Angst Amongst The Gold Farms

13Dec/06Off

Angst Amongst The Gold Farms

Julian Dibbell, author and UO gold monger, was recently interviewed by the Escapist, and he wants you to know that you gamers hurt him deeply.

More than anything, he seems bemused by the occasional blast of negative attention paid to the industry he worked in and documented. "I'm certainly aware that RMT [real money trade] and people who actively engage in it are hated by a significant faction ... of gamers and game developers," he says. "I quote Mark Jacobs standing up at E3 in 2003 and saying that he hates the RMT market with 'every bone in his body.' So, there you go.

And more personally...

"I have an assignment from the New York Times Magazine to write about the Chinese gold farms. And I went to a few of them, and I actually pulled a shift at a leveling shop. And, you know, not a half hour into my shift playing as some European player's gnome mage, I was spat upon," via the game's emote system, "by one of my fellow players."

He says it was different during the time he was writing the book. "For one thing, I was working in Ultima Online, which has a different culture about this stuff, right? The gold, the RMT market has been tolerated there from the get-go. It was even kind of encouraged in the beginning. ... For another thing, you know, it just kind of rolls off my back, to the extent that people do single us out for opprobrium." Indeed, he seems like a very laid-back, affable guy that just happened to indulge in a trade that gets the MMOG industry spitting mad.

He also, apparently, thinks I don't write very well.

He describes the arguments against the RMT industry as "often very crude. ... They're along the lines of, 'Hey, I worked my way up to level 60, and then daddy's little rich kid comes along and bought his way up to level 60, and that takes away the meaning of my achievement.'...

...let's look at the metrics by which you're measuring achievement. Everyone knows that MMOGs are tests of your ability to sit on your ass in a chair for a week, or whatever it takes to get to level 60. If someone has the will to do that, or the time to do that, more power to them. If somebody has the commitment to the game to plunk down $800 or $1,000, that's a kind of crazed obsession, too. I'm perfectly willing to honor either way of measuring [that].

"And furthermore, it's such a limiting view of the complexity and open-endedness of these games to say that it's all about getting to level 60 or Warlord or whatever you get to before the other guy does. There's so many ways to play these games and so many reasons to play these games that if you think that's what the game is entirely about, that's fine, but that doesn't define it for everybody else who's involved."

When asked what developers could do to stop RMT:

[He] uses one example he's gotten from the farmers themselves, such as "completely anonymous trades. [Make] the auction house the only way to trade, and [make it] completely anonymous, so there's no mapping an eBay buyer onto an in-game player," though he acknowledges that would be "breaking the socialization effect of the economy."

So, destroy the village so we can save it. Gotcha. But the kicker:

"My impression is that the anti-RMT stuff is stronger in America than it is anywhere else, even more than Europe. ... I think it has a lot to do with American culture's kind of Horatio Alger individualist pretensions. You know, you come into the world and everybody starts off on equal footing, and you raise yourself up by your bootstraps, and nobody has family money to help them along."

Paying money to gold farmers to short-circuit gameplay, of course, being so much more rational, worldly and European an attitude. Maybe it could be like a tax. Only, you know, not paid to the government. OK, so Russia's in Europe, so the metaphor could still work. Sort of. Oh wait, I'm making crude anti-RMT arguments again, sorry!

Filed under: RMT, _ Comments Off

Comments (82) Trackbacks (2) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Nyght
December 14th, 2006 - 18:23

Well, ya’ know, I drive over the speed limit too from time to time. So EULA, smoola. I don’t bitch when I get a ticket and doubt I would do so if banned.

I liked this; “the rich idle buyer”.

When to do I get my segment of Rich and Famous Gamers?
Brask Mumei
December 14th, 2006 - 20:34

By reading this post, you agree that Real Money Transfers (RMT) are a positive force in Massively Multiplayer Video Games. Further, you agree that you will not engage in any criticism of RMT in any public forum. Failure to abide by these terms which you, by reading this far have agreed to, will be proof that you have broken your word and are hence a cheater and a liar.
sinij
December 14th, 2006 - 23:42

Brask, yo forgot obligatory.

[ I agree ]

EULA is yet to see serious court action and I don’t think it will hold up in most cases considering that it a) written in a way where it cannot be understood by average person b) refusal does not necessary means reimbursement c) average person never reads any ELUA

Overall EULA is clever lawyer invention to create more lawyer jobs, its for lawyers by lawyers.
Gwaendar
December 15th, 2006 - 06:04

> EULA is yet to see serious court action and I don\’e2\’80\’99t think it will hold up in most cases

Wrong. Bnetd ring a bell? Both the EULA and the TOS were upheld in court. And the plaintiff was…

Blizzard.

