world-of-warcraft-law

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  • The Lawbringer: Mailbag 5.0

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    08.26.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Oh my, look at the time. Mailbag-o'clock already? That means we have questions to answer! If you'd like to send me a question for The Lawbringer, point a message from your email client of choice to mat@wowinsider.com with something having to do with Lawbringer in the title and ask away. This week, we've got some fun questions to go through. Our first email comes from Lee, who wants to know if the Diablo 3 currency trading on the real-money Auction House could ever be big enough for a foreign currency exchange-type of marketplace for Diablo gold. Lee asked: You've talked at length about gold farming and the repercussion of gold farming in mmos. Much of it is related to currency trading. You've pointed out that Diablo's new model of selling cash on the auction house will eliminate gold farming and selling as we know it by creating gold to blizzard dollar currency exchange. Do you think we'll see the development of Forex style black box trading, using a Trading API add-on most likely?

  • The Lawbringer: WoW's immune system and the gold selling virus

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    08.19.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Security is a lot like the human immune system -- the longer you are exposed to the dangers of security intrusion and attacks against you, the easier it is to learn how to defend against new attacks. The video game industry has been the target of hackers of all types since its inception, with hacks and leaks dotting the gaming landscape. Gold farmers and gold hackers are the relatively new kids on the block, but have been fighting a long battle with Blizzard as both sides push and pull to achieve their goals. Blizzard is in a unique position where they have the knowledge of years of attacks behind them. What happens when the new guy enters the genre and has no such immunity or experience behind them, despite hackers knowing exactly what to do? Have you ever read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel? No? Well, it's a pretty darn good read, and you already like to read (as evidenced by your eyes' sliding back and forth across the screen at this very moment), so pick up this Pulitzer Prize-winning look at the ascension of western civilization. The very basic (and I mean, extremely distilled version) thesis of the book is that western civilization achieved dominance over the world through serendipitous geographic factors and weaponry, diseases to which many were not immune, and central, powerful organization. I'm concerned with the germs part of the equation. What does any of this have to do with the massively multiplayer genre and WoW in particular? Well, a lot, in fact.

  • The Lawbringer: What WoW can learn from other microtransaction models, part 2

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    08.12.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Two weeks ago, The Lawbringer took a look at the EVE Online currency model, what happens when value is dictated by the players, and the successes and failures that Blizzard can learn from when moving forward the revenue model for WoW or any other secret MMOs in the pipe. This week, part 2 discusses the batch currency model, where players purchase one set of currency and earn another. While WoW is not likely to move to this type of currency in the near future, Diablo 3 has already embraced it with the real-money transaction auction house, which eschews a purchased currency for, well, currency. The prime example in recent gaming history of the successful batch currency model is Riot Game's wonderful League of Legends. I've been a Defense of the Ancients fan since the early days of the mod, and the fact that such a simple concept has evolved to a genre in and of itself is remarkable. Combined with the fact that there are 15 million accounts, millions playing all over the world, and a ridiculously successful microtransaction model for customization and convenience items, League of Legends has got the world captivated. But why is World of Warcraft not something that could benefit from selling its own currency, or, rather, why would Blizzard never let it happen? Let's find out.

  • The Lawbringer: Q&A on Diablo's real-money auction house

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    08.05.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Since Blizzard dropped the Diablo 3 bombshell on us early Monday, I will post the second article in my series on micro-transaction models next week. For those of you who have been living under the proverbial internet rock (you are missing some awesome memes right now), Blizzard announced that Diablo 3 would feature two auction houses, one using in-game gold as currency and the other using real currency that would be deposited into a Battle.net account wallet and used from there. The whole system gets more intriguing when you take into account that sales made on the real-money auction house can make their way to your own very real wallet through an unannounced third party or deposited back into your Battle.net wallet for use on anything digital in the Blizzard store, including WoW game time. If you're a regular reader of The Lawbringer, you already know how excited I get over virtual currency. This is my wheelhouse. I feel like a master carpenter at Wood Con 2011, cosplaying as my favorite oak tree, quercus alnifolia. Pair that with real currency, and excitement levels hit the stratosphere. I may break through the atmosphere at some point. That faint sonic boom you hear will be me hurtling through the air in excitement and wonderment. Sure, the Diablo real-money transaction (RMT) auction house is not related to World of Warcraft -- or is it? Oh, it very much is. Faithful readers and not faithful alike (how could you, Debbie?) have been writing in questions via Twitter and email asking me to explain the auction house and talk about some of the potential legal and tax issues that could come around because of it. Also, many people want to know how the RMT auction house could benefit World of Warcraft, despite Rob Pardo's saying there are no plans to bring it over to WoW. Let's take a look at your questions.

