Is it legal what IGE does?

Mmmm, just wondering. Of course buy and sell L$ is legal. But IGE is trading all those items and currencies of other games that strictly forbid sell in game items for real money. I remember when I had items on my Asheron's Call account that would have gone for 3000 US$ on EBay, but decided not to sell them as it would have violated the TOS.

So why can IGE do it? And on large scale and even give interviews in media? Shouldn't their accounts in games like Everquest all be banned and their company sued by Sony?

I am really confused.

What is legal and what is 'allowed' are two different things.

I think Sony would have a hard time convincing a court that it is illegal for someone to sell their game items, however there is nothing stopping them from suspending players accounts if found to be breaking the game rules...

The question should really be, Why are all these game companies who do not wish their game items to be sold NOT suspending IGE accounts?

Sony wouldn't have a hard time at all.. In fact they shut down a site selling everquest items with just a court order. They own the intellectual rights to the virtual property.

Their business is not hosted in North America, I believe, so it may be challenging for Sony to sue.

It definitely is not a criminal offense to do what they are doing. Sony doesn't write the laws of the land (yet).

However, they can and do shut down people's accounts for this sort of stuff. So, if you try to trade some IGE goods better make sure they can't trace back to your account that you spent a year or so building up.

A part of the issue might be that Sony sees it as an opportunity. A lot of people get involved in their games because they can buy cool stuff, or because they can play and generate cool stuff for sale.

However, they also realise that they can't sell the goods themselves as it would be unfair. They're walking a tightrope of sorts, and probably will continue to do so.

IGE is located in Hong Kong. I doubt they care what Sony thinks. And as long as IGE is employing Chinese workers as China grows to dominate the world, the Chinese Government isn't going to listen to what a Japanese company says. Hell, China told Microsoft to kiss its ass, cause they are going 100% behind Linux. MSFT is trying to sue China, but its a lost cause. So I wouldn't expect much to happen to IGE. They have protection. LOL...

And as for cancelling accounts, I'm sure IGE has hundreds of backup accounts in games where there is a danger of account suspension. Only makes good business sense.

IGE
19th Floor
Oxford House, Taikoo Place
979 King's Road, Hong Kong

Name www.ige.com
Status Valid
Validity Aug.12,2004 - Aug.12,2005
Class Digital ID Class 3 - Secure Server - International
Subject Country = HK
State = Hong Kong
Locality = Kowloon Bay
Organization = Internet Gaming Entertainment LTD
Organizational Unit = Support
Organizational Unit = Terms of use at www.verisign.com/rpa (c)00
Common Name = www.ige.com
Serial Number 0fd0c611515c45112eef2b0bfc9f496c
Issuer Digest 5ef536a45c823fc2a708c54f6c045233
NetSure 100K

Because the same people who buy items and moneys on IGE are the same people who buy extra memberships from the game companies.

I need more L$... Jacq.. Hook me up with a zero interest loan and repayments that don't begin until the year 2100.

I am having the worst experiece with IGE.

I sold them $125,000 Lindens, they paid me $497.50 via PayPal.

Now they have filed a dispute against me on PayPal saying I never delivered the product they paid for. WTF?

What do I do now? Paypal told me I must ( within 10 days ) show proof that I gave them a refund or paypal will send them a refund and sue me for it.

What do I do now? And.. am I the only person IGE has done this to?

You know as well as I do that when you sell $ on IGE you must pay them the money first before they mail you cash... but as far as PayPal is concerned, IGE says I didn't give them their "product" and they want their $497.50 back. I will have no options here because I can't show any proof that I paid them the Lindens.... SL transactions show I paid a "GIFT" of $125,000 Lindens to IGE Wheeling on June 15th. A GIFT makes no proof of product.

What to do now?

Heart,


Did you well Paypal this was a virtual item? They have screwed GOm in the past by not payign them because they don't count virtual currency as a product. So I would fully explain to them that the product was virtual dollars from a 3D game and that you have proof you gave it to them. I would keep calling until I got the right person. I would let Paypal sue you, they probably won't win in court.


Make sure you close the accounts you have linked to your paypal account, your checking and your credit cards, do it right away.

No, you're not alone.

Unfortunatley, you may very well be screwed. PayPal is very anal and retarded when it comes to dealing with "virtual goods"... Last I heard, they don't even accept any "proof" of ownership and transferal, because... well... There isn't any. PayPal has a very, very low reputation because of it (and other reasons).

Try your best to resolve this through IGE... I wouldn't trust paypal any further than I could throw the building they are located in.

I highly suggest reading http://www.paypalsucks.com/ ... A biased name, clearly, but their information is good. I do as little buisness with paypal as possible, through a 'dummy' bank account that I set up specificly to deal with PP, monitored constantly, and only deal with hard-item transfers where there is proof, or through sites I have faith in (Bluntly, I wouldn't trust IGE any farther than I can throw THEM, either. No, actually, I speak too soon. I don't trust them at all.).

