Recently, China’s inquiry website for judicial documents released a civil verdict of the dispute between Tencent and the account rental platform “8868”. Tencent received compensation of 300,000 RMB (46,878 USD) from the rental platform.
Tencent, as the plaintiff, argued that 8868 should stop renting out accounts of games developed and published by Tencent, and pay a compensation of 3 million RMB (~470,000 USD). Tencent further requested the platform stop a variety of copyright infringements including using Tencent’s copyrighted art and design materials to promote their services.
According to the court ruling, the services of platform “8868” encouraged users to breach their user agreements with Tencent and directly caused Tencent games to lose registered users. The operators behind the platform, Juhaowan and Shuizhu, created unfair competitive practices.
Account rental is a common practice in China’s gaming community. Many users rent game accounts for various reasons, ranging from trying out premium in-game items to bypassing ID authentication systems. These rental services normally charge an hourly rate and are not very expensive in general, but since the market demand is so massive, they still have a lucrative profit margin.
Since China has implemented a very severe video game age restriction, it’s not difficult to understand why video game companies and government regulators are paying more attention to these types of grey market operations that can help players bypass ID and age verification systems. This case is very likely to be an early warning of what’s to come.