The Incident involved hundreds of gamers ransacking the publishers office, spraying graffiti and destroying furniture. Grievances include rent seeking activities, mistreatment of virtual property theft, duping problems, termination of individuals accounts, and technical instability (lag, frequent crashes). The first one, rent seeking activities, refers to low level game staff who can create valuable virtual property and they can use it to make actual money and occasional even ask for sex. Game corporations have a corrupt, authoritarian rule over their virtual worlds complete with petty corrupt officials.

Links to the slides or full paper aren’t currently available although the abstract is provocative, but it would be interesting to me to get further insight into gamer’s rights in China. With the explosive growth of virtual worlds and games in Asia, there are very few sources of information that translate events and developments in the MMO industry.