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Would an online game be responsible?

I've been playing this game online for about 4 years, and one of its players sent another player a death threat via MSN messenger, but got banned inside the game for it and the reason being that if the game developer failed to take action against the accused player and the other player took it to the law officials, that he could get in trouble as well. Is that true. Would the game itself be responsible if it didn't happen within the game?

Public Comments

1. no, because it happened on msn messenger and not on the actual game itself. if it happened on the game, the game developer can and will be responsible because he/she created the game, and therefore may be sued, along with the threatening player, by the accused player.
2. dude i dont know, if it is so, well i better be carefull cause i get in trouble alot in several games specially Halo, i fight a lot just cause i like to and many people hate for that
3. No. The gaming developers or service would not be responsible for content out side of the game. Also, unless they encourage such activities, they have no responsibility for what players do in or out of the game. Plus, read the pages and pages of terms of service with in the game (no on does)... they have clauses in there to shield them from such stuff. Basically saying they are not responsible for any action inside or outside of the game world other than for the content with in the game as put forth by the developers.
4. Dog Lover is right. D*mn! - I have been saying that a lot lately - hope he is not still mad at me :) Anyway, the legal reason is that if the game developer/operator (not necessarily the same thing) edited the messages in any way, then they would lose the protection of being a "common carrier" with immunity from having to prevent any type of messages. It is the same reason your ISP itself doesn't discriminate against what you send on their network (aside: look for comcast to have trouble on these grounds soon given their recent disclosures) Keep that in mind when you see people complain about how Yahoo handles complaints on here - they are walking a very fine line - I used to be a manager responsible for the software they purchased from us to manage their inbound email so I know more then a little about how they work in these situations.
5. In our litigious society - folks look for the deep pocket - not necessarily the guy who did it. If something happened to the guy and the game company had not done something - then the guy or his family could have sued the game company. Even if the game company won the suit- they would pay thousands of dollars of defense costs. Look at all the people who post on this site wanting to sue over stupid stuff. Do you really think a lawsuit against the game company is outside the realm of possibility? Sorry - but stuff like this happens in the lottery syndrome money for nothing and anytime something bad happens I should get paid society we live in now.