Real ID and the worldwide impact of gaming

 
(Photo courtesy of FoxSpain; Flickr CC attribution license)
Starcraft II will be a worldwide phenomenon.  The RealID requirement, since retracted, is causing some ripples across US gaming blogs, and some other places.  I’m going to explain why the U.S. is, perhaps, not as important as we like to think…. right after the jump….

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Privacy; Blizzard; and being the only one in costume…

Lucious the Luscious; Sabrina the Sorceress; Paul Philbaum, Crombie, PA, acct.; Rena Tsolitias, adm. asst to Mr. Philbaum; Larry Goldberg, CPA; Crombie, PA. (All names totally fictional, for the purposes of illustration)
 
Maybe your teammates figure out that you’re an accountant, too.  After all, if your friends all go by their real name and you’re simply “Grandmaster [...]

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New wave of copyright lawsuits

Zynga vs PlayerAuctions (From Web site IP trademark lawyer)
Zynga Game Network, Inc. v. Playerauctions.com, CV10-2576 CBM (C.D. Cal. 2010). (Zynga says that Player Auctions is making money from their work.  We’ll keep up with this one.)  Others to keep up with after the jump.

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Crossing the Line

Tracking your virtual character to track YOU!
Pixels and Policy has a great article about using a guy’s WOW profile to arrest him in real life. Extraordinary piece of reporting about interaction between police and WOW support system.
This is a link to a somewhat related story where Blizzard (WOW-maker) was sued for the way the [...]

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Banned in Videogames – a Brief History

Today’s article is MAINLY about lifetime, universal, or at last long-term banning.
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 [...]

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World Of Warcraft China Server Now Reinstated

The World of Warcraft MMO, an Activision/Blizzard product, is now back online in China with NetEase as the administrator.
Earlier this year World of Warcraft was suspended in China. The Chinese government administration did not license the continuation of a server for WOW.
This online game has about five million active users in China, accounting for [...]

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