Ask HN: An idea to build a marketplace for game accounts, is it legal?

1 points by folkster 14 years ago | 4 comments

I just came up with an idea of game account marketplace website(e.g. WOW accounts) to build in my spare time.

Idea: The sellers submit userid and password, plus a description/screenshot of the account(e.g. level,items in the account ) to the website and price it(e.g. $10). The buyers can browse through the site filtered by the descriptions (e.g. level >20) and buy it, then the userid and password is sent to the buyer.

However, I am not sure if it is legal to do it or not.(assume all sellers are legitimate/not scam)

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

saulkw 14 years ago |

How would you weed out the scammers? Would be fairly easy to doctor a screenshot to have more items/levels etc.

folkster 14 years ago | |

That's a good question and my current solution is to refund the buyer once he found that the sale was a scam. It's not a perfect solution but I can't think of better ones at the moment.

Steqheu 14 years ago |

Can you elaborate a little more on your idea?

folkster 14 years ago | |

I just did. Thanks for your response.