Legal

Travel back two years to when Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment was filing for bankruptcy and (unsuccessfully) attempting to sever ties with Gary Whiting, Chairman and CEO of the company. Stargate fans watched as their hopes for an MMO were dashed.

Fast forward to present day, when Stargate Worlds appears back in the news. Unfortunately for fans, it has nothing to do with offering a sliver of hope that the game itself might also revive; instead, more lawsuits are being filed against Whiting and other Cheyenne employees.

The newest lawsuit filed in Arizona includes 17 plaintiffs who accuse Whiting of misleading investors in various ways to obtain their cash. Some of the allegations leveled at Whiting include "negligent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, common-law fraud and securities fraud"; he's also accused of issuing loans to himself from the company's funds -- money that may still be in Whiting's possession, according to Cheyenne Mountain's court-appointed receiver, Keith Bierman of Phoenix-based MCA Financial Group.

What's in a name? Quite a lot, as it turns out. A name alone was enough to send Blizzard and Valve to man the lawyer cannons over two upcoming games, DOTA 2 from Valve and Blizzard DOTA from Blizzard. The companies have reached an agreement, however, which includes Blizzard renaming its game to Blizzard All-Stars while retaining use of the "dota" name for noncommercial use in the fan community. Valve retains the commercial use of the name.

It sounds like a little matter until you remember that Warcraft III was the source of the map that spawned this game type, leading to both companies developing competing versions of a sequel. Blizzard All-Stars currently has no release date, while DOTA 2 is due out sometime next year and is currently in beta testing. Luckily, the terminology is only being changed on the corporate side, meaning players are free to continue discussing the games as they would have anyway.

En Masse Entertainment has issued a response to yesterday's developments in the long-running NCsoft vs. Bluehole Studio legal drama.

A posting on the official TERA blog says that the upcoming action MMO will launch as scheduled on May 1st despite "baseless accusations" and "unfounded rumors" regarding the theft of Lineage III assets by former Bluehole employees in Korea.

The piece states that "after extensive Korean proceedings, Bluehole Studio was not found to have made any use of any NCsoft trade secrets in the form of source code or game design." It also notes that NCsoft product performance has suffered since TERA's Korean launch more than a year ago.

Multiple news sites are reporting a verdict in the long-running NCsoft vs. Bluehole Studio litigation regarding stolen Lineage III assets. According to the sites, the Korean Supreme Court has confirmed the guilty verdict in the criminal trial originally reached in 2009. The body also doled out "tougher punishment" in the form of prison time and probation for a former Lineage III department head and a team manager.

ThisIsGame.com points out that there could be more bad news coming for the team that turned Lineage III assets into TERA, as the outcome of a $5.7 million civil suit is still pending.

MMO Culture has published a timeline of the TERA legal proceedings, though neither website cites a source for its information. We'll update the story with more details as they become available.

While we heard about Sony Online Entertainment's partnership with ProSiebenSat.1 Games Group to publish MMOs in Europe last month, the specific details of this deal were lurking under a cloud cover of mystery and speculation -- until now. SOE has posted a quite lengthy FAQ about this partnership and what it entails for the future of the studio in the Old World.

According to the deal, ProSiebenSat.1 has the license to officially publish eight of SOE's titles in 40 countries. These MMOs include DC Universe Online, EverQuest II, Free Realms, PlanetSide 2, and EverQuest Next (although not, oddly enough, EverQuest itself). SOE hopes that ProSiebenSat.1's location and expertise will result in in a greater audience for its games as well as more support and better localization for those under ProSiebenSat.1's umbrella. SOE even hopes that the partnership will result in "special content" for European players.

Previously, SOE had distribution agreements for Europe but nothing on the scale of what it now has with ProSiebenSat.1. It looks like EU players will need to transfer their accounts and characters over to ProSiebenSat.1's domain, although SOE promises that this will be an easy process. It's also important to note that these games and their servers will not interact with their North American counterparts, effectively separating the communities.

