There have been a few lawsuits against developers and publishers for microtransactions. Typically, we’ve seen these lawsuits spark up over the idea of loot boxes being a form of gambling that is catered toward a younger audience. Those have been heavily covered in the past, but a new lawsuit recently filed against Take-Two and 2K is about players losing their virtual currency once a game server is shut down.
Virtual currency has been present for ages now for a wide variety of video games. Players can purchase the in-game currency with real money to spend on various digital goods, whether new packs for in-game items or even cosmetics. While some games make these in-game purchases unnecessary for a player to progress, others take up with the digital goods that can be bought. However, once a game server is shut down, your accumulated in-game currency is lost. Now, before that happens, we often see developers slash prices for the in-game goods that can be bought, giving you enough time to spend whatever currency you have left over.
But it can be frustrating for those who find that your game server is being shut down with a considerable amount of in-game money saved up. That’s exactly what one mother is dealing with as she filed a lawsuit due to her minor finding the virtual currency to become useless with their NBA 2K game. As reported by Game File, we’re discovering that a lawsuit is against Take-Two and 2K for essentially causing their son’s in-game money to be lost once the server is closed to make way for the newer installments’ release. However, according to the response made by a lawyer representing the companies, the in-game money is not a player’s property to begin with.
The lawyer’s response more or less states that players are subjected to the publishers’ terms of service and agreements. The in-game virtual currency is fictitious and created by game publishers, and as a result, it’s now the plaintiff’s property. Of course, now we have to wait and see how the ruling goes and whether this will, in turn, cause the publishers to make up a means to transfer in-game currency for a series so that players can continue using their in-game currency when a newer installment is released. With that said, it could be that the plaintiff doesn’t have much of a case, and we’ll continue to see the trend of virtual currency being wiped once the servers shut down.
