Finally, it begins.

Marc Woebegone, known in the real word as Marc Bragg, has filed suit in the local district justice court in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a small town located 25 miles west of Philadelphia, PA. Bragg purchased virtual land, known in Second Life as “sims,” using real US currency. Bragg learned of a way to purchase virtual land significantly below market values, and invested thousands of US dollars purchasing land in an attempt to resell this land at a profit. Bragg claims that employees of Linden Research, Inc., the company who creates, manages and maintains this online world, allowed the auction to be created, and after Bragg paid US dollars for the land, terminated Bragg’s account, without explanation, without citing any violation of community policy, and have since refused offer a credit or a refund. Bragg’s calls to customer service and Linden Lab’s legal counsel have gone unanswered. Bragg’s final option? Seek relief in a real world court.

I knew that eventually RMT-type business models would result in a lawsuit somewhere. When you ban someone who has just paid real cash money for in-game bennies, you get into an area where judges and juries are likely to be very sympathetic to the defendant. He could turn out to be a cheating, exploiting little twink, but you still risk a jury not understanding that distinction.

This is, incidentally, why I think it’s important for billing models to be core to your game design and business strategy. Slap an RMT service onto a game after the fact, and you risk being hit from a direction like this that you’re not prepared to be hit from. On the other hand, Linden Labs is completely and totally devoted to this billing model and content delivery path. Hopefully, this means they have enough institutional focus to defend themselves from this sort of attack.

(found via nerfed).