  • The Lawbringer: What World of Warcraft can learn from other microtransaction models, part 1

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    07.29.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Microtransactions are here to stay. We were wary and scared in the beginning -- it was a brave new world, having the gall to ask consumers for a couple of bucks for horse armor. DLC (downloadable content) and microtransactions evolved over time to include better customization, new missions and levels, convenience purchases, and more. The industry began to shape itself around the growing need for better revenue models, as well as conforming to the needs and wants of players while remaining (hopefully) pure in motive. With the huge success of the free-to-play model in the United States and Europe, a feat which many said was not going to go over too well outside of the Asian markets, paying for your game over time instead of up front has become a staple, an afterthought, to gamers. World of Warcraft isn't going true free-to-play any time soon, of course. The subscription model works for WoW in a fairly unique way. The number of global subscriptions for WoW make up such a huge, defined income that removing that income from the table in favor of the "5-percenters," the people who presumably pay for items in-game, would be almost criminal in terms of corporate mismanagement -- unless, of course, you could make more money on those 5-percenters than you do on 11.4 million monthly subscriptions, which seems like a hefty move to make.

  • The Lawbringer: Mailbag 4.0

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    07.22.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Welcome to another exciting mailbag edition of The Lawbringer. I've pulled some of my favorite questions from my inbox this week to discuss topics like slander, libel, and that pesky idea about gold selling that I had during one the recent WoW Insider Show (I think it was the WoW Insider Show; I do a lot of shows sometimes) about the auction house. Somewhere, Basil has felt a twinge in his leg, as if a thousand voices cried out in unison and then were quickly silenced by the ringing of the auction house bells ... If you've got a question for The Lawbringer, send it along to mat@wowinsider.com. Be sure to include some sort of subject that lets me know that you're asking a Lawbringer question, because otherwise it will probably get lost in the millions of potential tags your email could be filed under. A long time ago, I was reading a post by venerable internet man Merlin Mann about managing your inbox and fighting with the notion that email needed to be sorted and dealt with quickly. It's been years since then, and I hate my inbox more and more every day because I never listened to Merlin.

  • The Lawbringer: Letters to Rogers, letters to Congress

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    07.15.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? We've got two stories to talk about on The Lawbringer today, both interestingly involving letters. That's right -- letters. To you from me, that sort of thing. These letters, however, are instruments of change in a world where we as consumers seem not to have much control or ability to change the big picture concepts that dot our path to consistent entertainment. The amount of energy that we have to put into just getting in a decent WoW session is staggering at times. The first story revolves around Rogers, one of the largest Canadian internet service providers, famous for its lame bandwidth caps and my old Canadian guildmates shouting "Rogers sucks!" as much as they could on Mumble. Yes, it is another chapter in the Mathew McCurley Guide to Awful Bandwidth Throttling -- but hopefully, this new information and story chapter will get us on the path to better WoW experiences in the face of the immense throttling of WoW data as peer-to-peer traffic. The second story is all about letters that you will want to send. Last week, I wrote The Lawbringer about Senate Bill S.978, colloquially being referred to as the anti-streaming bill. While not directly prohibiting video game streaming or even mentioning video games anywhere in the proposed legislation, video games are nonetheless obliterated in the crossfire of the entertainment industry and would-be illegal streamers making millions off of pirated entertainment, movies, music, and more. The Entertainment Consumers Association has begun a letter-writing campaign to inform and implore Congress to not pass a bill with such broad and language lacking description.

