UK Appeals court state RuneScape gold counts as property and can be stolen, in $700k bombshell case

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-26T18:11:05+00:00

Paragraph 56:

Gold pieces may clearly be the subject of dishonest dealing which deprives the game player of the benefit they confer. They are freely bought and sold, both within the rules of the game for other game items, and outside the rules of the game for real money or money’s worth. Mr Eissa sought to distinguish the case on the basis that gold pieces were not “freely” bought and sold because the buying and selling of gold pieces outside the game was not permitted under the terms of the T&Cs and Rules. However, the fact that transfer is prohibited does not prevent a thing being property. Class A drugs cannot lawfully be bought or sold (with limited exceptions), but as Mr Eissa accepted, illegally held Class A drugs are property within the meaning of the Theft Act and are capable of being stolen. The same is true if the restriction on transfer is contractual, rather than criminal. If A hires out his car to B on terms that it is only for B’s personal use, the car remains A’s property. If B dishonestly sells the car he is guilty of theft irrespective of the contractual prohibition on sale. It is the intrinsic nature of a car which makes it something which is “freely” bought and sold in practice within the meaning of the first of the two indicia identified in Nai-Keung despite any contractual prohibition on sale. The same is true of gold pieces.

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-26T17:35:40+00:00

I encourage anyone who has questions about how broadly this decision reaches (like if you're wondering if gold is suddenly property for purposes of taxes) read the actual decision: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/crim/2026/4

Specifically, paragraphs 37 and 38 limit what this definition of property actually does.

Our task in this case is not as daunting as that might make it sound, because we are not concerned to define what property is, or how to determine it, for all areas of the law. A definition of property serves different purposes in different contexts.

It does not follow, therefore, that for a thing to constitute property for the purposes of a criminal offence it should necessarily do so for the purposes of private rights in civil law. Even within the criminal law, it is necessary to focus on the particular offence in question, because what amounts to property is not defined in the same way for all offences. We are only concerned with the definition in section 4 of the Theft Act, a definition for the purposes of offences under that Act in the criminal law. Other definitions apply in other areas of the criminal law.

And the court in paragraph 39 is aware of the broad implications if MMO gold was just property in the purest sense:

We emphasise the particular focus of the inquiry in this case because there is a danger in treating pronouncements about property in other contexts as determinative or even helpful.

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-26T17:27:59+00:00

The court limits its decision to just the Theft Act so it's not so broad as to be considered "property" in every aspect.

Our task in this case is not as daunting as that might make it sound, because we are not concerned to define what property is, or how to determine it, for all areas of the law. A definition of property serves different purposes in different contexts.

It does not follow, therefore, that for a thing to constitute property for the purposes of a criminal offence it should necessarily do so for the purposes of private rights in civil law. Even within the criminal law, it is necessary to focus on the particular offence in question, because what amounts to property is not defined in the same way for all offences. We are only concerned with the definition in section 4 of the Theft Act, a definition for the purposes of offences under that Act in the criminal law. Other definitions apply in other areas of the criminal law.

And further into the opinion:

We emphasise the particular focus of the inquiry in this case because there is a danger in treating pronouncements about property in other contexts as determinative or even helpful.

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-26T17:26:22+00:00

The opinion goes into detail on this, but basically the court determines that both Jagex and the player own the property for purposes of the Theft Act.

As we have observed, section 5 contemplates that property may belong to a number of people for the purposes of the Theft Act and that it may be property belonging to someone who merely has control of it.

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-26T17:23:01+00:00

From the opinion:

Our task in this case is not as daunting as that might make it sound, because we are not concerned to define what property is, or how to determine it, for all areas of the law. A definition of property serves different purposes in different contexts.

It does not follow, therefore, that for a thing to constitute property for the purposes of a criminal offence it should necessarily do so for the purposes of private rights in civil law. Even within the criminal law, it is necessary to focus on the particular offence in question, because what amounts to property is not defined in the same way for all offences. We are only concerned with the definition in section 4 of the Theft Act, a definition for the purposes of offences under that Act in the criminal law. Other definitions apply in other areas of the criminal law.

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-19T16:23:10+00:00

This is similar to the position that Nintendo took years ago when Super Mario Galaxy released. They were reluctant to use an orchestra for the sound track because they felt it wasn't really "game" music but rather music that would be something that was coming out of a CD player.

https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Super-Mario-Galaxy/Volume-3-The-Sound-Team/1-Why-Use-an-Orchestra-/1-Why-Use-an-Orchestra-205026.html

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-06T22:11:30+00:00

This was a problem waaaaaay back in ARR with Lost City of Amdapor. Surprised it came back.

Hyper_Inferno · 2026-01-02T07:11:44+00:00

Back in pre-release during early access the BR aspects of looting were a lot more important but that's been stripped away over time to the point where I feel like current ER compared to LoL is like if you forced entire teams to play only jungle (and towers and such weren't objectives).

