eBay cancels virtual item auctions
29 January 2007Citing “legal complexities”, eBay has announced that it will begin cracking down on and canceling auctions for virtual items. The market for virtual items has grown since the first sword was sold for Diablo 2 and has blossomed with the release of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.
Speaking to Slashdot, eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy told the site that the decision, rather than a new policy to end auctions, was instead simply a follow-through of existing site policy that sellers must own the intellectual property being sold.
First time offenders are merely warned but repeat offenders can be suspended and removed from eBay. There are already many other marketplaces for the trade and selling/buying of game specific virtual items, so if you have a great magical cloak, you might want to think twice about listing it on eBay and find the marketplace for the game you have the cloak in.
UPDATE: eBay seems to have caused quite a stir with this. They’ve seemingly given Linden Labs’ Second Life items a waiver on this rule. It doesn’t help that one of the eBay board members is an investor in Linden Labs.
[tags]ebay,virtual items,auctions,world of warcraft,warcraft,diablo 2[/tags]
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