someone challenge the concept that a fully formed character is not the intellectual property of the player, but of the game designers, especially in a skill based progression sandbox game like DFO. Everything about that character, from personality, to clothing arrangements, to armor/weapons + skill combos were created by the player, not the developer. The developers can only argue that they designed the tools you used to create, but by that arguement, does Nikon actually "own" the work of Anson Adams because they made the cameras he used to shoot his photographs? (note: I have no idea what brand of camera Anson Adams used to shoot his photo's, if you do know, insert the name of that company for "Nikon", if you don't know then just work with me on that point pretty please
) Personally, I don't think the player has any real claim here, but it does kind of represent a serious gray area that could be argued either way, assuming you can get past the EULA/TOS.
I also am not sure if the creator of EQ Atlas would have been able to do anything legally to SOE/Verant for their copyright infringement (huge gray area here, IMO) of his website. For those who have never heard of it, EQ Atlas was a website where you could go to download and print very well made (and highly accurate) maps of EQ. The creator (as far as I know) created these maps based on his exploration of the game, and not on any "insider" info provided by SOE/Verant. He was making money of advertisements on the website, but SOE didn't (again - as far as I know) take any legal action, but they did release a book titled, oddly enough, EQ Atlas. Their maps looked exactly like the websites', and I do mean exactly. While I would normally side with the company on players selling their accounts, I wonder how SOE got away with this book. While it was their copyrighted intellectual property the book was based on, they were also using someone else' ideas and creations - and profiting from this. The only thing I can figure is he may have actually done the website on some sort of partnership basis with SOE (i.e., they were providing alot of the information, and he was creating the maps - as I said, they were very, very well done maps), or he was at least a volunteer GM or Guide in the game, which helped him acquire the information he used, which would have prolly put him under an even stricter EULA/TOS. Mostly, I just remember seeing that book on the shelf at Best Buy, and wondered what would happen to the website - then trying to get a map for Luclin (for a dungeon where my entire guild had wiped out), and he had written on there that he was no longer making maps for EQ, as SOE/Verant had screwed him over.
here is my take on this...
i could be right and i could be wrong...
Playing MMORPGs for me is like renting bump cars...
The owner of the bump cars gives you the opportunity to rent one. He tells you that you can decorate it in whatever ways you want and you can use it to bump other bump cars or just use it to roam around the bump car grounds. At the end of the day the owner tells you that you can go back any day to rent your pimped out bump car again.
No matter how much you customize your bump car it is still not yours since you just rented it. The money you cash out is payement for the "bump car experience" that you are having with your bump car. You cannot sell the car to anyone since you are just renting it....
As for the previous camera analogy...
All the prints that were made using the camera is yours since you bought the camera from Nikon (or any other camera manufaturer). You did not rent the camera from them. Same way as for MMORPGs. Unless you bought the whole game (servers and all the characters) you cannot say that your character is yours to keep.
No analogy including this one will work, unless you come up with another product where you BUY and RENT at the same time.
How about buying ski equipment and buying ski passes for the use of the lifts? It doesn't entitle the skier to ownership to anything on the slopes.
The problem with that is you can sell the ski equipment you bought.
When you buy the MMO "box" nobody is going to buy it because the account code was used thus the "box" is now worthless. Outside of if they could access the account that came with the box.
In your example you own the box you paid for just the same as you own the ski equipment. The difference is if I sell my ski's to somebody they can actually go use them on the slopes....
Back in the day when I played Ultima Online they fully supported the use of ebay. Then again things aren't like they are now either. Not saying I support "account rights" one way or the other. When I get sick of a game I just uninstall it and forget about it.
leasing a car.
you are actually renting the car, you do not actually own the car 100% like you would if you bought the car fully. any damage to the car you will have to pay to repair before the dealership will resell/lease the car to other people.
same is true for games. where games have DRM or CDkeys once used it will not allow you to reuse it or access the data again. making resell/trade value next to worthless on the game.
I'll comment here to clear up a legal inaccuracy that's been retyped a few times.
If a person purchases a game box and disk of an MMORPG, they own the physical copy of the game to use in their own home. It is their property, and this is recognized by both American, Canadian, and European law statutes at this time. A game company's claim that a person is Leasing the game itself for the purpose of the account has differing amounts of agreement with the courts, depending on the location where court cases have been heard on it. But the game itself, properly purchased by a customer, is theirs.
What does this mean? It means that a person can use their game client, installed on their computer from their personally owned game disk, to play on a private server where the server host is using server code that is entirely hand written and contains no source code or programming obtained from the game company itself. This is entirely legal, if, and only if, the private server never once changes money from any of their players, via charges or "donations" for goods or services obtained in the game. As long as the players legally own their store bought copy, and the server host uses hand-written code for the server, it's legit and Blizzard, Sony, or any other company that has attempted to sue such a situation fell flat on its face. But once again, money cannot be changing hands between the players and server.
This is possible due to previous litigations that drew upon a customer's rights of owned media and the private use and even the private back up copies that can be made within the privacy of their own home. One last time - a Game Company may STATE FLATLY in a EULA what terms and conditions are to apply to a player using their purchased product, but the reality is a hell of a lot different in the eyes of the court for what will actually be enforced.
