The Lawbringer: The lessons of globalization and gold farming
by Mathew McCurley 
Jan 21st 2011 at 1:00PM
Back in 2008, I wrote an article for The Escapist titled Crossing Boundaries, a piece all about globalization as the greatest issue facing video game developers and producers at the time. Guess what, ladies and gentlemen? It's 2011, and globalization still takes the top spot as the prime issue challenging video game development and production.
Rather than rewrite an article on the effects of globalization and the problems the phenomenon causes for the video game industry at large, I thought it might be fun to use globalization as a rubric for discussing the very global industry of gold farming, especially when it comes to the legal nature of things, whatever things may be. We will talk about the lack of predictability in the global market, gold farming as globalization, and the problems with fighting the good fight against the grey market. Won't you join me?
The issue of globalization
As technology pushes forward, the world gets smaller. From tweets during revolutions to global events being recorded on YouTube, the world travels at the speed of light rather than the speed of a clipper ship bringing news from far away lands. With globalization comes partnerships and relationships that would have never been experienced in the old world. Markets open, products cross unheard-of borders, and the world becomes porous. That's all well and good for the big-picture thinkers, but we're here to talk about a very small subset of industry and commerce that deals with our world, MMOs.
WoW, and MMOs in general, provide us with many interesting issues surrounding globalization. Censorship, competition, cultural acceptance -- all of these things are global issues that might not have ever occurred to you as issues a video game company has to deal with on such a broad basis. Every market you want to release your game in has rules, regulations, and sensitivities that have to be heeded before you make a dime from those players. The uncertainty and risk involved is astounding. What happens if that $80 million you raised to create a Chinese-specific MMO is suddenly worthless because the Ministry of Culture says no to your game?
That was a trick question, actually, since you can't even create or run an MMO in China if you aren't a Chinese national corporation (or cleverly fake-partnered/licensed with one). Ah, globalization.
Gold farming is a global industry
I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Gold farming is bigger than you think it is. A lot bigger. Someone once told me gold farming is now in the billions of dollars a year all across the world, and I wasn't hesitant to believe that in the least. Back in 2006, that number was potentially just under a billion. Now, with the number of MMOs and the huge increase in WoW players alone, the numbers must be astronomical.
A lot of people email me with statements or questions that sound like this: Why can't Blizzard just sue these guys and stop them? Sure, Blizzard could probably sue on some basic contract claims or, as it often tries, sue on a copyright infringement claim of some kind. The problem is jurisdiction. You can't sue someone you don't have jurisdiction over, meaning the rules have to apply to them as well for there to be any recourse, or the acts have to have their nexus where jurisdiction would be applicable.
Take China, for example. Our rules and regulations have no holding in Chinese courts because they aren't Chinese rules and regulations. Chinese courts are also famous for ignoring default judgments in U.S. courts. We may live in a global village, yadda yadda, but the rules we deal with are more separated than you could possible imagine. The real answer is you'd have to sue in China for a judgment in China, and that's not the simplest thing in the world to do.
Gold farming as global
After choosing this topic to elaborate on, I went and drew a little picture of the transactions that take place to illustrate a point to myself: Gold farming and the transactions that occur from the practice are heavily in favor of continuing those practices with little to no recourse available by foreign game companies.
Despite being a global phenomenon, the left side of the transactions never see or understand the right side of the transaction. The income from gold farming goes to a lot more than employment, obviously, but you get the point. And with a workforce that is so easy to assemble and easy to pay, the profit margins on gold farming must be immense, not even counting volume.
Lessons from a global, virtual industry
What can we learn from gold farming as a global industry that permeates almost every MMO on the planet? A lot, actually. Virtual worlds are still very much the domain of games, but one day they won't be. Recourse, therefore, is the issue we must begin to truly dissect. As the world gets smaller and virtual worlds become more popular and more pervasive, finding recourse to our problems will become the real issue, as the means and mechanics to creating and dealing in virtual currency may or may not have evolved to the point of real currency in our laws and in our minds.