One of our readers was kind enough to point us to two sites that, once again, were stealing our posts without crediting our authors or anything like that. (I don't mean "this post looks suspiciously similar"; I mean abusing copy and paste.) Unfortunately, while we're aware of these things, there's not a whole lot we can do other than request that the sites get taken down. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but it's all we can do. I guess it's nice to be good enough that your work is worth stealing without credit? That's something.

This week's installment of Ask Massively isn't going to focus on that, however. Instead, we're going to focus on the recent spate of MMO litigation and the potential for a boxed RIFT expansion. If you have a question you'd like to see answered in a future installment of Ask Massively, mail it along to ask@massively.com or leave a comment in the field below. Questions may be edited slightly for clarity and/or brevity.

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Is stealing a virtual good deserving of a real-world criminal sentence? According to a recent ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court, the answer is "yes."

The court recently upheld a ruling of a criminal case in which teens attacked another youth and forced him at knifepoint to relinquish his possessions in RuneScape, including an in-game amulet and knife.

The incident happened in 2007, and a lower court convicted the two thieves in 2009. One of the defendants then appealed to the country's supreme court on the grounds that the stolen goods "were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value."

However, the judges declared that these virtual items had value because they represented "time and energy invested" to acquire. The thieves were sentenced to 144 hours of community service.

It looks like being a young gamer in South Korea is getting tougher and tougher. Last year the country put into effect a "Cinderella Law" that prohibited online gamers 18 and younger from logging in to popular games between the hours of midnight and 6:00 a.m.. Now the government is taking a close look at an additional law limiting the amount of time played each day for minors.

The proposed policy comes from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) and would yank account privileges for minors if they played either more than two hours in a row or more than three hours daily. The MEST is concerned about game addiction in minors, citing that it may come from the duration of play sessions.

The game industry is concerned about possible over-regulation by the government spurred by theories on addiction that haven't been proven. Some are calling for earlier shutdown policies to be overturned if this one is implemented.

En Masse Entertainment has commented on a pending lawsuit by NCsoft that seeks to prevent the North American launch of TERA. As you would expect, there is virtually no detail on the proceedings, but En Masse publishing vice president Chris Lee does come out swinging, saying that the firm "outright rejects" NCsoft's position and will fight it to the last.

NCsoft has alleged that former employees stole Lineage 3 code and art assets that were used to make TERA, and the firm has already scored a legal victory in Korea that resulted in jail time for some of the ex-staffers.

How all of this affects TERA's U.S. release is unclear, though Lee says it's business as usual for En Masse and its fans. "This situation has no impact on our continuing efforts to realize the vision we have for our game. We are committed to making TERA awesome and delivering the game to you on time on May 1st," he writes.

It's been a long road to completion for En Masse Entertainment and its upcoming TERA MMO. If NCsoft has its way in court, it might be even longer. MMO Culture reports that NCsoft filed a lawsuit earlier this month stating that a group of its employees quit the company and went on to found Bluehole Studio (TERA's original Korean developer). In doing so, the former employees allegedly stole "copious amounts of confidential and proprietary NCsoft information, computer software, hardware, and artwork relating to Lineage 3" and used it to produce TERA.

The employees were convicted of stealing trade secrets by a Korean court in 2009, and the convictions were "mostly upheld by an appellate court." NCsoft filed a Korean civil complaint against Bluehole in 2010 and won damages and an injunction, both of which were subsequently overturned by an appellate court.

Despite the fact that both criminal and civil litigation is still pending, Bluehole launched the Korean version of TERA in early 2011. En Masse (Bluehole's American subsidiary) is scheduled to launch the U.S. version in May of 2012.

Jagex Games Studio is trumpeting its legal victory against Mark and Eric Snellman. The brothers formed a company called Impulse Software, which now owes Jagex unspecified damages following a two-year legal battle concerning macro and botting tools for the company's RuneScape MMO.

