[DangitBobby]

It's a shame that things that seem so simple take so much effort to shake out in a legal setting.

Obviously if they were able to trade it for money the thing was valuable, and that trade deprived the original players of whatever value, despite that value being artificial (Jagex could just just flip bits to give players gold), meeting the definition of theft.

Also interesting that Jagex tried to have it ruled as their own property as well. They have deliberate rules in the terms to the effect that they will never compensate you for scammed gold. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too; we create arbitrary restrictions on whether we will make players whole based on our convenience demonstrating their desire to treat it as without value where their own culpability is concerned, but also want it legally to be treated as their own property as far as culpability is concerned. Something about that feels off.

[altairprime]

The legal setting is designed to take this much effort to shake things out. Jagex is a corporate person and thus has no inherent moral compulsion or necessity to avoid hypocrisy in their desires. I agree with your view that it’s sketchy in human morality, but they are inhuman, so our human moral judgement of them is inapplicable. Only their incorporating principles and the law bind their actions to be prosocial at all. Thankfully the law panned out to be prosocial here, and with such intense rigor that the judgement will likely be referred to in other countries as well going forward.