This is pretty interesting. GamingPays!, a website designed to help people become more efficient gold and item farmers in MMORPGs, is being threatened by Jagex (Runescape’s developer/publisher) for publishing information on how to farm in Runescape. From one of Jagex’s initial letters signed by Mohammed Khan (good name), who appears to be a random person within their Community Management team:
The file has information regarding how players can make money from RuneScape. This breaks copyright laws as RuneScape as well as everything within it is the intellectual property of Jagex. Therefore trading someone else’s property without their permission, or advising people on how to do so, is against the law.
That is, of course, absolutely ridiculous. Aaron Crow, owner of GamingPays!, had responded to their initial take-down request in a very reasonable manner (far more more politely than my response would have been in his situation), but then got in touch with Gregory Beck, lawyer with the Public Citizen Litigation Group in D.C. Greg wrote back to Jagex and explained why Aaron was not violating Jagex’s intellectual property, and nothing was heard from Jagex for a month, during which time they appear to have hired a UK law firm to do their bullying for them. Their next letter was, as Aaron puts it, a doozy. Here’s the important excerpt from Jagex’s letter of October 1st. The letter quotes from Runescape’s TOS, saying:
* “You must not encourage, or attempt to trick other players into breaking our rules.”
The letter then states:
Your client (assuming he is so) will undoubtedly have used our client’s site and become bound by its terms and conditions. Insofar as it relates to RuneScape, your client’s eBook clearly encourages other players to break our client’s rules.
So your client’s activities constitute a direct breach of contract by it as well as tortious inducement to other parties to break their contracts with our client.
Whhhhaaaaatttt?
Now, I realize that it’s slightly ironic that two posts ago I was defending EULAs, and indeed, I’m a big fan of adhering to them, but no contract allows one to sign away his or her fundamental rights. Jagex is free to tell people that they can’t talk about topic X in-game, and ban the person from the game for doing so, but there is no circumstance I can conceive of in which I’d consider myself obligated to follow a clause in a EULA that restricted my freedom of speech in any way.
I’d love to see Jagex get slapped down in court and ordered to pay Aaron’s legal fees, but I can’t see it going to court at all. Aaron states he’s never played Runescape, so isn’t bound by their TOS, and even if he had, I can’t imagine a case like this getting anywhere.
Even at our level (ie small compared to Runescape), websites pop up with information that, were it any of our business, we’d prefer not be made public (quest solutions, etc.) We even get our own players asking if there’s anything we can do to force people to take down websites that provide quest solutions (some of which reprint our help files and such word for word and are perhaps technically violating our intellectual property), but that kind of heavy-handed attempt at control deserves to fail, and does fail.
If Blizzard tried this, the MMORPG blogosphere would be all over them for it, and rightfully so. Runescape is the 2nd largest MMORPG in the West. Let’s give Aaron some moral support, if nothing else, by blogging about Jagex’s shameful bid to exert control over speech outside of their service.
(P.S. One of the letters from Jagex or their lawyers claims that Runescape has 4.2 million registered, active players. I wonder what their definition of active is?)
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November 1st, 2006 at 3:21 am
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October 30th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Jamie (Mendax)
Speaking as a UK lawyer, although I can’t say that I specialise in virtual IP and so on, the threats seem pretty baseless. This is particularly because Runescape represents a free service, and therefore playing it, or certainly creating a free account and agreeing to the terms of service cannot be properly said to be a contract as there is a failure of valuable consideration between the parties. Necessarily, if there is no contract then there can be no tortious inducement to other parties to break their contracts.
In my very limited view of the situation the case is a total lame duck, and the worst that might be alleged legally is some form of tortious unlawful interference with economic interests, which would be far too remote and a causative link would be near-impossible to demonstrate.
Of course it is not beyond certain solicitors to attempt to hide baseless bullying behind fancy legal terminology in the interests of their clients. However I think anyone advising Jagex to actually commence proceedings based on this allegation would be rather negligent and should pay the costs themselves when they inevitably lose.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:08 am
Raph
“(P.S. One of the letters from Jagex or their lawyers claims that Runescape has 4.2 million registered, active players. I wonder what their definition of active is?)”
I believe they use trailing 30 days, which is a decent measure. Yes, they really are that big.
October 31st, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Marc Watson/Richter Carthan
Interesting how my fellow gameplayers instantly object to posting quest solutions or helpfiles. I much prefer our kind of players to the general populace of, say, runescape (I played Runescape for a few months, and the “fre armr plz??” got annoying after a while).