Greg Boyd once asked me if Facebook was a virtual world, and I didn't have an answer. I probably mumbled something like "of course not," followed by "well, maybe," then weaseled into an "aah you got me and I learned something." The truth is, Facebook is a virtual world, and one day you might sign a contract with Facebook connect. You might buy actual real estate in Second Life and pay for consideration in Linden dollars. We have no idea.
Will our laws hold up when the very real-world grounding that our systems are set up to deal with slips out from under us? We can tack on new ideas to existing laws, sure, but creating something fresh lets us operate under a new paradigm. Maybe gold farming is a step in understanding virtual currency and the potential recourses available to companies affected by it.
Something that has always bothered me about the global village concept is that we all play by different rules. Sure, it's a product of cultural, religious, and idealistic differences, as well as those that govern us, but in the case of MMOs and the grey market, I don't think it's fair to say that we're all on the same page yet. The communication is there, yes, but the recourse, for the most part, is not.
This column is for entertainment only; if you need legal advice, contact a lawyer. For comments or general questions about law or for The Lawbringer, contact Mat at mat@wowinsider.com.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Lawbringer
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Brodi Jan 21st 2011 1:31PM
A very interesting read, as always, but my train of thought got completely derailed by the little Magmaw. Sorry. :(
Corath Jan 21st 2011 1:50PM
I agree. The Magmaw picture was great. :D
Devin Jan 21st 2011 5:57PM
Now I want my Lil' Magmaw non combat pet :(
Craig Knighton Jan 21st 2011 1:33PM
Has there ever been a judgement, that went against a gold farming company?
I remember a case against a company who sold items, which was brought by Mythic Entertainment, many years ago, but can't remember any others.
My own stance is that it doesn't really bother me, as long as the gold is legitimately 'earned'. What brings it down for me is the same companies don't seem to care where they get their gold from, so the unscrupulous use various tools to steal it from players, and then sell it to the companies to sell on.
tatsumasa Jan 21st 2011 1:36PM
the reason the problem still exists is because the market still exists, and the market still exists to such a large degree because blizzard allows it. rather than punish people who clearly break rules by buying gold and then later have their accounts 'stolen' blizzard has adopted an approach that streamlines the recovery process. instead of saying sorry for you, hope you learned your lesson, they have invested time and resources into saying it's not your fault here's some gold and justice points.
blizzard enables the buyers and thus the sellers. the reason is apparent - if they let everyone who bought gold suffer the consequences of their unscrupulous actions, they'd lose a large chunk of their subscriptions. you can see their position on the whole gold farmer problem by looking at their solutions - a report spam feature that doesn't immediately kick someone offline and flag the account for investigation, it only puts that account on your temporary ignore list.
how could blizzard effectively cripple the gold selling market?
1) block gold selling website names from being typed in game. they did this one time before so i know they can. a gold spammer that can't type their website won't get many customers. and i realize they can type 'c@m' instead of 'com' but if '4wowgold' is blocked, it doesn't matter how they type the rest of it.
2) make report spam actually do something to the person spamming, not the people reporting. if blizzard made it so five spam reports in a ten second period kicked an account offline and flagged it for review, spammers would only get one message out per stolen account. flip side of that coin is people abusing the feature to kick people offline. it would take coordination of five (or however many) accounts to kick someone and if someone was found to have not deserved the kick, the kickers could get a ban. sure, it would piss off some griefers in the beginning, but in the end you will have much less spam.
3) make level ones not allowed to yell or talk on channels. time gold farmers (account thieves) have to spend leveling even one level is time they are spending not spamming their keylogger websites. flip side to that coin is making the game less social for level ones. i doubt blizzard will lose a whole lot of subscriptions if trying to yell at level one gives a message of 'you need to be level 2 to do that.' and really, any less yelling is a good thing. people who want to buy your crap are on trade channel. people who want to answer your questions are on general channel. yelling only pisses off the people who don't want to do either and have left those channels.
4) quit giving people who have had their crap taken back their crap. someone files a report for having been robbed. blizzard checks the logs and sees that the person received 10k gold two days before from unknown, well wtf do you think happened? don't give them back their crap. tell them they are lucky to not be getting permanently banned for violating the tos by allowing someone other than them to access their account. i know blizzard would lose a few subscriptions over that one though. and that is the reason it will never happen.
