Delete the number if you don't go online? The arrogance and domineering of the game company, and no one can take care of it?

Author 丨 Gao Shi

Edit 丨Ling Fox

Original 丨 game hunting

Unfortunately, your game account ownership not only does not belong to you, but also faces the risk of being deleted at any time because it is not online for a period of time.

This is not a joke, but a clear clause written in the service agreements of large and small game companies in China.

According to the agreement, after the player does not log in to the online game for 180 consecutive days, the game company can dispose of the relevant account by itself; according to the response of the relevant company, these agreements that are more than the "overlord clause" are completely "legal and compliant".

As a player, in the face of these terms, you may not even have a channel to appeal, and you can only ask yourself to be blessed with a bunch of "eating ashes" accounts that will not be quietly deleted.

First, it is always the player who is injured

Recently, Game Hunter received a revelation from readers that a game company had arbitrarily emptied the point card in the user's game account to recharge the game time without any prior notice confirmation, and refused to restore the relevant data on the grounds that the operation record was too long.

According to Daming (pseudonym), around 2016, he recharged the game play time point card in the "Sword Man Adventure Online Edition III" (hereinafter referred to as "Sword Net III"), but later because the computer hardware could not keep up with the configuration requirements after the game upgrade, he did not play online for a while.

It was not until April this year that Daming replaced the higher-configuration computer hardware and planned to log back into the game, only to find that his point card length had been completely emptied, and he could only restore the normal landing of the game by recharging.

Daming, who was deeply puzzled by this, still failed to restore the virtual property of the game account in the game customer service communication with the game operator Xishanju twice.

Daming said that the customer service said that the game operator's deletion of the relevant content in the account was a compliant operation, the purpose of which was to reduce the burden on the game server, and said that it could try to restore the deleted content. Subsequently, the customer service said that the company could not restore the account data on the grounds that the time interval was too long and the background data could not be queried to the account status details before zeroing, and the loss could only be borne by the player himself.

When Daming further questioned the customer service about the legality of such "deletion" behavior, the other party said that such problems were all responsible for the company's special legal department, and had reported the situation to the top level, and there was no illegal operation.

The implication is, "We have emptied the data in your account, and next time we dare."

According to public information, Sword Net III is a martial arts theme MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) developed by Kingsoft's Xishanju Studio; unlike most online games that are "free to play, props are paid", Sword Net III adopts a time charging model, and the game has two ways to play, namely the point card recharge time and the monthly fee system.

Daming's previous way of playing was to obtain the game time by purchasing recharge point cards, but he never expected that the time of the point cards purchased by himself with real money and silver would actually be emptied by the game operator because he had not logged into the game for a period of time.

The biggest feedback Daming received in the whole process of communicating with the game operator was that from the level of the user's "voluntary signing" of the contract agreement, Xishanju's "deletion" practice had long been written into the terms of the agreement and was completely "legal and compliant".

Looking at the "West Mountain House Game Use Agreement", you can see from clause 3.6(o):

"If the user's registered account activates the game service and does not log in to the game for 180 consecutive days, xishanju has the right to take measures to terminate the service of continuing to provide the game to the user (including but not limited to: canceling the remaining game time, game gold coins, game items, deleting the registration information of the game, character information and all other related information) from 24:00 on the day of complacency on the 180th day of complacency, and is not responsible for any losses caused thereby."

That is to say, as the operator of the three operators of the game sword network, Xishanju, with the above terms, does not need any specific reasons, just because the user has not logged in to the game for 180 consecutive days, it has the right to directly delete the user account and the virtual property therein, without any legal liability.

In the face of large game companies, it has never been easy for players to protect their rights, and it is even more difficult to protect their rights when it comes to the ownership of such virtual property. For most players, due to many practical factors such as information asymmetry and insufficient awareness of rights protection, they can often only silently accept the overlord clauses of the game operator and bear all losses alone.

Even if some more genuine users are willing to spend a lot of time and energy to compete with game operators, due to the lack of sufficient punishment mechanisms and regulatory measures, the outcome is often unsatisfactory, and it is more difficult to form enough deterrence and positive communication for the entire industry from the legal level.

