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I quit playing EQ2, you should too -READ WHY-
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The companies running these mmo's should just sell in game items themselves. Cut out the middle man and give the people what they want (not that I care, but obviously there is enough people to support this type of industry, why not capitalize upon it?). That is just my opinion (*pours gasoline on himself*).
Whatever I presented the facts. If dumbass's are going to come here and sput shit that isnt true and try then fine.
Even if people put "This is my time you are paying for" it does not matter because they are representing themselves as trafficking something that isnt there. No judge int heir right mind would say "oh because you said people were paying for your time playing the game it is ok".
Get a clue people. You make yourself look so dumb to anyone who ACTUALLY knows the facts.
No Ebay does not just shut down items that dont give proper notice of trademarks. They shut down only the auctions that are reported. And they WILL shut down ALL auctions as soon as SOE says the word.
THis is basic general trademark laws.
Go do your homework and play your video games, when you graduate from high school and a respectable college then you can MAYBE come here and debate.
Until then, I made my point. I just asked for some of yout o follow suit. It is not like SOE products are any good. And if you read my replies I said I wont be playing any MMO's because the companies have too much power and dont enforce their eula's. If someone cheats I am at the mercy of SOE to do anything, while in other games you ususally play on private servers so you can probably ban people yourself. And a MMO with money, it highly encourages people to use crafting and farming bot's to kill as many and craft as many things as they can to try and make profit. SOE can stop it and they dont.
That wa smy point. Read it. Swish it around in your brain. And make a decision. I made mine. Just dont refute my facts please because you will get burned.
Comedy Gold!!
Welcome to the world of MMOs.
And goodbye.... don't let the door hit ya.
Singling out EQ2 when this is a genre-wide issue was my favorite part.
Habit is not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. - Mark Twain
Bama get a clue. I can guarantee you no game company has gone to court with Ebay over non Ebay compliance. Ebay shuts down alot of auctions at Sony's request like people selling accounts.
I know I tried selling my beta account and Ebay shut it down on request of SOE.
Ebay cannot and will not deny SOE's request to shut down all currency auctions. They would be out of their mind.
If you dont beleive me, try emailing them and see what they say (Ebay).
I made this in the EQ2 forum. So why would I point out any other game? +1 for you.
Also SOE products were the only MMO's I was subscribed to. So it was only natural for me to come here.
But like I will say for the 15th time, it is not just SOE I am boycotting, it is MMO type games all together.
And yes goodbye.
How many times have you quit now R1tual? 3? 4 times? I see another "I quit EQ2" post every week from you.
I remember during beta you said this game sucked... yet you still bought it?
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, chairman of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
THey had Ebay remove all the SWG auctions at one time.
It was great business for all the other sites that popped up to auction off goods from MMO games only. I'm sure Ebay was happy with SOE for that!! NOT. There's way more to this issue than your research has shown. It's a multi-million dollar business.
You can say whatever you want about the laws, but the fact is these games are worldwide. Take your copyright infringement laws (which don't apply btw) international and that'll add a few twists for you. Try sueing someone in Korea for it. Good luck!!
You think you know something, but in fact you don't. The cost of enforcement is greater than the damage to the games caused by this activity. If it's a deal breaker for you, then don't play the games. Just don't expect everyone else to agree with you.
Real MMO fans have had to put up with this behavior for years. I applaud you for calling for a boycott, but nothing will stop it short of shutting down the games altogether, and an MMO fansite is not likely to be a great place to get people willing to back you on this.
Best of luck in your endeavors. Once you get this taken care of, how about stopping speedhacking in FPS games? You are going to be a god in the gaming community for your integrity and constructive approach to complex issues for sure!!
Habit is not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. - Mark Twain
Legally it is not that clear cut, actually, beyond the EULA. It's not clear, for example, that one player transferring in-game currency to another player in exchange for an out-of-game payment is a violation of anyone's trademark rights as such. The currency is still on the servers owned and operated by the gaming company. It is simply moving from one player to another. This certainly violates the EULA (which some trademark practitioners may argue itself would be a violation of the gaming company's trademark rights), but the gaming company's remedy under the EULA is to terminate the user/player who violated it -- there are no other damages to the gaming company. So the player who actually is transferring the cash in the game (say the character of an IGE employee) can have their account terminated, and the receiving/buying player can as well, but clearly this is not going to solve the problem or make it go away due to the ease with which new accounts are created. IGE itself is not an account holder, it is not a party to the EULA. All IGE is doing is acting as a broker between the players who are selling and receiving, from the legal perspective --- IGE is not an account holder or a player of the game.
So, the real reason that the gaming companies have not taken a more active approach to this (and there's no need to single out SOE, Blizzard and NCSOft and the others are all the same here) is a practical one -- even if they pursued people the likely result would be that they would have the right to terminate their accounts, and that's that. Not very effective. If they wanted to pursue IGE on the theory that the people who are actually in the game trading the cash and/or farming mobs to generate cash are actually IGE employees, they would have to (1) prove that this relationship exists (and my guess is that the way IGE does things it does not employ these people, but simply pays them for any cash they remit to IGE, thereby making IGE a broker) and (2) pursue IGE, which is cleverly based in China, a country that does not really recognize intellectual property rights to begin with.
So what can the gaming companies do? In theory they could pursue every player who cheats in this way, but tracking and investigating that would be very expensive in terms of manpower, so I doubt that this would ever really be the approach taken. They can, if they wish, ask third parties like eBay to remove listings relating to the game -- whether they could force eBay to do so is another matter, but eBay generally errs on the side of not listing when this kind of dispute arises, so as a practical matter they can remove the listings from eBay if they wanted to. That just serves to create more business for IGE, however. In addition, there is the consideration that the gaming companies must know that a not-small portion of their player base is a consumer of IGE and related out of game cash suppliers, and that therefore completely cracking down on this will cost them players and subscriptions. So, as a result of all of these issues -- some legal, some practical, some business-related -- I would not expect gaming companies to take a much different approach to enforcing these kinds of things going forward. If you don't like it, or are really disturbed by it, I think that online gaming may not be a good thing for you, to be honest.