On a different matter, RMT does two things to the casual player:
- Drive inflation of goods needed for purchase, either directly through their AH pricing or indirectly through the devs creating more money sinks or raising price tags on stuff like mount training
- Drive deflation in prices for the usually farmed goods.

It’s certainly nice that RMT decreases the cost of herbs needed for the potions by the 1-2% of players having fun in Naxxramas. What is a lot less nice is that the casual player now has to sell those herbs (which RMT farmers make harder to gather by camping the spawn points 24/7) for less to pay for the items he is farming for in the first place and which is subject to RMT-induced inflation.

In short, RMT jacks up prices for needed items AND diminishes the return you get for the normally farmed items. The normal player is thus impacted twice by RMT.
Axecleaver
December 15th, 2006 - 08:30

—
I thought that was the whole point of the end-game of MMOs, the complete lack of any sort of life and pooping in a bucket.
—

Maybe he’s on to something. Hey Lum, can you comment on whether poopsocking is in fact one of the design goals in your new project? Bonus points for using “poopsock” in the design document.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=poopsock
naladini
December 15th, 2006 - 11:07

EULA’s and TOS’s cover a broad array of topics. Just because a court upholds a few of the principles in one case, doesn’t mean the entire document will be valid for anything else.

The US operates under a principle that a person cannot sign away their rights. Companies can ask you to sign waivers, or accept agreements that do that, but those agreements are typically overturned if challenged. The catch is, very few individuals would be in a situation where they could compete with the legal resources of a MMO publisher, and a serious challenge would never quite see the light of day (especially given the unpredictability of courts and technology cases). In other countries, the EULA will carry even less weight than it does in the US.
Andrew Crystall
December 15th, 2006 - 11:46

Gwaendar, BNetD did not even TOUCH on RMT. What it confirmed was that playing the game on any other services other than those explicitly authorised for a game is contrary to the EULA in the USA. And there were a host of other issues there, which I won’t touch on – but it was NOT a simple EULA claim.

Also, what’s your soloution? Because saying “don’t” is a miserable failure. The only way of actually crushing the EBay market without causing inflation or crippling the game is Eve’s – allowing the resale of gametime codes for in-game currency.
No.6
December 15th, 2006 - 12:14

“Also, what\’e2\’80\’99s your soloution? Because saying \’e2\’80\’9cdon\’e2\’80\’99t\’e2\’80\’9d is a miserable failure”

I agree. A solution IMO is to design systems that allow players to advance and gain their objectives without interference from those (RMTers or just griefers) who monopolize resources.
Then players who don’t want to buy their way into the game can play the ordinary way and be unaffected.
Instancing is one technique towards this goal.
Brask Mumei
December 15th, 2006 - 14:00

Single player games is another excellent way to that goal.
CmdrSlack
December 15th, 2006 - 14:50

“EULA is yet to see serious court action and I don\’e2\’80\’99t think it will hold up in most cases considering that it a) written in a way where it cannot be understood by average person b) refusal does not necessary means reimbursement c) average person never reads any ELUA

Overall EULA is clever lawyer invention to create more lawyer jobs, its for lawyers by lawyers. “

Let’s see here….

A) This point doesn’t matter. Whether you can understand a contract or not is not grounds for invalidating it.

B) If declining to agree to the EULA prevents you from returning the game (because it is open), that will NOT invalidate the EULA. The problem is most likely with the retailer — the retailer isn’t a party to the EULA, so yeah…this point is bullshit too.

C) It doesn’t matter if the person reads the EULA or not. If you go and buy a house via mortgage, but don’t read the mortgage docs, do you really think you can weasel out of paying for the house?

I know you’re a “marketing expert” and all Sinji, but you’re less than knowledgeable about the law.

“The US operates under a principle that a person cannot sign away their rights. “

This is also wrong. People sign away their rights in perfectly binding manners all the time. If you were to settle a dispute with someone and you signed a settlement agreement, odds are that you signed away your right to sue the other party at a later date. There’s more examples, but it’s really not worth it. Every goddamn internet discussion about RMT is rife with non-lawyers talking out of their asses about the law.
sinij
December 15th, 2006 - 16:32

>>>The only way of actually crushing the EBay market without causing inflation or crippling the game is Eve\’e2\’80\’99s – allowing the resale of gametime codes for in-game currency.

