Player spent $1.4 million on Justice online character; friend sells it for $552

We all have that one friend; The friend who has just one job and can’t do it right. A man in China found this out the hard way. According to Weixin, a man from Sichuan named Lu Mou spent nearly 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) on his character in MMORPG Justice Online, which was sold by his friend for $553. 

Mou had loaned the character to his friend. They both met online, and then later became friends in real life. Since Mou had stopped playing Justice Online frequently, he loaned his character to his friend, Li, Mousheng.  The characters in the game are connected to mobile numbers, so Mou gave him the mobile number as well. Later on, Mousheng tried to transfer ownership of the character back to Mou through sale and trade on NetEase’s online market. That is where things went wrong. 

According to Mousheng’s statement which he gave to the Judge through online mediation, he was supposed to put it on the market for 388,000 yuan ($55,141), so that no other player would buy it. But instead, he says, due to a marathon gaming session before, he got exhausted and put it up for 3,888 yuan ($552). Seeing such a pricey character at a GREAT bargain, it got scooped up immediately. Mou believes that he did it intentionally. 

After the incident was heard by the court, it ordered NetEase to give the character back to Mousheng and refund the 3,888 yuan to the buyer. But Mousheng also had to pay 90,000 yuan (about $12,000) in damages to the buyer, since he had obtained the Justice Online character legally. This case is also significant since this was the first online mediation held in the province of Sichuan. The Judge also later released the statement, iterating the importance of education regarding Digital Properties so that players do not incur too many losses.