  • The Lawbringer: The odd future of bill S. 978

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    07.08.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? The machinima and streaming communities built around World of Warcraft are filled with some of the most talented and creative people in gaming, from awesome musicians to dedicated streamcasters. The first time I ever got to experience the WoW beta back in 2004, I was watching someone stream footage of their human warlock messing up mobs in (if I remember correctly) Westfall. Streaming is beneficial to gaming, MMOs, and e-sports because of video games' competitive nature and spectator-oriented design. You've probably heard of Senate bill S.978 already, most likely from many video game blogs and news outlets or YouTube campaigns fighting against the passage of this bill. Bill S.978 aims to institute a "10 strikes" policy, making the unauthorized streaming of content a felony, resulting in potential jail time. The main purpose of the bill is to strengthen the law and punishments available to organizations such as the MPAA and other content conglomerates to stop illegal streaming of millions upon millions of dollars in stolen entertainment. As is the way of things, gamers might be caught in the crossfire. Some of you fine readers sent me a few messages on Twitter asking me to weigh in on the 10 strikes streaming bill and maybe give a basic analysis of the thing, so I shall oblige. Lawbringer this week is all about the odd future of bill S. 978 and what it could mean for MMOs and WoW.

  • The Lawbringer: Supreme Court decides Brown v. EMA

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    07.01.2011

    On June 27, 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States of America ruled that video games fall under the same First Amendment speech protections as books, movies, music, and art. Justice Scalia wrote the opinion, decrying California's attempts to restrict speech as, at the same time, too under-inclusive and too over-inclusive. What does that mean for the video game industry? What does this decision mean for video games in general? Self-regulation, it seems, is doing the job when it comes to keeping parents in charge and violent video games in the hands where they belong. If you have no idea what Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) (formerly Schwarzenegger v. EMA) is about, check out my first Lawbringer feature on the topic as well as Gamasutra's feature, as it is probably the best, concise understanding of the case as it was back in November of 2010. Now, however, we have a decision. After being argued on Nov. 2, 2010, the Supreme Court decided on June 27, 2011, by a vote of 7-2 that the California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional.

  • The Lawbringer: Paying for addons and APIs

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    06.24.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Not unlike most topics featured here on The Lawbringer, this one started with a blog post and a subsequent link to said blog post. CCP, the creators of MMO darling EVE Online, recently announced that players and customers could charge for third-party applications, utilities, and websites as long as the creator purchased a license. This is a fairly unprecedented move. CCP is probably the only company who could get away with this right now, but more on that later. This story got my mind spinning about what this means for data feeds all over the MMO world, how Blizzard's free APIs coming out soon will change the way people make apps and utilities for WoW, and some thoughts on for-pay addons. MMOs have spawned an impressive gray market of features, apps, utilities, and services that exist only because players are willing to partake in them. From Eve Online ship "fitting" apps to gold selling, the gray market lives alongside virtual worlds, and it is fascinating to think that these industries only exist because of the success of the genre. Recently, Blizzard previewed its own APIs that it would be releasing for web developers and app creators, providing easy-to-parse information to these development communities. This stuff isn't free, of course, which is interesting amidst the news that CCP would be charging a license fee for for-pay versions of utilities that make use of its APIs.

  • The Lawbringer: Positive value creation from the negatives in the games industry

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    06.17.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? The no-win situation is, at its core, a sad state of affairs. Seriously, no one is winning in a no-win situation. In fact, everyone could be said to be losing. Piracy has been long held to be the dire no-win situation in the video game industry because it represents a perfect culmination of utter loss -- an infinitely copyable product that took millions of dollars to produce being distributed for free. No profit means the studio gets its windows shuttered and no one goes home employed. Last week, I read an article on PC Gamer that talks about Runic Games's Torchlight. The game is a fantastic spiritual successor to the Diablo series that the company's CEO, Max Schaefer, served as lead designer for. Runic Games was essentially bought by Perfect World, a Chinese MMO company that seeks to release an MMO version of the popular game. Schaefer has some different views and conclusions about how piracy effects his game. In a nutshell, Schaefer sees no problem with the millions of illegally downloaded copies of Torchlight in Asian markets. When the MMO is released, the brand recognition and audience building that piracy affords will bring in new customers for the eventual MMO, where it is harder to pirate a service. With so many games going online these days with multiplayer components requiring authentication or even a license purchase (as with used versions of PS3 and XBox 360 games), is this the right attitude to have in world where a game's success is made or destroyed based on sales? Is this line of thought able to coexist with the fickle dev studio and publisher system in place now in the industry? Ultimately, we can learn something from Schaefer's comments, especially about audience building. And, potentially, we can see the future of World of Warcraft's distribution as the game gets a bit heavy in terms of barrier to entry.

