Seraph.Kyaaadaa said:
i've always suggested that websites that sell gil be shut down. Its not exactly hard to find them, simply google key phrases like gil, buy, sell, and FFXI. If they can take punitive action against the RMT characters, wouldn't they be able to push a case in court against such websites? hell, they might even be able to rape the profit they accrue from idiot players who actually buy. not like its not the first time SE has dipped into their player's pockets...
It's not that easy. Real money trading is illegal INSIDE the game: It violates the term of service... which you need to agree to in order to play the game. You can get your account banned for participating in such act. But it stops there.
RMT (trading in-game currency against real money) is in no way illegal in regards to any "real world" laws. Unless SE finds a way to prove that it violates their copyrights or patents or whatever, in some legal way (like they managed to do with FFXIAPP apparently, and which really is good news for all of us non-botting players), they're completely powerless.
In the case of RMT, that is extremely complicated for them because legally speaking those sites aren't violating anything but the in-game rules of a GAME... They're not reverse engineering the code, they're not bypassing security protections. They're simply using in-game functions in a way that SE (and most of the FF XI community) does not approve.
That is why MMORPG companies have so little power over RMT sites. Now.... if SE was empowered to just make any website shutdown based on the simple fact they think it's unfair to their business, we would be living in a pretty frightening world, trust me... You don't want that.
Vana'diel doesn't exactly have the same rules as "the Outside World"... ^-^;
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Reply to the OP:
I got a /tell "v" once. I suppose they wanted to type Ctrl+V to paste their message, but they forgot to presss Ctrl ... :) I wanted to reply and mock them. But they were set to Away :(
Why are people in Away mode allowed to send /tells? Isn't that kind of dumb?