Decriminalize Real Money Trading

Money trading may not be something you read about in your high school economics class, but it’s something every massively multiplayer online gamer encounters every day. If the buying and selling of virtual goods using real money isn’t something actively encouraged by the game itself, you at least hear horror stories about gold farmers causing prices of in-game goods to go up, or find eBay auctions of in-game items for crazy-huge sums of money.

Earlier this month, the topic of real money trading in MMOs made some ink when a South Korean Supreme Court acquitted two Lineage gamers of criminal charges related to selling in-game currency for actual money. At issue in that case was whether or not the gamers had violated a South Korean law against unsanctioned gambling; but by clearing them of the charges, South Korea effectively legitimized Real Money Trading (RMT) in MMOs.

Don't quit your day job to take up Epic Gear brokering in World of Warcraft just yet, though; RMT is still a sore point for many game developers. In particular, you'll find that games like WoW frown on RMT within their End User License Agreements (EULA) or Terms of Service documents. People who violate those pieces of paper may not go to jail – but Blizzard can sue the pants off them for breach of contract (not to mention ban your account altogether).

Rutgers University law professor Greg Lastowka explains the legal side of the RMT issue as a case where first, the game developers have to decide how vigorously they want to regulate RMT and second, where players might consider violating the game's EULA because RMT really pays off.

"Most game companies are concerned about the trade of real money for virtual property because they see it as a potential way of creating liability for them," Lastowka tells GamePro. "If [fraud] occurs in a virtual world, the game is in the middle, the game company has to be dragged into litigation. So if players can have property rights and legal claims to their virtual property, I think that scares game companies for the most part."

However, as long as there is no criminal law on the books with a country's government – like the anti-gambling statute that sparked the South Korean case – it’s all on the game companies to go out and find people who violate their EULAs by engaging in RMT.

This is apparently quite the pain in the ass. Scan eBay auctions right now for Epic Gear in WoW (a game that explicitly bans the sale of in-game items for real money), and you'll find dozens of in-game things for sale, even fully leveled characters ready to be handed over to the highest bidder. Even without Blizzard responding to our request for comment on this story, we can just imagine how much of a headache it would be to keep track of every auction site and track back every contract violation to the actual perpetrator and then sue them for breach of contract in whatever country they’re based.