  • The Lawbringer: Where localization meets legal reasoning

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    06.10.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Have you ever been playing one of your favorite games, potentially developed in a foreign land, and felt an "off" feeling of oddness and wonder at word choice, phrasing, or character identity? Something within the core experience feels out of place or foreign, and you just can't put your finger on it? Welcome to the world of game localization. You've all experienced good, bad, and everything in between in terms of game localization quality. Maybe you didn't notice it. Maybe you did. Were you the kind of person taken back when wise and sage Tellah insults Edward in Final Fantasy 2/4 by calling him a "spoony" bard? Who could forget the epic spell casts of Final Fantasy Tactics -- "Life's refreshing breeze, blow in energy! Cure!" And we all remember gaming's great master of unlocking... Localization is more than changing phrases and dubbing voices. The world of localization exists to shape, mold, and conform a game and an experience to a completely new market filled with new and different expectations about the product. You also have a bevy of rules to follow and interpret, using deductive reasoning and precedent to figure out what changes need to be made to a game in order for it to pass the tests of foreign markets. You'd be surprised at the similarities between conforming a product to a foreign set of standards and the research and interpretation needed for legal reasoning.

  • The Lawbringer: China, forced labor, and why we must stop buying gold

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    06.03.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Gold selling is a multi-billion dollar industry that spans the globe, with a healthy portion of in-game currency sales originating from China. It's a cheap operation to start up -- all you need is cheap labor, some computers, a PayPal account, and a copy of World of Warcraft. The overhead is low and the payoff is big because the demand is present for the supply. People have a perceived need to buy gold, so more people sell gold, which allows the market to grow. It won't stop, either, as tradable virtual currency from all types of games hit the gray market. What happens when an industry with low overheads becomes too profitable? What happens when a relatively simple setup like gold farming goes from the quaintness of cottage industry to a virtual currency-fueled industrial revolution? People start getting ideas when money is sitting there on the table, ready and waiting to be snatched up by the stalwart businessman. Combine that sentiment with the corruption and profit motives of institutions and a labor force that is for all intents and purposes free, and you get the sad tale of prisoners in China and the people in charge.

  • The Lawbringer: No, you can't sue Blizzard over the Dance Studio

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    05.27.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Imagine, if you will, a time long ago. A time before we cared about dual specs, Ulduar, Sartharion, and the rest. Back before hard modes and vehicle fights. I speak of that fabled time at the end of The Burning Crusade, when Kil'jaden was reentering the world through the Sunwell and there was something about a girl and some manga ... There was a lot of supplemental reading. Wrath of the Lich King was announced, and we were all excited. One of the more community-jolting announcements during the Wrath of the Lich King launch trailer related to new character dances. Since then, the Dance Studio has become a legend in its own right, being called everything from the second coming of the WoW messiah to a dumb waste of time for designers and developers who could be working on more "important" projects. Some people believe it will never come, and others still hold onto embers of hope.

  • The Lawbringer: Account management and you

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    05.20.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Writing The Lawbringer has taught me a lesson in trends. Over the past few months, specific questions are sent to me in topical batches. Sometimes it is a few emails about selling accounts. Other times, I get four to five emails about account security or compromise. May's email topic of choice was transferring accounts to family members. Blizzard is very restrictive about what you can and cannot change regarding your account information. On the one hand, it is your account, right? Shouldn't you have ultimate control over the information you provide for the facilitation of a service you pay for? On the other hand, there is a certain degree of problem mitigation that comes with restrictive change. If Blizzard can control certain aspects of what you do with your account and the information it is all filed under, problems can get mitigated before they appear. Today's topic is really all about damage mitigation.

