eBay Cracks Down on Sale of MMO Goods

For essentially as long as MMOs have had subscriber bases, players have made money selling in-game money and items for real money, via the unbridled power of the internet. With World of Warcraft eclipsing all prior subscriber records many times over in its relatively short time on the market, the amount of money transferred due to MMO item sales, frequently called real-money trading, has only risen. Sony Online Entertainment even condones the practice in some of its games, on certain servers. Recently, eBay, which of course hosts a vast number of real-money trades, was rumored to be putting a stop to all such activity conducted on its service. Though the company has not made an official announcement, confirmation of these rumors has been popping up fairly frequently. Slashdot recently spoke with eBay representative Hani Durzy on the matter. According to Durzy, eBay has been working on delisting real-money trades for approximately a month. The process is expected to continue. Durzy noted that this is not in fact new policy, but is merely more consistent execution of existing eBay policy. In-game items and currency are considered to be the intellectual property of the game's copyright owner, not of the player whose in-game avatar has acquired the items. According to eBay's regulations, "The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner." The great majority of MMOs do not authorize such activity, so eBay has decided to take a blanket approach and ban RMTs altogether. The action is "for the overall health of the marketplace," said Durzy.