Beijing Court Rules That Virtual Theft Is Real
Theft
In a first, Beijing's Chaoyang District People's Court
in China has ruled that theft of virtual assets in an
online gaming world are just as real as theft of real
assets in the real world.
In the case, the plaintiff Li Hongchen, 24, said that
he had spent two years and 10,000 yuan (US$1,210) buying
pay-as-you-go cards to play, amassing weapons, powers
and victories in the online computer game Hongyue or Red
Moon, before his weapons were stolen. He said that his
assets were stolen by another player who hacked into his
account.
In China's online gaming industry, players play by buying
pay-as-you-cards, allowing the player to play by the hour
or minute. Credit cards are not yet widely available for
the players, who are generally younger, and the pay-as-you-go
cards circumvent the online payments security issue.
Massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG)
are very popular with this young, mainly male audience,
and many spend most of their time and income playing.
The objective of most of the games is to defeat your enemies,
accrue weapons and powers, and rise to a higher level.
Those at the highest level are constantly fighting off
new challengers who want to "kill" them, and
become the king of the pack. In order to create market
their games, the game hosting companies stage highly publicized
showdowns, with valuable prizes going to the winner.
Individual players have their own accounts, where they
keep their weapons, powers and identity, which they assume
when they go online. Li Hongchen accused the defendant,
Beijing Arctic Ice Technology Development Co., developer
and host of Red Moon, of not keeping his assets secure,
and allowing another player to steal his assets. The defendant
argued that the assets were virtual, and were only piles
of data.
By siding with the plaintiff, the Beijing court agreed
with Chen that he had spent real time, wisdom, money and
belongings, and that the company should make restitution.
Security is a major issue for all software companies,
and hackers are especially prevalent in the Chinese online
gaming world. Because online gaming has taken off so quickly
in China, none of the distributors have had time to make
their games secure, and hackers frequently break into
the accounts of players to steal their assets.
The court decision places the onus on the game makers
and hosts to make their games secure, which any way one
looks at it, will be a massive undertaking.
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