Can you please explain how resale of gametime codes changes anything but medium? This is honest question, I fail to see how it works, perhaps because I sadly don’t play EvE.
D-0ne
December 15th, 2006 - 16:34

Whoa there… If you do not understand a contract it is infact grounds for negating it.
http://www.answers.com/topic/mistake-contract-law

Actually every contract to be valid, must exchange something. A contract that says, “you give me a hundred dollars.” is not a valid contract. Contracts are about exchanges of value.

If you decline a EULA in the middle of a subscription by contract law you are due a refund for the remaining subscription… Companies get around this by leaving your account, that you don’t want, open.

Actually there is a difference between written contracts and virtual contracts that allow one side to not be present during the signing of a contract… If you read most EULA the company basically isn’t around for discussion of the contract and no one from the company ensures you’ve understood or even read the contract.

Buy a home and look at how many people it takes to sign those documents, many times it is three parties.

“Every goddamn internet discussion about RMT is rife with non-lawyers talking out of their asses about the law.”

Man, isn’t that the truth.
No.6
December 15th, 2006 - 16:37

“Single player games is another excellent way to that goal.”

Thank you for your helpful comment. :p
sinij
December 15th, 2006 - 16:53

CmdrSlack, I admit that INAL. My legal experience is limited to small claims court and I don’t think its nearly as procedurally complicated and bureaucratically convoluted as a real thing. Are you a contract lawyer? I’d love to hear detailed accounts and opinions from someone directly involved with it.

As to A) – I think you can argue that since EULA is written for ‘average consumer’ but written incomprehensible to said ‘average consumer’ it is sole purpose is to deceive.

B) I think that if don’t have reasonable means of refusing legally binding document its validity can be challenged.

C) Paying for a house – probably not without exceeding housing costs in lawyer fees and you won’t get to keep house ether. Now if you sneak in a clause that previous owners can move back at any time they want and stay as long as they want, that might be challenged. Real estate property law is an established legal area – you clearly know what can and cannot be done and most of it already played out in courts. EULAs are fairly new, there are almost no relevant precedents.

Overall I don’t think conceptually ELUA is on shaky legal grounds, I think what actually gets written into them are too far out there (“we own all, responsible for nothing”) that it will not stand up in court.
CmdrSlack
December 15th, 2006 - 18:00

“Whoa there\’e2\’80\’a6 If you do not understand a contract it is infact grounds for negating it.
http://www.answers.com/topic/mistake-contract-law“

Right. The problem with the “mistake” theory is that, well, it’s almost never ever used or a “get out of the contract free” card. Moreover, your link pretty much says that you’re wrong. Mutual mistake is when BOTH parties to a contract have made a mistake as to a material (essential) part of the contract. If one party doesn’t understand that contract, that’s a unilateral mistake, which almost never voids a contract. Nice try though.

Sinji — Yep, I do contract law, etc. I started out with real estate stuff, but have recently been handling more web-based businesses and the like. Suffice it to say that I’ve drafted my share of TOS/TOU type agreements.

I agree that there’s lots of room to argue that EULAs shouldn’t have the weight they currently have. Hell, I support that idea 100%. I wish that “legalese” was entirely eliminated from legal drafting, beyond the required terms of art. Sadly, dense, hard to read contracts are just part of life. I’ve negotiated contracts for a producer that I know, and let me tell you, I’ve yet to see a single agreement that is in what I’d call English. I spend more time explaining to him what the contract means than I do actually negotiating. Hell, even if stuff is clear, when you get into cross-collateralization and other fun “pay back your advance” stuff, it’s still confusing. Unfortunately, no matter what the local Google Fu wizards want you to believe, that’s not really grounds to avoid or void the contract. Here’s where I’d say, “It’s really in your best interest to get a lawyer for that stuff.” Yes, it helps me out that that’s the case, but well, I doubt we’ll see a massive change in the verbiage of contract drafting. Even within the legal education industry, there’s still not a ton of support for the move to plain language legal drafting. There’s supporters, but not as many as I’d like.

