Dateline:Shanghai, Hunan, China. November 24th.
In a country of 1,306,313,812 people that has just recently started down a breakneck pace to become the world’s largest economy not based on the McNugget, a lot ofstrange thingscan happen, especially when you have a population that rivals Korea in it’s devotion to living in the psuedo-reality of online games.
The Legend Of Mir IIis one of these games, and in China it’s gone over like gangbusters. With that rampant popularity comes theyinof online cheating, character prostitution and game exploitation, and the counteringyangof developers who seek to curb such acts via bans, suspensions, and possible genital kicks. Of course, it’s not unheard of that they might finger (and by “finger”, I mean “kick in the genitals”) the wrong guy every once in a while.
This is one man’s story of fighting back against an MMO developer gone mad with power. It’s theunderdog versus the behemoth,David versus Goliath,Aquaman versus anything.
Hit the jump for more details and unnecessary hyperbole.
Did I mention that the guy actuallyDIDcheat? Yeah, he deserved a kick to the pot stickers.
He sued them to have his account reinstated and for RMB 45,000 (roughly $5,625USD) in restitution for the items he lost. The court, after some examination of virtual-item-to-real-world-cash exhange rates, awarded him the lesser sum of RMB 30,000 (roughly $3,750USD). This amount, while lower than his original goal, is still more money than you have in your sock, and enough to buy the servitude of3 small childrenin most Chinese provinces.
It might seem that this is a world away, but even in the darkest heart of China the court system is based on peer will. Apparently people in Chinadobelieve that virtual goods have some intrinsic real world monetary value to the point where the loss of such goods is tantamount to being stolen from. It can be assumed that it’s only a matter of time before a court in the United States of America follows a similar path and delivers a ruling against one of our local MMO developers.