October 31st, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Matt
Hard to disagree with you there, Marc. It’s a lot easier to have a mature, responsible player-base when you’re our size than when you’re Runescape’s size though.
November 1st, 2006 at 5:58 am
Andrew Crystall
They have nearly 900,000 paying subscribers, I believe.
However, basically they’re doing some pretty legally…um…dangerous things there. I can’t see this standing up in court, and the nature of the claim could well relate to far deeper IP rights issues. The very claim that a contract was formed… (*thud*)
And..umm…Blizzard DID keep on issuing takedown notices on Ebay and making DMCA and other legal threats for an “unauthorised guide” maker, until recently, when he made them back down entirely in a lawsuit, actually.
Here we are:
http://news.com.com/Blizzard+abandons+DMCA+threat+over+WoW+manual/2100-1043_3-6082135.html?tag=nefd.top
November 6th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Ronald Watts
Personally, I always refused to post quest solutions on my wiki while it was still up.
I tried to make money on UO, but it never worked out for me.
I don’t see why if the companies don’t like this being done, why they don’t just undercut the gold sellers and offer gold themselves.
December 11th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Aaron Crow
Hi Matt and friends,
I realize I’m a little late on this, but thanks for your coverage of the story and your moral support. I appreciate it! I wish I could give you an interesting update, but so far nothing new from Jagex. Greg tells me they’re currently after a “very successful” gold reseller, so perhaps they decided they have bigger fish to fry (I don’t sell gold or accounts from my site).
Best wishes to all!
Aaron
January 10th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Cameron 'Atomic' Reeves
For those of you still reading this, check this out:
http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?t=215671
March 4th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Meili
This looks like jealousy to me. A gaming company is simply protecting their interests because Mr. Crow is promoting cheating in his web site.
I suppose you don’t care about customers who have a crappy game experience because gold farmers have taken over 90% of all the good areas to gather resources. With respect, I am sure Mr Crow knows such activities as gold farming (selling RS gold for rl money) are illegal. So please, stop whining if Customer Service asks you to stop. You are encouraging bad behavior, what did you expect?
March 4th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Matt
With all due respect Meili, I think you misunderstand the situation.
Selling RS gold for rl money is not illegal. Runescape doesn’t like it, but that, in no way, makes it illegal.
As a UK lawyer pointed out above, Jagex’s threats are baseless. It’s just a big company trying to bully the little guy because it can afford more lawyers.
March 4th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Meili
Jagex owns the items in their games. Period. Selling it for real life money is clearly illegal as the players don’t own those little pixels and game coding. Even if it is not illegal, yours and other people’s reasoning smacks of envy rather than logic.
I suppose you think one day the Jagex customer service just randomly thought to themselves one day “ooh I am so damn bored with providing customer service for over 800,000 players! I am going to go bully some hapless internet person now.”
Yeah, it sounds like “bullying” to me, even though, Mr. Crow is advising people on how to cheat and sell RS items (which Jagex has copyright to) for real life money.
Pfft. I suppose when your game players collectively pay over $4 million a month, you won’t bother to protect them against the gold farmers. Right.
P.S. Your reply of “Selling RS gold for rl money is not illegal. Runescape doesn’t like it, but that, in no way, makes it illegal.” makes it seem that you support gold farmers, is that true?
March 4th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Matt
No, I’m not saying I support gold farmers. What I’m saying is that selling RS gold for rl money is not illegal. It’s potentially a violation of the contract between the user and Jagex. That’s a civil matter, not a criminal matter.
In this case however, the defendant only gave away information on how to efficiently sell gold. That is absolutely no different from any hint guide available on IGN or Gamespy and it’s almost certainly legal in the United States.
–matt
March 5th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Andrew Crystall
Meili, no, they don’t own them “period”. This is an untested legal assertion, nothing more. And MMO companies have gopne to some lenghts NOT to have this tested, because it is not even an especially STRONG claim in law. There’s a reason they rely on the EULA rather than sueing IGE, and the EULA’s specify termination of liscence as the company’s ultimate remedy.
And yes, if you rememebr Blizzard had to back down from preventing an unofficial guide to WoW being sold on Ebay.
June 3rd, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Chad Estrem
Sorry that im late on this but i am working in the legail field.
Even if it was illegial to sell runescape items for real money, it is still legial to give people information on how to do so.
