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Hernandez v. Internet Gaming Entertainment, Ltd
So here’s a new one in the gold farming lawsuit category. Instead of it being a game developer trying to stop a gold farmer, this random guy, Antonio Hernandez (a WoW player) decided to bring a lawsuit against a gold farming company.
The case of Hernandez v. Internet Gaming Entertainment, Ltd was originally filed back in June of ‘07. Hernandez wants it to be a class-action against IGE. He apparently has Blizzard’s blessing on the whole thing too.
According to this article, IGE claims to no longer be involved in the virtual gold trade. That’s odd because I visited their website and I couldn’t see anything there that isn’t related to virtual gold trading.
Who is actually to blame for gold farming though? Is it the gold farmers just trying to make a quick buck or is it the players who buy the gold? Much like drug dealers. Is it the dealers that need to be shut down or is it the users? Without buyers there would be no sellers. Supply and demand.
In Blizzard’s case what really matters is the gamers that pay their monthly subscription. If they shut down every player who was caught buying gold I bet that whole “10 million subscribers” thing would drop at least 25%. That’s a lot of revenue.
So I imagine that we’ll always see gold farming companies come and go. As long as there are users willing to buy, and game developers unwilling to punish subscribers, there will be sellers to provide.