However, none of that helps you now.

Some comments/suggestions:

Don't refund the money right away. I'm not a lawyer, so take that with a grain of salt, but I wouldn't refund the money without contacting an attourney. You have ten days, use all of them, hastily. If you refund the money, you will never see it again. Watch your bank and/or credit card balances closely IRL... PayPal has a nasty habbit of trying to get the money that way. As Eboni suggested: Close the accounts if you can, monitor them very closely if you can't, and have them refute any charges PayPal tries to place.

Forget about taking any action directly against IGE. You cant. For the reasons already mentioned in this thread months ago. This is not the first time I've heard of IGE pulling scams and shit, sometimes with the 'aid' of paypal, other times refusing to pay money that people bought because they can find no record of the sale, etc. But as I mentioned, try to contact an attourney if you can... If for no other reason that to get a firm idea of exactly where you stand in terms of vulnerability.

Similarly, PayPal will be worthless. Your only hope is to work it out with IGE... They have a toll-free number if you are in the US, 1-866-348-0205. I don't know about other countries. There is also a 24-hour-a-day live help line here: http://www.ige.com/livehelp.aspx?lang=en , but I've never used it (I don't use IGE, period). Good luck. I tried to deal with these guys when a RL friend got scammed in another game and I couldn't even manage to rustle up someone who spoke more than a dozen words in english. I hope their phone support is better.

I hope you get this resolved. I'd hate to see IGE and PayPal claim yet another victim.

I'd also suggest you contact LL. I doubt they will help you, but LL somewhat "endorses" the money-exchange sites, so they have a certain amount of responsibility in my mind. If nothing else, if enough people complain about some of the nonsense IGE pulls, maybe LL will at least stop endorsing them.

In my many hours poring over PayPal's dispute resolution documentation, I have gleaned some extremely useful tidbits of information. One thing that seems relevant here is that "goods not received or substantially not as described" chargebacks (which it sounds like Heart received) will *not* be upheld if the goods in question are "intangibles" (in PayPal's jargon). That is to say intangibles are *not* covered by PayPal's Buyer Protection, and any chargebacks initiated under Buyer Protection should not be enforced.

We had a "goods not received" chargeback put through by a fraudster once. In the "delivery" section of the dispute resolution form, I selected "other", and put a note to PayPal that the purchase being disputed was for intangible goods, and therefore should not be covered by their buyer protection policy. PayPal was forced to agree, and we got the money back.

Heart,

This may not make you feel any better or not, but I do know that IGE was having tracking problems on June 15th, as I purchased L$ from them and it took 5 hours for them to get it to me. This was the only time that I have ever experienced any sort of problem with IGE and still trust them.

Now, I know that when I purchase L$ on IGE, I get an email from them confirming the purchase. On June 15th I did not and I figure it is from the tracking problems.

I refuse to use PayPal (they have scammed me for over US$10,000 by freezing legitimate accounts and demanding sensitive information) and am currently in legal action against them and have filed complaints with the US Department of the Treasury, the authorities in both California and Nebraska and also the Federal Trade Commission.

Give IGE some time. Mention to them about the tracking problems they were having on June 15th and see if that doesn't jog their memory. Normally they are very good to work with and you should be able to see positive results.

IGE is perfectly legal. Though I can understand why you'd want them out of the way, Anshe... then your currency trading operation could dominate the world.

*ahem*

He he... outside GOM, of course, babe.

Though, I wouldn't be surprised if Anshe launched a hostile takeover of GOM Then it could be called the AOM... Anshe Open Market.

tee hee hee

Wouln't be the first time (that a hostile takeover has happened in the broad universe of commerce).

Heart,

I would not refund any money, and keep the reconrd of the transfer, even though it shows as a gift, if you get taken to court, it shows that money was transferred.

I think more importantly, telling paypal this is a transaction for intagibles is a good idea. If they cannot enforce thier own chargeback then you are in good shape. I theory Paypal should not beable tyo just take money from a linked account, but they may have some provision in the EUL that says you agree to that. I would check them carefully before I close any accounts. I would however let my credit card co and bank compnay know that you have a dispute with paypal over a charge, the banks and credit cards are the real power here. get them on your side. Write letters, document who you talk to at the bank, the creditcard, IGE and Paypal. Besure and advise them that the product was delivered, and absent a full refund of the Lindens, you are not giving any money back. Be sure that adverse action agaisnt your credit shows up as disputed and pitch a bitch if the y report you.

