According to the Beijing Internet Court, the verdict of a recent case of a "game booster maliciously destroying a player's account" has been announced, with the boosting service company ordered to pay compensation of 46,922.8 yuan (~6832 USD).
The case centers around a gaming enthusiast, Wang, who purchased a game account online and spent a lot of money on rare in-game items. In order to quickly level up and save some grinding time, Wang thought to find a game booster online.
After some searching, he purchased the game-boosting service from a company named “S”. Then, after his payment, S company's customer service assigned a game booster to Wang and advised him not to log in to the game account during the boosting period. Wang followed the advice strictly and patiently waited for the game account to be leveled up.
Beijing Internet Court ordered a game-boosting service company to pay a player 46,922.8 CNY for destroying in-game assets.
After the completion of the boosting service, Wang logged into his game account to find that over a hundred valuable "Generals" on his account had been broken down and deleted, making them unrecoverable. Wang was extremely angry and messaged the booster to inquire about this, only to be told that due to an internal dispute within S Company, their supervisor had instructed the booster to carry out the destructive action.
Afterward, the game booster blocked Wang within the messaging app. Wang then requested compensation from S Company, but the two sides failed to reach a settlement. As a result, Wang filed a lawsuit against S Company, demanding compensation for economic losses in the amount of 46,922.8 CNY.
A screenshot of Beijing Internet Court’s verdict on the game booster case
S Company argued that the loss amount claimed by Wang was too high and did not take into account the depreciation of the account. Going on to say that the deletion of the game characters in question was the action of the game booster, who was recruited by the company through online or internal sources after the player placed an order. The company only had an employment relationship with the booster and did not carry out the account deletion action itself.
Nevertheless, the court held that as an operator of game-boosting services, S Company failed to fulfill its contractual obligations and should bear liability for breach of contract. Whether the service was completed by a contracted booster or an employee of S Company does not affect its liability.
In the game involved in this case, the "Generals" are an important factor in advancing the game and have a significant impact on the entertainment value of the game. Deleting all the characters on the account would greatly reduce or even eliminate the entertainment value of the account. The court supported the amount of loss claimed by Wang, which can be measured based on the cost of purchasing the account and the subsequent microtransactions.
Therefore, the final judgment orders S Company to compensate Mr. Wang 46,922.8 CNY within seven days from the effective date of the judgment.
Source: WeChat