Tobold's Blog
Saturday, June 02, 2007
 
WoW player sues IGE

WoW player Antonio Hernandez filed a class-action law suit against IGE for gold farming, or as he states it for "knowingly interfering with and substantially impairing the intended use and enjoyment". Which only proves that in the USA you can sue anyone for anything. That doesn't mean this will go anywhere. I seriously doubt that IGE will be stopped by this in any way.
Comments:
It's actually a fairly interesting idea. I mean...imagine if all WoW players started suing IGE for the same thing, someone may have to take notice (whether that would be a good or bad thing is debatable.) 3 million(ish) players in the North America and then who knows how many from other parts of the world, that could become huge.
 
This could be an interesting development.
 
How do we all join this class action?! In in!
 
All blizzard would have to do to fix farming is make the most profitable areeas instanced.
 
How rich is this guy? If he's rich, he might be able to get a lawyer good enough to actually win it. This is america after all. rofl.
 
I doubt he is as rich as IGE is.
 
The law-firm has to be rich enough and has to find the case promising enough as they are probably paid a share of the money if they win this case.
 
All blizzard would have to do to fix farming is make the most profitable areeas instanced.

In this case, that would make Blizzard another defendant. The plaintiffs are charging (amongst other things) that gold farmers are inflating the currency. If Blizzard made farming in instances available, that would lead to further inflation.

It would be an interesting precedent if American courts said anyone inflating virtual currency (or other economic effects) is a tortfeasor. The developers would need to shut down rather than do anything to affect the in-game economy, at risk of massive liability.
 
I think he meant make 5-mans more profitable, not make new, farmable solo instances.
 
In the litigation industry, the bigger the target (in terms of $$$), the more interesting it is to the law firm.

So it's not so much a matter of how much money Mr. Hernandez has, but rather how much money IGE can be milked for. After all, if the suit is won or settled for big $$$, the law firm will get a big chunk of money (split among a few law partners), and the WoW players will get a big chunk of money (divided by 8.5 million). So your check as a WoW player will probably be less than the postage it takes so send it -- but the real potential benefit to WoW players is to stop gold farmers by removing the monetary incentive.
 
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