All of that said, I'm not horribly conversant on the current state of legality of buying and selling character accounts. At one point it was viewed (and upheld) as legal as the defendants claimed that what was being purchased was the Working Man Hours used to accumulate virtual goods or character levels as a purchased service. But in other cases it was viewed as an unlawful transaction where the virtual goods were clearly stated as owned by the game company at all times, etc.
Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass about buying or selling accounts or gold. I sold my Blizzard WoW account a while back when I discovered WoTLK endgame play sucked, pocketed the money, and moved on.
i can sell my time spent developing char
Good post, interesting bit about the hand written private servers, I never knew that.
Warhammer fanatic since '85.
I go to an all you can eat restaurant. I eat all that I can. Then I leave and let someone else take my place, expecting that between the two of us, we should only have to pay for one. After all, there was only one of us there eating at a time, and I merely sold him my spot. See why the restaurant will not allow that?
See why online game companies won't allow account transfers without both players having to pay separately for everything?
It's legal to sell your account in the sense that you won't be punished by the criminal justice system if you get caught. But for the legal system to step in and say what games can and cannot make into a bannable offense would invite all sorts of mischief, and ultimately make running a game more expensive without much benefit to anyone. That would mean fewer games, and likely more expensive to play. Let's not go there.
And the game company can refuse to extend the service contract for access to the character (ie ban the account).
The legal ambiguity is the reason why game companies do not sue players sellign accounts but it also means that the players cannot prevent the company from shutting down any account that violated the ToS.
Rhetoric hits the wall of reality.
When you buy an online game you are not actually buying a game but a license to play the game. If you don't agree with the terms and conditions you have the right to return it for a refund but businesses do have the right to set conditions on how you get to use their products and services.
If you join a gym you don't get the right to take equipment home and keep it or the right to allow others to go into the gym on days you don't feel like going.
Gaming companies can put anything they want in a EULA but as has been stated it does not mean that everything they put in will stand up to scrutiny in court as they don't have the ability to remove many legal protections that have been granted to consumers. Simply adding fine print to an agreement does not relieve a company of the obligation to follow existing consumer laws. Having said that the current EULAs in use with in the MMO genre have stood up in most courts around the world with some aspects of them being curtailed or negated.
As to the comment that was made that anyone can reverse engineer a game and put up a server and not be at risk to the original company as long as they don't charge for it is mistaken. In general private servers that have no assets aren't worth the time and expense to go after but ones that do charge or do anything enough to annoy the rights holder to the game will be taken down generally due to copyright and trademark infringment issues. Imagine what would happen if someone made a Star Wars film with all the same graphics, sounds, music, special effects but with different actors and said oh but we aren't charging for it.
To the original posters questions it would seem in the long run to be in the interest of the gaming company to allow for greater flexibility in how accounts are handled but all the current gaming companies seem to disagree so that is what we are stuck with until someone else feels like trying to be different.
" As to the comment that was made that anyone can reverse engineer a game and put up a server and not be at risk to the original company as long as they don't charge for it is mistaken. "
No, this is correct. Again, you need to look at the specifics of what I had written as to how things remain on a legal footing. First, the private server must run on hand-written code that does not have any vestiges of the game company's programming. And second, the players playing on the private server must have their own properly purchased physical copies of the game client being used. Finally, money cannot be changing hands through any step of the game play.
The law that was successfully defended involving the above, which defeated Sony's first two lawsuit attempts with Everquest and a few attempts by both NC Soft and Blizzard revolves around media ownership and use. It is currently illegal for a company to sell a movie, a piece of music, or a piece of computer software and enforce that it can only be used or run on a specific piece of hardware. If you purchase a music CD, decide to rip the music files into MP3 format and play the music copy you have generated on either your Ipod or on a player in your car, you are *protected by law* for having done so.
The format being followed here is that 1) you legally own the media in question 2) the copy made was for your own personal use 3) no sharing or profit or resale is being made involving your action with the media.
Sony and the other companies lost their initial lawsuits on certain servers as the courts ruled that the gaming companies could *NOT* expect a judgement to be found in their favor that the purchased game client could only EVER be run by their provided server hosts. It violated the owners' rights of personal use as it was viewed as a form of purchased media property.
Now, more recent lawsuits have been won by Blizzard and NC Soft for going after private servers that violate 2 things (and many of them do both of these things). The first is that the server hosts accept money. The second is that the server has some form of forum traffic or postings that inform perspective players how to illegally download or obtain client software, thus being an accomplice to a player using non-personally purchased game copies.
If a private server accepts no money, and keeps any forum boards or websites completely clear of links or information on how to obtain the client software, this leaves the game company with a compelling problem. They have to PROVE that one or more players is playing on the server without legally owned copies.
A recent ruling in America came down on Blizzard's side that private servers that do not have a means of validating the fact that a player's client software copy is legitimate (such as checking for a game CD code) are operating illegally was a shot in the arm for the gaming companies. This is under appeal at last check and will probably have a reverted ruling, as it is will be viewed as unreasonable for a private party to demand purchase information of a piece of media from another private party. European trade laws would have a spasm if that kind of ruling was sought after over there.
Actually, EULA's are rarely enforced in a court of law. They are not a negotiated contract. click through EULA's are even more wortless in court.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor