Let’s break down the component parts first of all. No discussion of legal terms is complete without a glossary, so I’m going to give you the abridged version. There will also be a referral for outside reading to understand the history of community in video games.

Universal banning – A pipe dream. Not yet technologically possible from an economic standpoint. For example, that would be Sony (or Activision) or Microsoft feels you have created a grievance so heinous, or repeated on so many occasions, that your personal ID (not just your gamertag, or your machine-tag, or your IP address, but you PERSONALLY, are banned from their games online at any computer, any console, or any IP address.) Developers can only dream of this type of power.

Banned by gamertag – this is the way of most online games. Depending upon whether player is paying for the gaming, or whether it is free-to-subscribe (and paid via optional add-ons) the banning varies in effectiveness. Tracks you by username and billing/registration information. Obviously if free-to-subscribe it is simple (if you are dishonest) to give an email address and a fake name.

Banned by game console or IP address – This is the most used these days. Especially with Xbox360 and PS3 accounts now updating regularly so as to tie these to the internet, the difficulty of “just playing” and not connecting is very complicated. And so the banning effectively “bricks” the Xbox360 or the PS3 to any additional updates through the company servers.

Starting from most recent to a little earlier: here goes…

Bragg vs. Linden
A great article on Law.com about the banning of Bragg. It is insidiously complicated or notoriously simple, depending upon how you look at it. Here is your legal citation and synopsis, “After a dispute over a land auction, Linden seized Bragg’s virtual land as well as an account with $2,000. Bragg v. Linden Research Inc., No. 06-08711 (Chester Co., Pa., Ct. C.P.). ”

Dailytech tells the story of the estimated one million X-box live customers banned from using the service for having modded consoles. The quote from Microsoft is “When a Gamertag comes up as violating our policies for online behavior, the person who owns that Gamertag is punished by being banned from the service. Keep in mind, this isn’t just a ban on a particular game. This is a ban on the Xbox Live service as a whole, so you won’t be able to go online at all during your ban”

Activision’s proactive legal strategy to give cease-and-desist orders to Websites running programs/addons that Activision feels violates the terms of use. (The Cease and Desist letter posted at Play No Evil video-game security blog).

Blizzard bans WOW glider from ingame use, and is victorious in the lawsuit. This is another version where the users are permanently banned.

Amicus brief filed by Public Knowledge in the case. Incredible background if you’re asking “what’s modding?”.
Ongoing coverage of the case given by Virtually Blind from 2008. Still the superior coverage of the older cases.

Kotaku has a story about Blizzard banning 350,000 users in Battle.net. The justification and method listed is “The Diablo II CD keys associated with the closed Diablo II accounts are now restricted from playing on Battle.net for approximately 30 days. Repeat offenders will have their accounts closed and their CD keys permanently banned from Battle.net. As a reminder, we reserve the right to close the accounts and ban the CD keys of players who are caught cheating on Battle.net. ”

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Here are a couple of places to find some background on the philosophy of games, choices, and banning.

Interview with Raph Koster :A point he brings up during the discussion is that the biggest and most successful games on the market are the ones that present very little choices for the gamer, and pegs them into roles that need to be fulfilled or they fail (World of Warcraft is the example).

So to this lawyer, it makes sense that the games with the fewer choices would be the most vigilant about enforcement to restrict those choices (i.e. mods, add-ons, etc.).

2. Commentary on a video-games Website; “is there a banning quota?”

3. Again, a good sampling of the response from developers as far as banning games.

4. Posts tagged banning at Massively.com (A great resource for MMO news)

5. Why Governments aren’t Gods and God’s aren’t Governments. Great article, especially concerning the whole philosophical reasoning of why an operation must be able to govern in games.

6. And lastly, of course, one for the eggheads. Basically, an article that gave me a headache, so it MUST BE GOOD.

If you’re looking for a broad statement of philosophy from me about this subject, you can move on. It is like all games, the choices on banning reflect the choices of the developers. Whether that is an actionable offense by the developers to kick out a player forever from their world, that legal decision is in my opinion at least 5 or 10 years away at least.

Jay Moffitt is a Tennessee attorney. This blog is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not consitute legal advice or create an attorney/client relationship. Jay Moffitt is not certified as a specialist in this area by Tennessee and Tennessee does not certify specialists in this practice area. All comments will be answered promptly and courteously as long as they are germane to the discussion and do not contain specific game names or incidents.

There are few reported court decisions of a player appealing an in-game ban. One of those rare cases was mentioned on Techdirt, when a Federal Judge upheld a gamer ban(Case variously cited as C-09-03007 RMW; SD Cal Estavillo v. Sony Computer Entm’t Am. Inc., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86821). The player’s complaint protested against his ban from a Sony site. An intelligent and thorough discussion of the case may be found at this site, and another more approving tone from this site, which approves the idea of increased responsibility for a company as a “virtual company town”. I rather side more with the latter point of view, as the resources of a multinational corporation running a multimillion-dollar business rather make them more of a landlord than as a poor helpless forum-owner.

A very well-informed viewpoint is espoused at “Law of the Level“. It’s pointed out that an in-game monitoring system could make the publisher/administrator liable, by giving them certain “red-flag” knowledge. I’d advise a close reading of the well-written article, especially if you’re building or supervising a chat room associated with a game.

The second common reason to get banned in-game is conduct; usually for using bots or scripts to improve your online performance, or for “spamming” fellow players with offers to sell gold or places where they can buy gold. The current most discussed game is Aion, which is having spam troubles even before being totally out of beta stage. Basically the game is being beseiged to such an extent by “gold spammers” that it is hurting the initial launch of the game, at least in the public perception.

The important lesson to be gotten from these public conflicts is what can be done to eliminate them at an early point. Blizzard (Now Activision/Blizzard) has taken an aggressive stand against any users they feel in violation of their Terms of Service, which has led to some hard feelings. Another company to “celebrate” their hardline stance is Silk Road Online.

Here is a short collection of links as to other articles concerning gold spam and “illegal bots”
Epic Toon Blog
Massively article on how spam “drains” MMOs
Twinking(sending gold to another character whom you own) is another form of cheating
A good first place to look for MMO banning concerns

So, what to do? Throw up our hands? There’s a couple of good common-sense ideas being tossed around; first for the developers/publishers. Stroppsworld talks about three simple ways to fight gold spam. These are (1) Reduce the need for gold (2) Remove mechanisms that facilitate the gold trade (3) Provide players with moderation tools. Another novel way is discussed by Sony Creative Director Laralynn Williams at the GDC conference in Austin. The banning issue is mentioned two-thirds into the discussion under “Solutions Lead to New Problems”. To the question “How do you deal with hackers when everyone can create a free account? Player char dressed as referee. All our C/S agents wear this outfit when are in game – only our GMs can wear these”

Finally, for the gamer, remember who the gold farmers are, and whether it’s worth all the risks. After all, an MMO downloads a client on your computer, a bot to bypass that client does so as well, we’re reminded by a blog named playbbg. That script downloads directly into your operating system and the blog points out those hidden dangers. And also, the common-sense realization should be that in participating in gold-purchasing that is clearly outside the game’s terms of service, that you have no one to complain to or get enforcement from if the offer terms out to be fraudulent or not executed properly.

Jay Moffitt is a TN attorney. The statements here are not legal advice, and no attorney/client relationship is created. Jay Moffitt claims no certification in this specialty, and TN does not offer a certification in this area of law. Copyright, Jay Moffitt, 2009. Comments are welcomed and will be answered promptly and courteously.