There are also other ways to control the economy rather than taking things away from people. For instance, World of Warcraft essentially taxes sale of goods in-game now where it never did before. There’s a perfectly reasonable way to limit the input of gold into the world without taking anything away from the users.

As to the notion of goods being only worth their economic value, I’d say not only is that not necessarily true in real life, but it’s less true in an MMO. A crazy powerful sword can still be used for killing stuff even if it’s not worth any gold or even trades.

(2) it’s tempting to extend the ‘virtual’ analogy to treat the MMO as a contractual ‘sovereign’ able to impose whatever terms it likes on willing participants. Why burden the creators with ‘real-world’ contractual limitations?

As to (1), the government doesn’t come into my house and take my stuff away. They may do things behind the scenes which values or devalues my stuff, but to my knowledge they can’t walk into my house and take my stuff or my money away, which is essentially what these companies want.

As to (2), could you elaborate a bit?

If I were to question a EULA such as in these MMO’s you refer to, I’d look into anti-restitution and rescission clauses. These companies must be getting more than just subscription fees out of this arrangement and I’d argue that collection of usage data and habit profiling is additional consideration to the agreement which has value and can be sued upon.

Other questionable terms include forum selection clauses, choice of venue/law clauses, and unilateral rights to cancel accounts — the last one may seem silly, but when you’re marketing your game as a replacement for real life and people are spending over 40 hours per week in your virtual world, at what point does the argument that the user as actually been divested of something stop being silly?

While a company may not have any legal duty to discuss why they elected to go a certain route, transparency is the new black. Plus, if they seriously haven’t figured out that strict control over user-possessed virtual property isn’t necessary to maintain a functioning economy, perhaps academic discussion could help them out.

Do companies need to disclose the true reason for their terms? I mean, as long as the other party consents to them without a presence of duress or fraud, can there be much argument had? We’re not talking about essential services like a utility company–this is gaming and purely of entertainment value.

While I agree that the way certain business/consumer contracts just seem plainly unfair, especially in today’s digital realm (99% of the reason I’m back in school for the 3rd time), I’m not sure I can disagree with their motives or lack of exposing them. The MMO’s do rely upon their subscribers, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a psuedo-socialist entity where the users have property and chattle rights that would dictate a public policy change.

Either way, this brief interlude from my contracts final studying was helpful and interesting.