Property Ownership

Who owns the virtual properties?

A screenshot of submitting a stolen goods ticket

for World of Warcraft.

If you are a gamer, you may answer that you own those virtual properties - including golds, gears, characters, and perhaps even the achievements - under your game account. For example, you sometimes give gifts to your friend in games; you may also trade your gears, golds, and goods in those games through the virtual auction house. Also, you might go to the support webpage to report a stolen virtual goods, and the Game Master (GM) will deal with this issue according to the evidence you submitted.

Such experiences make you feel like these goods are owned by you. However, does that have to be true? The answer might be tricky.

The user agreement of the Word of Warcraft

According to the end-user license agreement for World of Warcraft, the total ownership to all in-world property is given to Blizzard, the owners of the game.(Glushko, 2007) Thus, the company can do what ever they want to those properties.J.P. Thompson describe this in his article:

"...[t]herefore, the company can choose to do whatever it wants with any property that has been crafted, sold, or bought within the game, including destroying the goods, redistributing it to other players, and resolving property rights issues however Blizzard sees fit. Players of the game have to agree to the license agreement before playing the game, so they knowingly enter into such an agreement."

Recall the results from our survey, that most people do not really consider their virtual properties valuable. A reason for this may be the legal question of property ownership; gamers are not ensured that their virtual properties shall remain theirs, they may change or even disappear. 

We believe that this is harmful to the virtual economy. The efforts of gamers are ignored and creativity is stifled when both of these should be valued.  Human beings are what allow the virtual economy to function; people first created trading within the virtual world and in turn the virtual economy. What makes up the goods in this economy is both the coding developed by gaming companies and the effort of users. Property ownership overlooks all of the efforts and creativity of users and hurts their rights and benefits. These issues are important and need to be regulated in order to protect the rights of players.

Related Reading
J.P. Thompson, Two Economic Issues in Virtual WorldsThis article talks about the two existing issues in virtual worlds: property rights and gold farming.
References
Glushko, Bobby, Tales of the (Virtual) City: Governing Property Disputes in Virtual Worlds (June 13, 2007). Berkley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 22, No. 507, 2007. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1458547