Blaine, WI resident, Geoff Luurs fell victim to a heinous crime. His "friend" obtained his user name and password and wiped his FFXI account clean. Luurs did the math and claims that he lost over $3800 worth of virtual property (and subsequently, his girlfriend [j/k people with $4k worth of good in FFXI don't have girlfriends]). He called the police, but they did nothing because they believe that the goods have no real value. No real value! no real value! Dammit, my gil is worth something!
However, if the government begins recognizing virtual items as having real value, then the next logical step would be to tax them. It would not make sense otherwise. It is akin to the "don't give licenses to illegals" argument in the sense that one arm of the government (police saying the virtual goods have worth) to take an opposite stance to another arm of the government (the IRS saying they have no worth). The thing that perplexes me though is that it seems well-settled to me that this stuff has value. While it may not have a physical manifestation, there are still people who are willing to buy 'worthless' virtual items - if a WoW gift card came out that only had an azure dragon whelp pet, I bet people would buy it. Virtual goods are commodities.
While I agree that the tax implications are mind-boggling, and surely going to be a pain to gamers everywhere, virtual goods will be eventually thought of the way they should be, as valuable property, for better or worse.
What do you think?
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Thank you very much.
This happens in Second Life where they actually have a real world value for money in that game. the result? People make businesses on there and don't actually play the game for more then a little bit. A time ratio of something like 6 to 1. Six hours making items to sell for every one hour playing the stupid game.
I wouldn't want to see MMOs drop into that sort of cesspool.
The police are not doing their job, as property has been stolen and they are doing nothing about it.
Wouldn't it be more practical to charge a crime for unauthorized login and vandalism, instead of placing an unpredictable monetary value on items?
The TOS you agree to when you enter the game plainly states that the items and money have no real world value.
Any of this hits a court and that alone will get it thrown out.
If the person who coded those 1s and 0s say it has no value beyond the subscription price then it doesn't.
If you don't set rules and laws for these kind of things, people are going to habitually do them and thumb their nose in the face of deceny.
Seth388 mentions the Terms of Service, and while I disagree with his analysis (contracts can have all sorts of terms, but if those terms are illegal or unconscionable, they're not binding), I think he raises a good point -- let's look at the ToS. If Mr. Luurs is merely a licensee of Blizzard's service, and has no claim to ownership of the virtual property, then he can't claim that his property rights were violated by the theft even if he could sell the in-game assets. Under the terms of the contract, he would be attempting to sell goods that don't belong to him, and Doc Brown would frown on that.
game. set. MATCH.