An old and (apparently) trustworthy player told me recently this:
To make a management avatar, you just need to send a support case to Mindark explaining the reason for it and have it approved so that if reported as an alt you have a record of it. Shop owners and Ship owners (where the shop is owned by multiple people) were the biggest reason for it since Mindark can't come up with a way to "Share" ownership of anything in this game.
Now thing is that I was not able to find any such mention in EULA or otherwise and from what I previously understood:
- having more than one avatar is not allowed; the only legal way to have a second avatar is to ask for termination of the previous one
- there is no such thing as supported "sharing ownership"; each avatar has a single legal owner (making the relation between avatar and people one-to-one: a single avatar per person, a single person behind any avatar), and while sharing the avatar is not really disallowed, it is done at own risk and as far as MA is concerned they will consider that it was the legal owner behind it at all times.
So... what's the truth?
1) Can alts be legally allowed (if requested, for legit reasons, like managing shops on different planets)?
2) Is it allowed to share your avatar (taking the risk that if the other person does something bad you are responsible)?
3) Is there any legal "shared" form of ownership (either over avatars, deeds or items)?
Please note that all questions are from a legal / rules POV, not something like "people do it for ages" or "just make a second account for your siblings, parents, kids, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, dogs, cats and so on".
Also please note that I don't have any stance on this; is simply a curiosity question and I think it would be best for everyone to have some clear answers that send the things back in the white/black areas, instead of leaving them in the gray one.
To make a management avatar, you just need to send a support case to Mindark explaining the reason for it and have it approved so that if reported as an alt you have a record of it. Shop owners and Ship owners (where the shop is owned by multiple people) were the biggest reason for it since Mindark can't come up with a way to "Share" ownership of anything in this game.
Now thing is that I was not able to find any such mention in EULA or otherwise and from what I previously understood:
- having more than one avatar is not allowed; the only legal way to have a second avatar is to ask for termination of the previous one
- there is no such thing as supported "sharing ownership"; each avatar has a single legal owner (making the relation between avatar and people one-to-one: a single avatar per person, a single person behind any avatar), and while sharing the avatar is not really disallowed, it is done at own risk and as far as MA is concerned they will consider that it was the legal owner behind it at all times.
So... what's the truth?
1) Can alts be legally allowed (if requested, for legit reasons, like managing shops on different planets)?
2) Is it allowed to share your avatar (taking the risk that if the other person does something bad you are responsible)?
3) Is there any legal "shared" form of ownership (either over avatars, deeds or items)?
Please note that all questions are from a legal / rules POV, not something like "people do it for ages" or "just make a second account for your siblings, parents, kids, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, dogs, cats and so on".
Also please note that I don't have any stance on this; is simply a curiosity question and I think it would be best for everyone to have some clear answers that send the things back in the white/black areas, instead of leaving them in the gray one.