Drakkenfyre Jan 21st 2011 1:55PM
Obviously you didn't know about the people who were getting banned for "gold buying" when they didn't.
Back during Burning Crusade, there were some people who were banned for transferring large amounts of gold, 5000g and up, between characters and account. There were some who were even banned for giving it to a friend to buy Epic flying.
They were legit because they came to the Customer Service forum, complained about the ban, said they had never bought gold, and was simply transferring gold between accounts or gifting it to friends, and a CM checked, confirmed it wasn't bought, and they were unbanned.
I don't know if the gold buying banning is quite as reactive now, but they would ban you even if they SUSPECTED gold buying.
Also, I do wonder why don't they censor out gold seller addresses. There is one very well known one that we all know who's name still isn't censored, and I wonder why. I am so sick of seeing it.
Craig Knighton Jan 21st 2011 1:53PM
A lot of people get their accounts compromised without ever buying gold, or going near to gold selling sites or even 'dodgy' websites. There are lots of legitimate sites that have had their adverts poisoned to load malware onto visitors machines. Banning them is a little extreme don't you think?
The gold spam in chat is blocked to a degree, but there are limits to what Blizzard would filter. It's so cheap to buy domain names, that gold selling websites would buy names with more common words, and then we'd be trying to chat and have their own words censored due to unfortunately saying a word matching a gold selling website.
Gold farmers don't hack or steal - they farm the gold, hence the name. Criminals using malware steal accounts and gold, and then sell it on to the gold selling sites.
There are two ways to stop it
1 - don't make gold worth much. If there's nothing to buy, then there's no reason to buy gold. Of course this will kill professions etc.
2 - Blizzard sell it themselves for a low sum, and allow players to sell their excess gold back, in exchange for game time.
The first won't happen, and I would have said once that neither would number 2, but having seen Blizzard sell pets and mounts, it wouldn't actually surprise me to see them selling gold.
Kevin Fitzgerald Jan 21st 2011 1:59PM
No offense, but I believe those are some terrible ideas. As long as you can't hear the spammer, then your experience isn't harmed. Let Blizzard worry about the farmers, and you just play the game.
Allowing players the authority abuse your hypothetical kick system gives players the right to sue Blizzard. They pay their monthly dues for access, and allowing players to deny them access is a very poor and potentially illegal decision.
The purpose of a business is to make a profit. If Blizzard banned every account, or refused to return gear and gold to every account that purchased gold, players would quit. Guilds would lose contributors, and raid scheduled would be messed up. Blizzard doesn't want to upset the community because it lowers the quality of the experience.
Gold farmers hurt WoW. They probably drive 1/1000 WoW players from playing. But if Blizzard took action against anyone that bought gold, it would probably drive away 1/100 WoW players.
naughtyzoot Jan 21st 2011 2:08PM
Only problem with #3 is you basically hit level 2 now by traveling from the starting area to a major town to access /2-Trade :/
Drakkenfyre Jan 21st 2011 2:34PM
I missed the part about level 2's.
I absolutely hate it when someone makes a "minimum level to enter cities/talk in Trade" suggestions.
One of the methods companies use to gain gold is to bot. Those bots can automate leveling. Let's put 2 and 2 together, shall we?
The gold farmers use those bots to level, then spam anyway.
Net result? Absolutely no !@#$ing change.
And it wouldn't matter anyway. The accounts they use to spam on are usually compromised accounts. They will have a character above level 2 anyway.
tatsumasa Jan 21st 2011 2:34PM
@craig http://wow.joystiq.com/2010/06/29/the-lawbringer-why-youll-never-buy-gold-from-blizzard/
@kevin
actually you don't pay for access. read the eula and tos. you're paying to use blizzard's toys when they say you can. i'm pretty sure there was a lawbringer about that too but i can't remember. blizzard can let you play as much or little as they want and you can't sue anyone.
