I wonder how this will impact gaming in general. The court also made short work of the EULA... Would this fly when servers are shut down? If digital goods are property with value, what then with the whole debate about gambling mechanics in games?
I'd assume the whole videogame lobby will jump on this to get this overruled. Lets see if that happens, and what higher courts will conclude.
Wait, what?
Is my Animal Crossing island worth anything?
It's a link, you could have read it. But since tl;dr : a dev hacked accounts and stole for half a million of pounds worth of Runescape gold. Defendant argued they stole code, intel, which as such had no real world value. Court ruled that since the code was generally seen as property and had a real world value due to the existance of real world markets for it, it needed to be considered as if it were actual property.
That would open up any similar 'digital property' for which there exists a way to trade it for money to similar claims. I'm not sure if it woulds suffice that it's tradable in-game and a third party real world market exists though. If so, that would then include stuff like FUT cards and COD skins and whatnot.
It's a link, you could have read it.
But since tl;dr : a dev hacked accounts and stole for half a million of pounds worth of Runescape gold. Defendant argued they stole code, intel, which as such had no real world value. Court ruled that since the code was generally seen as property and had a real world value due to the existance of real world markets for it, it needed to be considered as if it were actual property.
That would open up any similar 'digital property' for which there exists a way to trade it for money to similar claims. I'm not sure if it woulds suffice that it's tradable in-game and a third party real world market exists though. If so, that would then include stuff like FUT cards and COD skins and whatnot.