Game developer sued for virtual losses
Filed under: Fantasy, News items, Legal
Shanda, operator and developer of several popular online games in China, is being sued by a gamer for RMB 100,000 (USD 14,300) in losses resulting from technical issues in Legend of Mir 2. The plaintiff, named Wen, claims to have spent roughly RMB 200,000 (USD 28,600) on virtual items in the game. Wen filed the lawsuit in Shanghai, following the disappearance of more than 30 of those virtual items over the course of a year.Shanda is no stranger to controversy, or to the legal system of China. An assistant manager at Shanda received a five-year prison sentence in 2007, following the discovery that he and two conspirators established an illegal trade in virtual items in 2004 and 2005. The trio netted a cool RMB 2 million (USD 286,000) in just 14 months. Although the lawsuit presents little in the way of financial distress to Shanda and there is no way of knowing if the company was negligent at all in respect to Wen's grievance, this is yet another incident of negative publicity related to Legend of Mir 2.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zelnick said on 3:23AM 5-21-2008
Wow, anyone who pays that much for pixels AND THEN gets in a legal spat over them has got to have some problems.
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James Egan said on 3:00PM 5-24-2008
I guess it can seem weird, and in some respects it might be a cultural difference, but people are pretty attached to their virtual stuff outside of Asia as well.
What this person spent on virtual items seems a bit steep, but I'm sure it pales in comparison to the more hardcore players in ZT Online. I wrote about them last week here:
http://www.massively.com/2008/05/18/hardcore-gamer-builds-chinese-empire/
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