Are MMOs illegal now?

[pdxhero]

As most everyone probably knows, there is a genre of online gaming variously called "massively multiplayer online" (MMO) or sometimes "massively multiplayer online role playing games" (MMORPGs). These are the "virtual world" games, including Everquest, the Sims, Second Life, Runescape, etc.

All MMOs have a notion of virtual money. And as a practical matter, their virtual money can in all cases be exchanged for real money. Some of the game franchise owners really try to prevent real-money transfers (RMTs) of game items; others don't try very hard and some, recently, don't even have rules against it. In the case of games that have rules against it, the RMTs are supported by a gray market operated by companies like IGE.

All MMOs contain random events. These may be explicit, as when plays establish gambling operations using game objects, or implicit, as when valuable in-game items become available.

This leads to a host of interesting questions with respect to both taxes and UIGEA.

Why do we care? Because there are millions people in the US playing MMOs. Any involvement or even potential involvement of MMOs with UIGEA would cause a lot of young people to become instantly interested in politics, completely changing the political dynamic about UIGEA.