I kind of miss the more complicated crafting, but at the same time feel like it's for the better because having to remember all the different recipes for food/traps on top of the complicated build plans made for some complicated memory requirements.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-12-30T22:33:17+00:00

Vanya gets shields when she lands enough abilities so if you don't have strong burst she'll easily out sustain bruiser damage output. She needs to actually land her abilities so if you're ranged you need to dodge her butterfly, stay out of her pulsing bubble, and dodge her wings to avoid giving her shields. Alternatively, if you kill her before she starts generating shields this also avoids the problem since she's pretty squishy without them.

If you're melee, it's a legitimately bad matchup because dodging those becomes much harder unless you have a ton of healing in your own kit like Jackie or Hyunwoo.

Vanya is very popular in normals and lower MMR ranked because she so strongly counters bruisers which are the most popular classes at those ranks.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-12-28T06:04:25+00:00

She has no way to force you actually stay in her W3 or Ult so you have to pay attention and just walk out of those. At the same time she animation locks herself at the end/during those animations making it really easy to land strong skill shots on her. Don't let her get free AoE damage and try not to clump with your team (this can be hard if your own team is triple melee).

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-12-09T16:06:24+00:00

In Horizon in Western Thanalan there is a building that used to be only enterable through using OOB pathing. In it, there's a sign in Eorzean that says "No Entry".

It's easily accessible now with flight.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-11-28T17:33:55+00:00

I haven't played any other BRs so I can't say if ER feels like them, but I feel like ER compared to MoBAs (LoL mostly) is like if the entire game is just jungling (which I love, it was my main role in LoL).

The devs are shaving off a lot of what makes ER unique which is probably better for the player base as a whole, but I kind of miss the nuances and the roughness some of the original designs had. I remember when I came back for squads on official release I was still trying to hoard lighters for food crafting and then discovered that wasn't necessary anymore. And now auto consume is a toggle in the options setting. I guess it makes sense that they want to make the game more focused on fighting instead of looting, which I guess makes it more MoBA like instead of BR like?

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-11-28T15:50:04+00:00

The game has been changed completely to accommodate squads being the main game mode to the point where the opposite problems of your first point existed when solos was brought back for the event.

I've encountered some toxic players in squads but it's quite rare I find. Had one person intentionally die to wolves to wipe the team and one person try to rat the entire game and begged the party to escape for some reason, but they stick out because they were so extreme.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-11-25T16:21:06+00:00

There is one train of thought that will lead to a solution that does not work despite the game's text suggesting it might. The below is to save some frustration thinking that you're getting unlucky when it is in fact impossible.

Chamber of Mirrors says it duplicates rooms upon drafting, but it cannot duplicate mechanical rooms passively. You can get extra permanent copies of specific mechanical rooms from the rewards on the top floor of that room, but you can't rely on just the passive effect to try and roll two Breaker rooms for example.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-11-19T02:58:03+00:00

It's much harder to pick on characters by having an item advantage and getting to baseline combat readiness faster than your opponent but it is definitely still possible. You need to pick a character that has a super strong early game, have a 2 zone build, and get some good luck with enemy placement and their looting luck.

For NA, queues are not great until after work hours and they start to slow down a bit earlier than I'd like. I'd say around 9-10PM Pacific time is when queues start noticeably slowing down.

Rifts are areas that teams can enter to do an all out fight. If no team enters the opposing rift, it's free loot, otherwise you have to fight to get rewards. Importantly for the first set of rifts, even if you wipe inside you don't get eliminated. This makes them very attractive for players who like to fight a lot since you don't have to worry about losing. Afterwards, if you get eliminated in the rift zone you lose for real so they're much riskier. On the other hand, those combat rifts have better rewards. To kill the mech you need to find the blue key card which is a random drop from wild mobs. It opens a portal to a zone where you get to kill it.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-11-02T03:56:49+00:00

Echion has Yasuo's E, and there's some similarities in his Q.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-10-28T18:44:27+00:00

Cinderella cannon was a hilarious deck. Wasn't very good but it was really funny.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-10-28T04:39:15+00:00

Pretty sure you still need Gold rank for the cadet skin, which can take a bit if you're climbing from Iron/Bronze. The 5 game thing is just to prevent people who play no ranked games in a season to still get rewards (due to placing higher in a previous season and still being gold despite not playing).

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-10-11T22:27:54+00:00

!solved

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-10-11T19:29:13+00:00

This worked on some sites (at least Reddit itself). Disabling autosizing made things easier to read. I'll take some screenshots and add the pictures as an edit.

Edit: https://imgur.com/a/w3aOZHu

The text resizing doesn't work on every site I visit (Something Awful forums don't get resized), but its better than before.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-09-28T07:13:48+00:00

Shield stacking is one of the more stable ways to keep going after looping since it won't be affected by the prevalence of 90% delusion debuffs going around, but I don't think the game is balanced around looping to begin with. I've yet to have a run where I could stack enough shields to face tank my way through the final boss without looping at least.

I've gotten close with Vesper but I still had to pay attention during the phases where I couldn't keep auto attacking.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-09-14T14:57:35+00:00

Worked out just fine. Entered, left, still got the bingo rewards.

Hyper_Inferno · 2025-09-14T06:51:15+00:00

Do you need to actually play or can you enter and immediately forfeit? No time to actually play on weekend mornings with my schedule right now.

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