As far as IGE and legality goes. Sure under HK law they are legal, but SL is the only compnay that supports actively the buying and selling of game world items for real world money. Sony and Wow publically oppose it, and thought it does go on, it is very frowned upon. I think the next logical step, given the size of the market, its for compnaies like sonay to facilitate such exchanges between players in game. I mean If IGE is making fistfulls of dollars selling EQ stuff, why shouldn't sony coopt that pie.

There was a huge flap over the whole IGE thing back when I played WoW. (IGE isn't the only one, but they are one of the largest selling in-game items, money, and even power-levelling services).

What hasn't been mentioned here is that IGE draws its sellable product from cartels which employ low-priced labor in shifts to run the same characters in games 24/7, doing nothing but farming for gold. In at least 3 cases in WoW, users found some of these characters -- all Level 60 Paladins, and all on 24/7. None of them spoke English.

If the game company bans the account, the sweatshop simply buys a new account. Buying pirated CD keys in Asia isn't that tough. But the practice is now spreading to Mexico, as well.

I'm not sure how they're doing things in SL, because there doesn't seem to me to be a way to 'farm' like you could in MMRPGs (kill mob, loot items/gold, repeat). Further, since LL's business model allows the sale of items offline, I doubt there's any way they can legally challenge it.

In the case of other MMRPGs, however, companies have indeed pursued legal action (as was noted) and shut down some of the sites. It's like playing the old arcade "wack-a-mole" though. Bash this guy down over here and another one pops up over there.

Sony finally found a very effective way to combat this problem:
http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/

I doubt IGE will be selling much EQ2 stuff anymore.

-AP

I came to the forums to start a new thread and warn everyone about the IGE issues I'm currently dealing with and found this thread.

My fiasco began on May 18th 2005, where I gave IGE Wheeling XXX of lindens to sell per the services offered on their site.

They happily took my money and promised to send a cheque for the amount of the sale.

Two weeks pass and I receive an email from Roland Lai, a representative of IGE requesting that I complete a security form before they can proceed with my order.

*side note: I've done one major transaction with them in the past without any problems and without having to complete this security form.. the only problem was that it took 8 weeks before I received the cheque.

Anyway...I comply and complete their security form and return it the very same day.

On June 21st, I receive another email advising me that they will not proceed with my order due to security reasons.. here is their response.


As for the sell order on May 18, 05, we have referred your case to our Department’s in-charge. We quoted his response “We regret to inform you that this is very hard to make the decision when we take the balance point between security measure and customer satisfaction. However, in this sensitive time, we are not comfortable to accept your order at this moment. Thank you for your visit and appreciate your valuable comment”.



Please note that this decision is based on several Specialists who reviewed your documents thoroughly and came to the same conclusion. Please be reminded that this is final decision from our Security Department. And our Customer Service Department will contact you shortly to arrange to return the game currency to you.





Sincerely,





Security Department

Internet Gaming Entertainment Ltd.

-Let me just say that their 'security form' was a badly designed information sheet. Name, address, phone number.. and how I want the my sell order to be sent. paypal, cheque etc... it was not a security form as you would imagine one to be.

hmm.. ok, considering I have an excellent credit rating and am all around upstanding citizen.. I ask them to give me a reason....

a week later, I receive generally the same response as above. It makes absolutely no sense.. but alright, fine. You don't want to do business with me.. alright. But now, where is my money?

On June 10th, they returned 1/3 of the money I gave IGE wheeling on May 18th, and I still await the balance.

I've sent several emails to which I receive no response, until today.. this is what they wrote.

Dear IGE customer - Sky Everett,



This email is to inform you that our Security Department has received your email regarding the following issue. Our Department is checking your record at the moment. We will contact you by email ASAP. Your patience on this matter is highly appreciated.



Sincerely,





Security Department

Internet Gaming Entertainment Ltd.

www.ige.com


I saw IGE Wheeling online earlier.. and sent several IM's.. all of which went unanswered.

So, since May 18th they have held my Lindens in their greedy little palms, that's 42 days!...and for some reason they won't return it. How difficult can this be? It's been over a month now...On June 10th they returned a portion of it.. why not all of it? Where is the balance?

I'm here to tell my story and let everyone make their own decissions if they wish to proceed and or continue to do business with them. I certainly will not...

Typical tactic. Delay delay delay until you go away.

it's more than delay tactics... I feel as if they've stolen this money from me. They returned a portion of my trade on June 10th.. why not the entire thing??

Are these guys scam artists??.. has anyone else experienced anything similar? What was the end result?

If you have any disputes with IGE be sure to check your transaction history on the website as it shows the NAME of the person you payed the gift to. And if they continue to dispute it remind them that their records on SL's website should show the same thing.

https://secondlife.com/account/transactions.php

now if they steal your money, here are some government links to report the fraud.
FBI
FTC
econsumer.gov

or the FIC?