The player group that should be the party to be served, within these rules of non-equality of the relevant terms formulated by the game company, can only be reduced to the "human flesh training machine" of the game account.

This is our gaming market.

Second, the bottom clause or the "overlord contract"

Such "deletion" incidents as Xishan Jujian Network III are not unique in the game circle.

Taking NetEase's "Forever Devastated" as an example, since its launch in the second half of last year, the popularity of this buyout game that focuses on "martial arts eating chicken" has not decreased. Three months after the game was launched, the official announcement of global sales exceeded 6 million, which shows the popularity.

This phenomenal buyout multiplayer competitive game still can't bypass the "deletion clause" set by domestic game companies.

In the early days of the launch of "Forever Doom", a service clause about "365 deletes the number without logging in one day" has triggered a discussion that is even hotter than the game boom.

For the player circle, the debate on the ownership of online game account data has never stopped, and now the game company actually has to put its hand to the buyout of the game, which will naturally trigger widespread condemnation, in this incident, public opinion almost one-sidedly accused NetEase of "eating ugly".

At the time of public opinion fermentation, the game operator quietly deleted and amended the relevant terms. By flipping through the data, it can be found that the above terms are from point (9) of Article 7 of the "User Agreement" published by NetEase:

"If the user has not logged in to the game for 365 consecutive days, netease has the right to take measures to delete the user account and any records of the user account in the game database (including but not limited to roles, levels, virtual items, value-added service proxy coins and other data information) from 24:00 on the 365th day, and the deleted data and information can no longer be recovered."

In fact, the vast majority of game companies have written such terms into their respective "use agreements", but there are slight differences in specific rules and wording.

In contrast, the goose factory's "deletion" clause, in addition to giving a 3-year landing period, is also relatively soft in wording.

"You fully understand and agree that in order to make efficient use of server resources, if you have not used your game account to log in to Tencent Games within 3 years, Tencent has the right to take measures such as deleting the game data and related information under the account and its account with advance notice."

According to industry practice, such clauses of game companies are often used as "bottom-up" exemptions, that is, once a server failure or other unpredictable situation leads to data loss, there can be a paper agreement to protect the rights and interests of the game operator.

However, judging from the above many cases, this kind of "delete the number without going online" clause seems to have far exceeded the acquiescence of the "bottom of the pocket" and has a tendency to be abused by some companies that do not comply with industry rules.

These practices of game companies, which are undoubtedly related to the "overlord clause", are actually stuck with two detailed rules of the Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Games issued by the former Ministry of Culture in 2010, which are:

First, Article 19 (3) Records of purchases by online game users are kept. The retention period shall be no less than 180 days from the date of the last time the user receives the service.

Second, Article 20 (5) Keep information such as transaction records and accounting records between users for not less than 180 days.

Today, nearly 12 years after the formal implementation of the above provisions, the entire game market environment has long been different, and even the former Ministry of Culture has re-formed the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2018; some game companies are still standing still in place and even regressive in terms of serving player awareness.

Article 127 of the Civil Code, which came into effect this year, for the first time includes data and online virtual property in the scope of protection, clearly stipulates: "Where the law has provisions on the protection of data and online virtual property, follow those provisions." "This raises the legal status of data, online virtual property, to new heights."

Deleting the point card recharge records of real money and silver within the specified time, and even deleting the number, are particularly eye-catching today, when the rights and interests of users are increasingly valued and the virtual property protection act is becoming more and more perfect.

III. Conclusion

Perhaps, for some game companies, the player is just one of many cold data in the server.

Such obviously unreasonable but stuck in the gray area of legal regulation is essentially a kind of arrogance and contempt for the entire player base by the game company.

In a highly mature game market with 20 years of development, there are companies that put on a "hello dear players, I am your father" face, which is too magical.

It is recommended that these big business head enterprises still hang out.

After all, if another wave of rectification is introduced, the first ones who can't stand it will definitely not be the players.