GearBits

Gamer Sues, Wins Over Virtual Property

In a landmark case on virtual property rights, a court has ordered a web-based game company to return virtual property to a player whose online cache of virtual currency and weapons was stolen.

Li Hongchen, 24, spent the equivalent of $1,210 over two years on his virtual cache for the Chinese game Red Moon, only to find in February that his account had been cyber-burgled via the game's central servers by a hacker.

Hongchen took the game's creators, Arctic Ice Technology Development, to court when they wouldn't help him identify the hacker.

In court, the company stated that Hongchen's property had no real world value, but this December, a District People's Court in Beijing ruled that the company was liable for the player's virtual property because access weaknesses in its servers had allowed the looting to take place.

The result is one of the first legal rulings on virtual property rights, and another example of the blurring line between virtual and real worlds. Some Everquest gamers, for example, already trade game characters and articles for real money through eBay and similar sites.