What game is eBay playing with Second Life?

eBay has announced that it is cracking down on the sale of virtual goods, such as currency, clothes and weapons from online games and virtual worlds.

eBay’s policy on the sale of digital goods states that “The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner”. There is some question about whether virtual goods are really owned by the game player, or whether they are the intellectual property of the company that owns the game or virtual world.

Interestingly the ban doesn’t extend to the much-hyped Second Life. eBay spokesperson, Hani Durzy, told CNET that the reason for this is: “We think there is an open question about whether Second Life should be regarded as a game.”

So if Second Life isn’t a game, what is it? And how does eBay decide what constitutes a game and what doesn’t? Why is Second Life different to other games? Is it simply because eBay believes the Linden Lab’s marketing guff (ie that Second Life is more than a game), or could there be some other reason for eBay’s philosophical questioning?

eBay founder and Chairman of the Board, Pierre Omidyar, is an investor in Second Life. According to an interview with Durzy at AuctionBytes, the decision to exempt Second Life was made at a “policy team level” and had nothing to do with Omidyar.

Anyone who has ever worked at a bureaucracy, or any large organization, knows that what the boss wants, the boss gets.

The boss doesn’t have to issue direct instructions to each individual employee; the boss’s interests and inclinations are usually common knowledge within the organization.

For this reason the whole “policy team level” line doesn’t wash with me. If you were in that particular “policy team”, you’re not going to create policy that pisses off the chairman of the board, are you?

Even though there are other sites, such as ige, where you can off load virtual goods, I am worried about the way that eBay has dealt with this issue by making what seems to be an arbitrary decision.

eBay is a global trading platform and has changed the way many markets operate - for example, it has had a profound impact on the antique market, where its global reach has changed the notion of what is considered scarce and what isn’t.

eBay therefore needs to operate at the highest standards of integrity and openness, and decisions like this one need to be completely transparent.