Destructive authority over online-game assets: Conditional access and platform-mediated harm

Abstract

Online-game losses span contract, tort, consumer-law and computer-access doctrines across distinct legal relationships. This article asks how law should characterise and remedy destructive interference with virtual assets when technical access, contractual control or system-enabled capacity exists but authority to delete, consume, liquidate or irreversibly disable them is contested. The Qingyu Tpor incident supplies an inter-user illustration; J.A. v. 2K Games a publisher-side boundary test. A maximum-variation, multilevel comparison of China, selected United States pathways and European Union law supplemented by German law reveals a cross-doctrinal specification problem: existing routes protect distinct interests and treat consent, platform terms and technical capacity differently. The article develops a destructive-authority protocol for pleading and adjudication that identifies the relationship, route, route-specific interest or entitlement, sources of permission, and interference mechanics and consequences before applying each doctrine’s elements, burdens, defences and remedies. It prevents a conclusion under one relationship or route from deciding a legally distinct claim without that claim’s elements being tested. Deletion, consumption and forced in-system exchange form the core; appropriation and publisher discontinuation are adjacent boundary cases. Property torts depend on local recognition, while contract, consumer law, general tort or data-interference rules may apply elsewhere. Restoration and compensation require an established obligation and proven net loss.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Computer law & security review, 2026 · DOI ↗