Play Money: Earning Real Money in Unreal Places

The thriving genre of Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) fuses two species of fictions: the interactive fantasy sagas in the persistent world and the legal system of intellectual property.

Despite the imminent threat of “physical” social isolation, the “virtual” universe has witnessed real social interaction among the players. In fact, studies have uncovered that online gaming caused gamers attain the pinnacle of Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”- self-actualization. Thus, the competition created is very much appreciated by the gamers. On-line players splurge immense amount of time inside these virtual battle-grounds to upgrade their characters by acquiring weaponry, armory, money, and gold. In view of the importance of these virtual items in making the characters more powerful and ultimately more competitive, the development of property rights within the game-world was thus inevitable.

In due time, the convoluted world of virtual property became a business opportunity for real money trade. As in-game items began to be sold for real world money, opportunistic entrepreneurs saw the prospect of making money by organizing teams of workers (usually situated in low- labor cost locations such as the Philippines and China) who would incessantly play these games, with the ultimate purpose of promptly earning the coveted virtual items, thereafter selling them online to gamers who don't have adequate time to acquire them. Thus, both the virtual and real worlds witnessed the emergence of the so-called “gold farms” or “sweatshops”. Indeed, being a high-risk venture which runs contrary to the spirit of the game and which destroys the “virtual economy” of the games, such practice of paying real world cash for accounts or in-game items is vehemently opposed by various games and gamers. These transactions are typically prohibited by the terms of use or end user license agreement (EULA); unfortunately, enforcement is costly, time-consuming, costly, and strenuous to pursue effectively.

As these virtual worlds create new forms of intellectual property and even new rights, legal predicaments in the real world such as fraud, theft, and ownership disputes emerge to complicate matters and to blur the line between the virtual and the real.

**** The title of this blog was taken from the title of an upcoming movie concerning the same topic. ****