However, i do not beileve that any body under any circumanstances should be able to sell runescape items which do belong to Jagex staff unless with consent from Jagex.
Jagex has protection on these items not only for what is on the contract but also becuase there game is copyrighted. That means the items are also copyrighted.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
ink
whose aaron? wat is this stuff about?!
February 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am
kohel
im confused is it or is it not illegal to sell rs items or gold for rl money?
February 21st, 2008 at 9:23 am
Matt
No, it’s not illegal. It’s against Jagex’s policy and EULA, but that’s not at all the same thing as it being illegal. There are no laws prohibiting it, no court decisions ruling that it’s illegal, etc.
February 26th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
link
will i get suspended or kicked off runescape for having an auto miner,cuter,or any other auto guy.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:52 am
ishard
Guys please could you give me a little advice? I realise its slightly off topic but it does concern Jagex and Runescape.
Jagex have now stopped anyone complaining about moderators and have no way for paying customers to complain about them.
Is this an infringment of my legal rights? If I feel I am not getting the service I pay for from Jagex do I have the right to complain?
March 4th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
runescape items
good
March 13th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Runescape Player
It’s absurd how Jagex and Runescape staff treats their customer. You can be banned for saying you dont like Runescape. You cannot complain against a moderator or the customer support. Customer support is automated since 2001 with same reply word by word. And you dont have a option to contact customer support on your own. Jagex has mentioned in knowledge base they are the owners of Runescape website and there is no free speech there. If you are worried about free speech you have to leave their website. They dont let you complain for anything they dont want to talk about. Just outright ban.
Heck they even lie about the age of players. On website it says 13+ but there is a handbook “Runescape OIfficial Handbook” copyright owner Jagex Ltd. If you read this handbook it mentions preference for age group 8+ and above, and 9-12. Isn’t it illegal for promoting 8+ kids for account ? I thought 13+ was international law. However, even if it’s not why two different ages on website and handbook. The majorty of long time players are quitting them coz of the sad changed in game.
It’s Ruinedscape now.
PS: I have been Runescape player since 2001/2002 so I do know what Im talking about.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:29 am
Colin
i think they should make a dragon cross bow and make every cross bow evalable to non-members and the dragon 1 members! So my friends are starting to quit becuase of it…=/
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 am
jake
some guy said that i was gonna become a player moderator but there was no crown by his name but i didn’t know so he said give me you password and your account will be updated so thats what i did but then he stole my accout and it was a lvl114 i worked so hard on it and it was just tacken away i was also a member and had finaly bought some dragon armour i was crushed when it happend=’{
April 16th, 2008 at 7:11 am
David
That threat is ridiculous indeed. I have written about and posted emails and threats from Jagex on my blog linked above if you’re interested.
April 20th, 2008 at 2:30 am
rog
one thing i don’t see mentioned very much is that under uk law`you cannot be bound by the terms of a contract if you are under 18 which means that their terms and conditions would be unenforceable in court
and their threats are baseless. What would be good is a class action by all those who invested years of their time and money only to have jagex destroy the game
April 24th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
A commenter
Currently there’s no way for normal players to contact Jagex other than bug and advert reports and billing support. They have forums, but if you wrote even a small complaint about them your post would get locked, hidden and you would be threated with a ban.
Is it even legal to be uncontactable like that, or for example to ban accounts that might have months of membership credit (about five euros a month) left, and keeping the money?
May 28th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
nikola
can i have free accounts plz and thank you
July 31st, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Anonymous
The day Jagex gets slapped in the face and forced to close its the business is the day I will finally like them.
It’s true, you can’t even complain about them without getting banned from their services, and all of your membership money is never returned.
Their TOS said I could contact Jagex ‘via the forums’ if I have a complaint, So I adressed a thread to Jagex, and complained to them about their quality of service, and that I wouldn’t be satisfied with an answer from any moderator, I wanted to hear from their CEO.
All I received was other players’ spam and harassment in my thread and a Jagex Forum Moderator locked the thread and threatened action against me for my complaint.
I re-created a thread saying it was my right under the TOS to contact them via the forums as it said I could do so.
I gave it a few days rest and tried again, but to my surprise I was struck down by a moderator who told me I cannot use the forums to contact Jagex.
I looked in the TOS, and surely enough, the phrase ‘via the forums’ was changed ‘via the forms’.
These are really shady business practices, and if there is ever a class-action suit against these con-artists, I’d be more than happy to take place in it.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:14 am
John
Someone better nuke the jagex company.