A U.S. woman who for years played and socialized in a “virtual world” computer game asked the B.C. courts to push the reset button for her after she was banished for breaking the game’s rules.
And Courtney Reynolds sued the B.C. game-maker in the province’s civil resolution tribunal for $5,000, mostly for “pain and suffering.” She maintained she was “wrongfully”, or “by mistake”, kicked out of the game called Kingdom at War, and wanted the courts to rule that she was “unbanned.”
Reynolds, who played under the account name “belle,” claimed Vancouver-based A Thinking Ape Entertainment owed her $1,637.66, the value of virtual objects she could no longer access. (Players earn or receive such objects or buy them for real money for use in the virtual world.)
She rounded up the amount of the lawsuit to $5,000, the CRT’s claim limit, by suing ATA for $3,362.34 for “pain, suffering, loss of friends and community, and the value of her time.”
“It was a big nuisance, it went on for months,” said company vice-president Tayber Voyer, who called the lawsuit “unusual. Generally, the community is pretty positive.”
He said her account was deactivated because she broke the game’s rules by buying and selling accounts and playing under someone else’s identity, he said. The CRT ruling said it wasn’t the first time.
Tribunal member Chad McCarthy determined the CRT had jurisdiction to hear what he called “essentially a contract dispute about the terms-of-use agreement.” He noted Reynolds lived in the U.S. but ATA’s offices are in B.C.
But McCarthy couldn’t rule on Reynolds’s request to have her unbanned because this type of injunctive relief isn’t within the CRT’s jurisdiction.
Reynolds said in her written submissions that her account was “wrongfully deactivated” and she lost her virtual objects and “suffered because she can no longer interact with other players within the KAW virtual environment,” according to McCarthy’s written decision.
She also said the terms-of-use were hidden from her, its wording was misleading and it shouldn’t be enforced against regular-users, all three claims for which McCarthy said there was no evidence and therefore dismissed.
Reynolds also said ATA deactivated her account by mistake because she switched phones, which made it look like she was account-sharing when she wasn’t.
Her claims for damages because of losses of virtual objects, for which she wrongfully cited a 2007 U.S. court ruling, was also dismissed because the terms-of-use said players don’t own the objects, they are only given permission to use them.
And McCarthy said Reynolds didn’t provide medical or other evidence to back her claim for pain and suffering damages.
The terms-of-use also gave ATA the right to revoke players for any reason, McCarthy ruled.
In 2019, ATA’s revenue was $25 million to $50 million, it had 75 employees and its three-year growth was 145 per cent.