As far as B) goes, if you decline the agreement, you don’t get to use the service. That’s the effective refusal for the consumer. IIRC, Best Buy got spanked in court for not allowing people to return open software specifically because it made it impossible for the user to return the software as part of the whole “I don’t agree” option. If you decide after subscribing to the service that you no longer wish to abide by the terms of the agreement, your recourse is to cancel. Since the software has been used, you don’t get the refund. If retailers didn’t cockblock returns of open software, it’d be rather like buying shoes. If I buy a pair of Chuck Taylors and then decide, “Wow, I really don’t need some canvas shoes that, while they may give me hipster cred, won’t last more than a year before falling apart,” I can return them to the store. If I wear them for a few days and try to return them, well, I shouldn’t be too pissed if the store won’t take them back. I do agree that if the publisher of software tells retailers, “We won’t credit you for returned software,” and that cockblocks the return option that is in most EULAs, well, then the publisher should get spanked.

On C)I was basically addressing the “people don’t read that shit” factor. I’ve done house closings where the buyers are experienced and don’t want to hear every clause in the mortgage translated into English, I’ve done closings where it’s the most painful and tedious thing ever because they want every last sentence explained ad nauseum. Theoretically, the sale of a house can be contingent upon all kinds of stuff (via the contract you sign when you make an offer/accept an offer), but nobody will lend money for a sale where the seller can come back and claim the property later. That’d be a horrid investment for the bank lending the cash.

I’m actually working on research into EULAs and similar agreements for an article that I hope to publish in 2007. The software industry gets away with all kinds of shit, including disclaiming all kinds of warranties that you’d think would apply. Courts have been very lenient in enforcing these agreements, even though the terms are pretty much all in favor of the publisher. The reason that most courts give for disclaiming the implied promise that the software does what it is supposed to do? “Making software is hard.” Seriously. It’s bullshit, and I think we’ll see change in the next 10-15 years as more mission-critical software fails. The Tokyo Stock Exchange had a massive software failure last year. We see all kinds of ID theft stuff where people steal records from Choicepoint, CardSystems, etc. Sooner or later, someone will win a class action against one of these data holders and the data holders will go after their software providers. That’s where the fun starts, IMO.
Andrew Crystall
December 15th, 2006 - 22:17

CmdrSlack, not true.

Actually, comprehensibility IS a factor in the legal standings of a liscence (NOT a contract) in the UK and other European countries. A few of the adware lisencing terms have fallen under that.

And for certain contracts, actually, it IS a factor in the UK. Short Term Assured Shorthold Tennancies, for example, MUST be written in layman’s English.

“If declining to agree to the EULA prevents you from returning the game (because it is open), that will NOT invalidate the EULA. “

Again, not in the UK or Europe. The company must refund you if you demand it. And there are again other rights like the value of your time you CANNOT sign away here.

And once more, a EULA is a liscence NOT a contract. It falls under copyright law and not contract.

sinij, to be clear – resale of time codes in Eve for in-game currency is FULLY allowed. And it’s crushed both IGE’s interest in Eve and the value of Eve ISK on Ebay (by a factor of 15) without wrecking the economy. Point to a similar effect in another game if you have a better idea, thanks.

Again, the entire contract vs liscence thing here is CRITICAL!
TPRJones
December 15th, 2006 - 23:41

I don’t recall ever saying this before, but D-one is right. That’s a pretty good summary.

Essentially, at this point, MMOG EULAs have no legal standing and only serve as a jumping-off point for legal arguements of the company should a lawsuit occur. If the time ever comes that the key sections dealing with the nature of MMOGs are tested in court, then there will be some legal precedent for the next trial to come along. But even then, the EULA will still NOT be a contract, and will serve as a basis for the company’s legal arguements. Because EULAs are not, and have never been, a form of legally binding contract.
TPRJones
December 15th, 2006 - 23:45

Can you please explain how resale of gametime codes changes anything but medium? This is honest question, I fail to see how it works, perhaps because I sadly don\’e2\’80\’99t play EvE.

The key difference is that the transfers are mostly one-way as far as US dollars goes. You buy time-codes and trade those in for ISK. You can trade ISK for time-codes to pay for your playtime. But AFAIK there’s not a simple method in place to trade either ISK or time-codes for cash. The danger of inflation to RMT is not at all abated (although, if you’ll read above, I have strong doubts about those dangers anyway, and EVE may be a good place to study that effect), but since it’s now unprofitable for IGE and other RMT sellers, the farming problems are all gone.
CmdrSlack
December 16th, 2006 - 09:55

Andrew,

I really can’t speak to the whole UK system, since, you know, I’m a lawyer in the U.S. But thanks for your view on how the U.K. stuff works. What’s true in the U.K. is not necessarily true in the U.S. For instance, in the U.S. software licenses can and do get around copyright law (that’s the whole point, really) and they are also subject to various rules of contract.

