Player Casinos - Legal or not?

Hello fellow players!

The reason to this thread is to further complete statements made by GM's prior to this message.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2713021

Even with the statements in above link, I stumbled upon the Terms of Service by recommendation of my Free Company leader.

http://support.na.square-enix.com/ru...2&tag=users_en

I quote:
"3.6 Any Illegal Activities. You may not conduct any illegal activities whatsoever in connection with the Game. This includes every illegal activity not specifically highlighted above, including without limitation gambling, defamation, harassment, and fraud."

I'd really love a GM's comment on this; whether or not these Terms of Service applies to gambling with other currencies or items not included in the game.

Please enlighten us!
Yours truly,
Abel

There has been a post about it. As long as the terms are laid out in game chat and followed through, then they're legal.

When it comes to ToS, the general rule of thumb in regards to illegal activity is that they're referring to IRL related concerns, particularly if there are vague definitions on one end that conflict with more elaborate ones elsewhere. The use of "gambling" is, from what I get from the context, involving real world money. You may not utilize the game as a means to formulate some sort of real world event as a means to allow people to gamble. You may not hold events that people bet RL money on whether or not a specific item drops, who can get the most amount of people to hate you for being a d-bag, etc. SE does not want to be held as a source party for potential legal claims between players. Stupid and farfetched, most definitely, but there are MANY stupid and farfetched things that happen on the daily.

Now when it comes to something like player-run casinos, it's a grey area. Can you do it? Certainly. Both the host and participant are bound to their "contract" that is established for in-game trade/currency. Can you host some sort of casino that involves people spamming the /random function hundreds of times in quick succession? Nope. The host and the participant would have a run-in with a GM for it. Basically, you can do it, but don't be stupid about it to the extent that it causes a violation of something else.

I really hope these don't become a thing again... ; ;

They were so bad in FFXI! D:

/random casinos are something of a grey area. On the one side, so long as ground rules are set and there IS a chance to win, they are tolerated. On the other hand, the potential of being scammed is exponentially greater than if you buy gil from RMT. As such, it's better to treat them like reverse RMT and go on about your day.

While they are frowned upon by the community, casinos for in-game assets (gil, items, etc) aren't against the rules. Cheating someone is, but that's technically a separate issue, since you can cheat people in a lot of different actions.