Acting training platform, game clearance, clarifying the legal and moral boundaries in cases
2023-04-13
The game training platform bypasses the "anti addiction" mechanism and encourages users, including minors, to participate in commercial training. This not only affects the gaming experience of other users, but also allows minors to bypass layers of supervision and achieve "game freedom". Recently, the People's Court of Pudong New Area in Shanghai tried a case of unfair competition that broke the minors' "anti addiction" mechanism and organized commercial practice, further maintaining the fair competition order in the game market and supporting children with an "umbrella" for the online environment. A certain game company has a fair matching mechanism in its game, equipped with a complete "anti addiction" mechanism. Minors can only play within a specified time period. The game service agreement also stipulates that users are not allowed to use their account for commercial purposes such as training. However, the game company found that a certain training platform lured and encouraged users, including minors, to engage in commercial and large-scale game training transactions through its platform through the form of "issuing orders and returning cash" and setting up a special zone. Minors can enter the game system without time and duration restrictions by accepting orders, and thus bypass the "anti addiction" mechanism to enter the game to earn fees. Therefore, the lawsuit was filed with the Pudong New Area Court. The plaintiff's game company claimed that the act of the agent training platform hindered the normal development of the game business, caused damage to itself, game users and social and public interests, and constituted unfair competition. It requested the agent training platform to immediately stop the above act and compensate for economic losses totaling 4.5 million yuan. The defendant's agent training platform argued that the game agent training is not the same field as the game service. The game agent training is equivalent to the game playing, which is a kind of service and does not constitute unfair competition. The game agent training enhanced the game user experience, did not cause losses to the plaintiff, but increased the flow and user stickiness of the plaintiff, and the agent training platform did not profit from the business involved in the case, so it requested to reject all the plaintiff's claims. After the court heard the case, it was found that the defendant provided commercial practice transactions for game users, using their business activities and user groups as the basic resources for their own operations, and this behavior itself had market competition attributes. The behavior of the training platform in this case disrupted the market competition order, causing three damaging consequences: firstly, it disrupted the fair competition game mechanism, damaged the user experience and legitimate rights and interests; Secondly, it interferes with the real name mechanism established by the game and the "anti addiction" mechanism for minors, damaging the plaintiff's commercial interests; Thirdly, it increases the risk of minors becoming addicted to the internet and infringes on social and public interests. At the same time, the practice platform uses games with competitive rights from game companies as a profit tool, which violates the principles of good faith and business ethics. The practice platform also takes measures to deliberately avoid the plaintiff's supervision, which is subjective and malicious. The plaintiff is also unable to eliminate the impact of the defendant's behavior through appropriate technical means. To sum up, the court found that the act of providing commercial online game training service on behalf of the training platform constituted unfair competition, and decided to immediately stop and compensate the game company for economic losses of 800000 yuan and reasonable expenses for rights protection of 185000 yuan. The parties have not appealed, and the judgment is currently in effect. The judge's words: Firstly, commercial practice is illegal and should be regulated by law. With the development of the gaming industry, commercial practice has long been in a gray area, and
Edit:Ying Ying Responsible editor:Shen Chen
Source:rmfyb.chinacourt.org
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