The brothers have been muzzled as a result of an injunction, and they are forbidden from discussing Jagex, RuneScape, or the lawsuit. Additionally, the pair must relinquish "all websites, domains, source code and customer details to Jagex along with all the details of all those individuals who have developed scripts for iBOT and sold or re-sold those scripts," according to a company press release.

Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard vowed to protect RuneScape users from similar threats in the future. "We have spared no expense fighting this case, as demonstrated by the seven figure bill this action has cost, but the point of this and other cases of its kind is that we will continue bring to justice those who set out to harm the game or our beloved community. We are delighted to say that we have convincingly neutered them after a very long battle," he said.

Jagex also says that its "Bot Nuke" operation, which began in October and includes a suite of code obfuscation tools, has rendered 98% of RuneScape bots obsolete.

[Source: Jagex press release]

Blizzard Entertainment made waves last year when it announced that Diablo III would be supporting real-money trading (RMT) through its in-game auction house system. While it proved to be a divisive topic among fans, apparently it was too much with the South Korean rating board, which sees such activities as potentially violating the country's anti-gambling rules.

The board was quoted as saying that "the feature involving for-cash trades between users was not included in the presentation to the rating committee, and therefore it was not subjected to any scrutiny."

To appease the board and pave the way for release, Blizzard has dropped the RMT auction house for the Korean version. The ratings board has warned the company not to sneak in the feature in a future patch and gave the title an 18 rating for the country. Interestingly enough this makes South Korea the first country to slap a rating on Diablo III to date.

Gamers opposed to the controversial new SOPA legislation are somewhat limited in terms of voicing their displeasure. Game companies have a bit more visibility, and Red 5 Studios is making the most of it. On January 18th, the company will temporarily shut down the beta for its highly anticipated Firefall MMO shooter as a form of protest.

The lights will remain off for 24 hours, and Red 5 CEO Mark Kern has some strong words for the bill and those who support it. "We are extremely disappointed in this misguided legislation. We are also ashamed of the ESA for supporting a bill which is clearly not in the best interests of gamers or the game industry," he told ShackNews.

Kern went on to say that Red 5 has canceled its plans to attend this year's E3 "unless ESA reverses their stance."

SOPA is an extremely hot-button issue on the internet right now, with politicians, companies, websites, and individuals coming out for and against this controversial piece of US legislation. It's so important that many game studios have broken the unwritten rule of not commenting on politics to state their positions on the matter.

Riot Games is one of these studios that have piped up to oppose the bill, as CEO Brandon Beck posted a lengthy reasoning as to why SOPA would harm League of Legends specifically, and he asked players to help stop it from being passed into law. "While we do support efforts to prevent online piracy, the current form of this legislation comes at far too high a cost for us, our players, and online communities across the internet," Beck writes, citing examples as to how the game could be taken offline and the community dismantled if the SOPA were wielded against LoL.

Interestingly enough, Colorado Rep. Jared Polis, who is himself a League of Legends player, replied to Beck in support of Riot Games' stance: "I'm particularly concerned that SOPA might stifle the kind of innovation that brings us games we love, such as LoL. The bill makes it far too easy for angry competitors to sue good law abiding companies out of existence." Polis says that he is drafting an alternate piece of legislation to combat internet piracy without SOPA's potential abuse.

[Update: If you'd like to encourage other companies to blockade SOPA, you might be interested in the online petition aimed squarely at Electronic Arts.]

Twinity users are experiencing a bit of lawyerly inconvenience according to virtual world blogger Tateru Nino. Portions of the Metaversum GmbH sim have been taken offline for unspecified reasons, and Nino speculates that "someone's team of undead zombie lawyers woke up and started asserting intellectual property rights and licensing restrictions."

The Twinity project makes use of both Google Maps and 3-D data to recreate cities like Singapore, London, Miami, and New York, but patrons will need to put their online party plans on hold for the time being.

Twinity's dev team posted a cryptic explanation, along with its intent to "try to reactivate the cities in the future."