IGE is getting suedFollow

I haven't read any of the replies, so this may have already been stated... but IGE does not "farm" gil, they are a currency reseller. They would not be akin to the person behind you in a theater kicking your seat, but more like a guy sitting next to them encouraging them to kick your seat by offering incentives to do so. Not that that really matters, but just important to remember that those RMT we hate so much aren't IGE employees.

The bell has run! To arms men! To arms!!

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6171627.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;1

IGE says they don't "Own" the gil, but they are a mediator like Napster, they take your money, and someone else's gil and swap them, chargeing basically a broker's fee. It will also be hard to charge IGE or gilsellers, when they are based outside of the US.

IGE is actually one of the few RMT companies that is based in the US. They are in NYC, if I remember right. They were a splinter off from My Super Sales, which was one of the first RMT companies ever which was started by an American.

So, if anyone can be brought down and made an example of, it's IGE. Unfortunetly, as my above post said, I really don't know how much of a dent in the RMT trade that would cause these days, with most people buying currency directly from the farmers.

are you implying that the entire court that will be handling this case will be avid MMO players?

This isn't the first time IGE has run into legal actions. So far no one has been successful against IGE, I doubt this would turn out any differently.

Unfortunately, not anymore. IGE is owned by a new group in Hong Kong, their HQ is no longer in the USA :(

PS: Here is where the news of IGE being sold was officially announced.

QFT!!!!

I'm a journalist, and I used to write stories about methamphetamine labs in Central California. The "broker" position that some say applies to IGE is similar to the absentee "landlords" who lived in San Francisco, while renting their homes to Mexican nationals who came across the border to engage in the drug trade. The arrangement gives the worker bees a place to manufacture and sell their meth... and if they get caught, then it's extremely difficult to connect them to the real dealers, aka the absentee landlords, who can claim they had absolutely no idea what was going on.

On the other hand, there must be an easy-to-track paper (or digital) trail linking gil farmers and buyers with IGE... and, I don't see how IGE can play the "I had no idea this was wrong" card. If the company is indeed merely a broker (aka dealer), then they're still guilty of a) profiting off of the intellectual property of SE, and b) adversly affecting the gameplay of said intellectual property, which DOES translate to a diminshed quality of play for legit, rate-paying customers.

Someone compared IGE's role to that of Napster. Lets not forget, Napster got sued too... and lost! And, the Napster case set an entirely new precedent that other mp3 sites had to follow, forever changing the digitial music trade on the Internet.

I'm surprised nobody has sued IGE until now.

Let's hope this makes some progress!

I don't think this will work. Just think about it for a second here. If there really was all this distuption that the plaintif is claiming... then why are they still in buisness? Because there are consumers, and that is the problem, not the farmers and sellers. If you really want to see it go away, don't use the service. Until that time though it will be here and in the next MMO that comes out until people as a whole stop paying for it. I doubt that IGE is sweating this much at all.

Don't take my earlier statement the wrong way, I hate rmt as much as anyone else, but it seems like the scum always go free, and get away with murder.

If in fact all the gil selling companys do stop selling gil to people, alot of players who buy gil on the game, eventually cause alot of people to quit the game.

I dont buy gil, but know alot of others who do, same thing all of them say, dont got time to farm, they have work in morning so they buy, to get by in the game and I know alot of people on this game buy gil and dont say anything.

So, if this does stop it, expect the game go downward spiral.