So yeah, maybe I’m wrong for the U.K. I really don’t know as I’m neither a barrister or solicitor. I’m about 99.9% sure that I’m right for the U.S.
Brask Mumei
December 17th, 2006 - 20:59

CmdrSlack: That renormalization of the EULA is *exactly* what I fear. As a software developer, I love the “disclaim all liability” sections of EULAs. This is why I am so pissed that MMORPG developers and similar people are pushing the boundaries of EULAs by trying to throw things like RMT into the mix. They are already such ridiculously one-sided contracts that software developers should stay very silent and cross their fingers and hope the customers don’t notice.

If MMORPG developers think tax liability will shut down the industry, just wait for general software liability to become an issue. The next anarchy online that reformats your harddrive on install won’t just be a good laugh down at the pub.
Gwaendar
December 18th, 2006 - 05:55

>Overall I don\’e2\’80\’99t think conceptually ELUA is on shaky legal grounds, I think what actually gets written into them are too far out there (\’e2\’80\’9dwe own all, responsible for nothing\’e2\’80\’9d) that it will not stand up in court.

The point all people yelling about how EULAs and TOS aren’t contracts or binding or giving away rights you are supposedly not able to sign away are missing though:

A MMOG company isn’t forced to take you as a customer and to provide you with a service. Simple as that. If the EULA doesn’t stand, you cannot force the devs to provide you service.
Andrew Crystall
December 18th, 2006 - 08:48

Gwaendar, no, they can allways close down the game*. But there is absolutely no inherent reason why goverments cannot – and they allready do in Asia – regulate what MMO providers can put in their EULA/TOS and dictate how they must treat RMT.

(*not entirely true, but let’s NOT get into that now)
sinij
December 18th, 2006 - 12:57

>>>As a software developer, I love the \’e2\’80\’9cdisclaim all liability\’e2\’80\’9d sections of EULAs

I wish your home architect, maker of your car and your investment firm/bank to enjoy similar privilege you think you are entitled to.

There should be no ‘disclaim all liability’ sections in any product. You release crap that has detrimental effect on others, be it an appliance, auto, building or anything else you should be held responsible.
Brask Mumei
December 18th, 2006 - 13:17

I didn’t say I was entitled to it. I said I really loved having it. I’m sure if there was a similar option for Architects and Car Designers they’d love having it too.

I also would like to hear how much liability the authors of Linux should have to shoulder. The cold hard fact is that if you release software for free you cannot afford to have any liability at all.

The putty FAQ has a good answer to this question:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-indemnity
D Lacey
December 18th, 2006 - 15:48

Perhaps RMT can be compared to the “war on drugs” – prohibition of various intoxicants that supposedly have no medical use – because banning RMT stops players from having fun the way they want.

But that hardly invalidates my comparison to the prohibition of performance-enhancing drugs in athletic competitions, and I think my parallel is closer.

Let me explain it – I thought it was obvious but apparently not -

1) People buy things via RMT that make their characters more powerful and competitive.

2) This makes it so that in order to keep up, unless the other person is that much better of a player (or has that much more time to spend “training” / leveling up / farming) – anyone who wants to remain competitive must also participate, whether or not they want to.

Feature 2) is not found in the “war on drugs,” but it is found in performance-enhancing drugs in athletic competitions.

Feature 2 means that even if using RMT spoils someone’s fun – they have to do it if they want to remain competitive – and many games have PvP and are highly competitive that contain RMT.

If, RMT was restricted to PvE only, in cases where resources were not competed over either (opposing groups trying to ‘camp rare drops’ or the like) but fully instanced – AND when the existence of RMT didn’t make it more difficult to just play the game by providing a faster, albeit less fun, way to get tougher that so many people took that there were not a critical mass of players teaming up to do it the regular way – then it would be ok, but I doubt that would happen.

I would not stoop to saying “but it’s in the EULA” is a reason for banning RMT – it’s evidence that someone in the developer/publisher/lawyer of the former thought that there was a reason to ban RMT. What I’d wonder is, what was their reason and is it valid to accept that they had a good one, or not?

But my own opinion that RMT is a bad idea is that RMT makes games less fun for me if it provides a competitive advantage for people using it, and if it doesn’t, I don’t care.