  • The Lawbringer: Mailbag 3.0

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    05.13.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Since last weekend was my stepsister's bat mitzvah, I was incommunicado down in Florida celebrating with family, eating a ton of delicious food, and getting sunburned within 30 seconds of stepping into the punishing Florida sun. The emails to Lawbringer never stopped, however, and I picked my favorites to answer while lounging next to the pool, happily oblivious. A lot of people sent me emails about the Blizzard earnings call that has been making the rounds in the gaming news cycle this week, for a few specific reasons. First, Diablo III's beta is coming between August and September, which is super exciting to me because of how much I want to be playing that game again. BlizzCon was not enough. Friends at Blizzard, send all beta invites to mat@wowinsider.com. Second, Mike Morhaime revealed that World of Warcraft is currently boasting subscriber numbers mirroring pre-Cataclysm subscriptions. Subsequently, the internet went crazy and collectively, shall we say, made a mess in its pants about the state of WoW's prominence. Let's mailbag.

  • The Lawbringer: A good cause

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    05.06.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? On Monday, Blizzard announced that it would begin selling a new companion pet in the pet store and that for a limited time (until July 31), 100% of the cost of the pet would go to the American Red Cross to aid victims of the tsunami and earthquake in Japan. Blizzard used its art and time assets for a great cause, using a previously successful tactic to raise money for people in dire need. While Blizzard is not donating the money directly, it is facilitating donation collection and incentive by putting the pet up for sale. What interests me is the level of fervor and the community outcry for this type of relief effort by Blizzard. Why are people so eager to push a corporation like Blizzard, which has a costly back end to monitor and maintain, into what amounts to a large-scale companion pet release for charity that people would have donated to anyway based on the generally accepted understanding that people are charitable? First, we need to learn a tiny bit about corporate donations and charity and explore why people like Blizzard in the first place. Second, we can ask why we want Blizzard to do the right thing.

  • The Lawbringer: The system is down

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    04.29.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? For PlayStation Network users, this past week has been a harrowing one. The security breach and subsequent dismantling of the online network was a huge blow to Sony, which prided itself on being able to provide the service free of charge and expand into sales, downloads, and everything else synonymous with a next-gen online network. This past week's events, however, prove that these networks are fragile and have everyone asking the question, "What is next?" What would happen if World of Warcraft were down for a week -- not due to some prescribed downtime or voluntary upgrades, mind you, but a comprehensive security breach that affected every single member of our online community? From the PlayStation Network incident, we can see the hostile environment that these security breaches foster, from political ramifications to financial consequences and even legal trouble. Shall we muse about the stability of online networks?

  • The Lawbringer: Let's read Activision Blizzard's 2010 10-K annual report

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    04.22.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? One of the best perks associated with living in a free society is transparency. In a society of rules and laws, transparency helps keep people honest. Does it always work? Of course not, but to me, it's better than the alternative. Activision Blizzard filed and released its Form 10-K earlier this year and, as usual, made this filing public to all investors of the company and subsequently to the world. What is a Form 10-K, anyway? In the United States, companies that meet certain criteria and more than $10 million in assets have annual filing requirements with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Each fiscal year, a new document in filed discussing the company's structure, executive compensation and pay, audited financial statements, risks, and more. Basically, Activision Blizzard files this form to let the government and the public know about the company's performance. The best part is we get to see it, too.

  • The Lawbringer: Avatar rights as expectations

    by 
    Mathew McCurley
    Mathew McCurley
    04.15.2011

    Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Running parallel to the games we love and enjoy is a world full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play? Last week, I introduced the concept that the denizens of a virtual world may have gained, over time, the right to rights within that virtual world. Raph Koster, the lead developer of Ultima Online, explored the idea over 10 years ago when the MMO genre was in its developmental infancy. These rights synced up with a world where there was a distinction between free-to-play MUDs and for-pay subscription worlds in the U.S. and European markets. Today, the MMO has transformed into a new beast from the close-knit communities of MUDs and the relatively forgiving user base of EverQuest and Ultima Online. The people who made WoW are the contemporaries of Raph Koster and children of the MMO genre that EverQuest cemented as important. How then, in over 10 years, has Koster's declaration of the rights of avatars held up to the incredible growth of the industry and Blizzard's own impressive growth? The short answer: The code of conduct you follow in World of Warcraft is pretty lenient, all things considered. The long answer: Well, there's always a long answer.