Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

The market of virtual property trade is growing at an amazing rate: 900 million US dollars annually! Most of the trades are conducted by the computer game players in buying and selling virtual currency and character based virtual properties (using real money to sell / purchase virtual weapons, cloth, etc.) However, what people don't know is that most of these trades are illegal because the properties are owned by the game manufacturers not the players. Most of the games come with an "end-user agreement" document which no players ever bother reading, in the documents, there is always a written agreement like this one: " the ownership of the characters and merchandises in this game are belonging to the manufacture, not the player". This simply forbid virtual property trade in the real market between the players. Many game producers have practiced this right by eliminating player accounts that are associated to the virtual property trades, terminating web sites which facilitate virtual property trades. So, next time, before you buy any gold for your WOW character, read the software end user agreements first.