A legal dispute over whether someone stole money from RuneScape players has been re-examined to determine that yes, they did.
Most free-to-play games like Fortnite, or the newly launched Highguard, are filled with microtransactions, tempting you to buy cosmetics and skins with actual money – or rather in-game money that you’ve bought with real cash.
In-game currency (Fortnite has V-Bucks, Highguard has gold, etc.), can often be earned in-game and as far as players are concerned it’s real money and the the things it buys have significant real world value.
That’s as far as fans are concerned anyway, as this law is, not surprisingly, several steps behind in determining exactly what virtual currency is and whether it’s illegal to steal it. But according to a new judgement by the Court of Appeals it is.
This is in relation to a legal dispute where a former employee of Jagex, the developer behind popular MMO RuneScape, allegedly hacked 68 player accounts and stole ‘hundreds of billions’ of in-game gold pieces (per GamesIndustry.biz).
When the case came to court, Jagex said the amount stolen was tantamount to £543,123 of actual money, but the judge ultimately ruled in favour of the employee, since it was argued RuneScape’s gold could not be considered actual property and thus not legally capable of being stolen.
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The Court of Appeals begs to differ, however, per a ruling made earlier this month on January 14. You can read the full thing here, but if you just want the cliff notes, Lord Justice Popplewell thinks RuneScape’s gold does count as property and that the previous ruling didn’t ‘bear analysis.’
According to the 1968 Theft Act, ‘’Property’ includes money and all other property, real or personal, including things in action and other intangible property’ and it’s that ‘intangible property’ part that’s being highlighted.
‘They are properly described as something which can be stolen as a matter of normal use of language,’ reads the ruling’s conclusion. ‘They do not fall within any of the established exceptions.
‘They are not ‘pure knowledge’: functionally they exist as identifiable assets distinct from the code which gives rise to them and outside the minds of people. There is no good policy reason for excepting them from the category of property which can be stolen.’
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The judgement is likely to have widespread ramifications because this effectively means there’s grounds for facing criminal charges if you’re caught stealing virtual currency in any game that makes use of it.
It’s possible this could be extended to other in-game items as well. Not to mention, if such virtual items are official property, this could prompt a re-examination, at least in the UK, of loot boxes, which include virtual currency and items as random rewards.
Game publishers have routinely denied loot boxes are a form of gambling, but if the things you can obtain from them are equivalent to actual, tangible property that can be stolen, it could be argued that they’re no different from slot machines.
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