Kevin Fitzgerald Jan 21st 2011 3:26PM
Tatsumasa, you're in correct. However, when it is players that are denying your access, that's a different story. It's like if you went to see a movie. Management could ask you to leave for any reason. However, if a patron forced you to leave, and management didn't reimberse you, that's where you could take legal action via consumer protection laws.
Kevin Fitzgerald Jan 21st 2011 3:28PM
Gah! I meant, "you are correct".
tatsumasa Jan 21st 2011 3:35PM
@kevin
alright, i can see the legal issues there. so maybe if someone is reported for x number of spams in a given time frame make that person not able to talk then. it isn't enough that i don't have to hear it because there's still more people out there waiting to be tempted to buy and have their accounts stolen so they can then be used to spam some more.
when a person comes in to work and discovers they're sick, they need to go home to keep from getting everyone else sick, not me go home so i don't get sick. i'm already not buying gold. it's the people who could that need to not have it thrown in their face.
Kevin Fitzgerald Jan 21st 2011 3:47PM
Tat, if that's how you feel, I'll respect that. I'll only say that logisitically, that would be a nightmare for Blizzard to have to deal with rampant abuse. Blizzard is (and should be) more concerned with player experience than they are with gold buying.
It's easier for them to give the players the ability to tune out gold spammer if they player chooses to do so. Then at their own leisure, investigate the gold spammer and takes actions from there. It would be multiplicatively more challenging to deal with players kicking people out of WoW for fun, and having to take disciplinary action against them.
Ez Jan 21st 2011 6:59PM
@ tatsumasa: Well if it ever happens to you, then maybe Blizz will take your advice and wipe you out. You have to realize many people who get hacked are not buying gold. They can hack thru uploaders or even if you just unwittingly visit a website and your IS is lousy. A kid exploring the internet is very vulnerable, and loads of victims are kids.
I wish they would try blocking the gold spam. Maybe put a BadBoy on each server.
Rimar Jan 22nd 2011 3:36AM
@Drakkenfyre
A week ago in the Ashen Lake area of Mount Hyjal where the flame mobs pat, I saw 2 bots going about their routine of killing and skinning. They would even detect someon killining near them and run and skin your kill too. (my toon is a skinner and had to learn to be quick skinning his kills as they got one of mine).
I tried talking to one (the other was an ally) and he was unresponsive in any way. So I watched these two for quite a while and eventaully one's bags got full so when he killed he'd pause, couldn't skin, then move on. Between the two of them they had dead mobs strewn everywhere. They did that for an hour and then suddenly they both left the area.
When they came back, apparently their bags were empty because they resumed their original pats. The one I had attempted tp whisper to was still unresponsive.
So I filed a GM ticket on them both.
busuan Jan 21st 2011 1:40PM
There are two aspects of "Our rules and regulations have no holding in Chinese courts". The first and the foremost is that there are surprisingly few treaties (therefore few laws) on whether, what and how to recognize the other party's court rulings. US recognize rulings from a Communist country?! That's a lethal political poison.
The second is that US legal system is of Case law while the Chinese is of Civil law. I can foresee the experts from two countries fighting each other forever.
DarkWalker Jan 21st 2011 9:42PM
Not only that.
I believe most countries in the world will only recognize other rulings from other countries if due process, according to the laws of both countries, was respected, and both countries' legal systems agree about jurisdiction rules in the specific case. If there is any conflict about jurisdiction rules, the lawsuit will probably need to be filled in the defendant's jurisdiction in order to have any effect.
For example, for players in Brazil, no matter what Blizzard might have added to the EULA/TOS they can't sue one such player in the US based on the EULA/TOS and hope for the judgement to be accepted here; there's a local law saying standard form contracts (of which EULAs/TOS are subspecies) are not allowed to set jurisdiction rules, with any clause that attempts to do so being regarded as null and void. Without such valid clause, any lawsuit needs to be started in the place the defendant live, else the whole lawsuit is simply disregarded as invalid.
Paultab Jan 21st 2011 1:42PM
I've asked before and I'll ask again. Where has it ever been stated that gold buying is an EULA violation.
Selling to farmers and players is clearly stated, but I've still never seen evidence written or otherwise that buying is an offense.