Right now I try to stick with playing games where RMT doesn’t – wouldn’t – provide any advantage that I notice while playing. Mainly for me this means sticking with games where the ‘grind’ is for “xp” rather than “gold” – untradeable.
Gwaendar
December 19th, 2006 - 09:33

> Gwaendar, no, they can allways close down the game*. But there is absolutely no inherent reason why goverments cannot – and they allready do in Asia – regulate what MMO providers can put in their EULA/TOS and dictate how they must treat RMT.

Indeed, but that’s beside the point. The point is, if an individual or an organization manage to get the current EULA invalidated in court, they won’t have any license to access the game at all. And beyond that, they will even have lost the right to fire up the client.

And while certain governments may indeed limit the kind of provisions set forth in an EULA, I doubt that this could somehow force a service provider whatsoever to provide service to a customer they do not wish to have. To put it in very naive terms, if it comes down to that, while there may very well be a court order throwing anti-RMT provisions out of a standing EULA, I’m highly sceptical that such an order would also deny the MMOG the right to tell the other party “OK, if it’s like that, here’s your subscription money back, and your IP range is banned from our game.”
TPRJones
December 19th, 2006 - 14:24

Absolutely, Gwaendar. And that’s the last nail in the coffin for the EULA issue in terms of the RMT debate. On the one hand a EULA is not a contract, which mean farmers are not breaking any laws or violating any binding agreements when they do their RMT thing. On the other hand, the game company is free to refuse service to anyone for any reason. So, when it comes to the RMT discussion EULAs are a red herring and pointless to argue about.
Andrew Crystall
December 19th, 2006 - 16:56

Gwaendar, it depends. Some counties, this can be true. But in the UK, an illegal liscence provision can be set aside “without predudice”. And if they shitcan the account under another clause (when the origional issue was only over a specific clause) anyway, then that’s actionable.

Which is why you shitcan their account for the specifics AND the grace-of-the-company clause. And the grace clause, if properly worded, will stand.

Regardless, if a company was ordered to stop banning people for a specific reason (which was illegal.. for example, banning anyone over 45 because they hated old people) and they didn’t, then that would be potentially actionable ANYWAY.
CmdrSlack
December 19th, 2006 - 20:21

Brask,

What worries me about the use of the “no liability of any kind” clauses is that, at some point, something really, really bad will happen as a result of software failure. Take, for instance, the radiation therapy machines that killed people due to bad software (the name of which escapes me at the moment). If something caused massive financial loss or loss of life, and it was traceable to poorly written software, I can see those non-warranties going the way of the dodo.

IMO, if the software industry wants to avoid broad regulation from the government (because I think that’s where we’re going once the EULA gets normalized), it needs to start self-regulating. If that means slowing down development cycles, making security part of the each state of the life cycle of software, and possibly having something akin to clinical trials for software, then so be it.

But something’s gotta give.

Could the EULAs for MMOs draw public attention to how crazily abusive these things are? Sure. Will they draw enough attention to trigger massive change? Probably not on their own.
Brask Mumei
December 20th, 2006 - 10:46

CmdrSlack: I can’t help but think your examples already have a simple solution now. If you are purchasing software that is used in a life threatening situation (such as the radiation example), either only accept software that doesn’t have the “Discount all liability” clause or hire your own third party that will assume the liability of the software.

If I write a video game that causes loss of life (played while driving?) or massive financial loss (crashes a company laptop) I don’t want to be held liable. The second case might take some explaining. After all, if I make a physical toy that explodes and causes damage, I am held liable. Why shouldn’t I be liable for my computer game doing likewise? My excuse here is that it isn’t a failure of the computer game that causes the problem. It is a failure of the OS and the hardware.
sinij
December 20th, 2006 - 18:54

Brask, if I design bridge and it falls within 20 years, if I manufacture car that explodes and burns in accidents, if I squander money trusted me as a financial institution for safe keeping… I also wouldn’t want to be held liable, but I *absolutely* have to be held liable or I might not take necessary steps to make sure any of the above won’t happen.

We are talking here about software problems, poor coding practices that result in unstable software that does not work as intended and causes system instability as a result. If problem lies elsewhere it is not *your* software problem.
Andrew Crystall
December 21st, 2006 - 06:33

There are no-failure designs, and software. They don’t run on PC’s, but very simplistic (not simple…) embedded processors. The design and testing of said software is expensive.