The Court of Appeal in R v Lakeman has determined that virtual gold pieces in the online role-playing game Old School Runescape constitute "property" for the purposes of the Theft Act 1968. Whilst not required for the criminal offence of theft to apply, the Court also considered that the gold pieces satisfied the Ainsworth criteria and the requirement of rivalrousness, which suggests they may also be considered property under civil law. This is the first reported decision to consider the application of these principles to in-game assets since the enactment of the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 in December, which we discuss here.
The decision will be of significant interest to video game companies. This case only concerns the meaning of property for the criminal theft offence, and the Court did emphasise that treating something as property for the purposes of the Theft Act does not determine its treatment in other regulatory environments (such as FCA regulation). Nonetheless, the status of in-game assets and their value is a very important topic that has received particular attention recently in the consumer law context (see our earlier article on the CPC Principles here).
Background
The case concerned an ex-employee of the publisher. He allegedly accessed 68 player accounts without authorisation by hacking and/or misusing credentials, removed around 705 billion gold pieces from those accounts (estimated to be worth £543,123) and sold them off‑platform in return for fiat currency and Bitcoin. The ex-employee was charged with theft and associated computer misuse and money laundering offences. This was an appeal from a preliminary hearing in which the Crown Court had decided that the gold pieces were not property for the purposes of the Theft Act.
Players of Old School Runescape could build up in-game wealth (such as gold pieces) to improve their avatar abilities and access additional quests. Gold pieces could be accumulated through tasks such as woodcutting or mining, which the Court noted could be time consuming. Gold pieces could alternatively be transferred between players using two methods permitted by the game rules. It was also possible to buy a "bond" from the publisher which could then be either used to pay for 14 days of membership unlocking access to the full game, or could be exchanged for gold pieces within the game.
The publisher, like many in the industry, had sought tightly to regulate the use of this in-game gold piece currency through the EULA and user terms. For example, these terms stated that: virtual currency was not the player's own private property; that virtual currency could be capped, restricted, deleted or ended at any time; that the virtual currency had no monetary value and could not be sold or gifted in the real world; and that any attempt at real world trading was a serious breach of the player's agreement.
Were gold pieces "property"?
Despite the game developer's EULA and user-terms, the Court found that the gold pieces had a real world value because they were regularly bought and sold outside the game. Typically, the sale terms would be negotiated on a third party website or platform, before the gold pieces were transferred between the players using the in-game method. At the time of the alleged offences, 13 million gold pieces could be purchased offline for a real world value of around £2.70. Further, the Court noted that the pieces have a value within the game, as they represent the product of purchase of a "bond".
Section 4 of the Theft Act includes "other intangible property" within the scope of the offence. The Court found this apt to catch any thing which can in normal language be described as capable of being stolen, unless one of the established exceptions to the offence applied. None of those were relevant here, the gold pieces were properly described as something which can be stolen, and they had an ascertainable value. As such, the Court found it would be surprising and unsatisfactory if dishonest dealing in them did not amount to the offence of theft.
The fact the EULA prohibited the buying and selling of gold pieces did not affect this conclusion, as a contractual restriction on dealing in a thing did not prevent that thing from being stolen. The Court compared the situation by analogy to a person who resells a car they have rented. Such a person may be found guilty of theft irrespective of any contractual prohibition on sale in the rental agreement.
The Court was clear that the civil law definition of property was not determinative of how something would be treated under the Theft Act. Nonetheless, the decision contains detailed consideration of how those criteria may apply to virtual gold pieces. As discussed below, the key civil law considerations relevant to whether something constitutes property are the four criteria from the decision in Ainsworth and whether the thing is rivalrous.
The Court referred to the new Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, which has confirmed that digital assets which are neither tangible assets nor choses in action may still be recognised as property, and to the Law Commission reports which preceded it. The Court noted that the Act is not intended to confirm the status of any particular thing as giving rise to personal property rights, which is to be left to the courts to determine and develop as part of the common law. It also noted that the Law Commission in a Supplementary Report had indicated that in-game purchases are very unlikely to satisfy the existing requirements for proprietary legal treatment. However, this was not intended to be a substitute for the more nuanced treatment of assets as also described in the Law Commission's reports.
National Provincial Bank v Ainsworth [1965] AC 1175 establishes that property should be definable, identifiable by third parties, capable in its nature of assumption by third parties, and have some degree of permanence or stability. The gold pieces met each element of this test: they were clearly definable and identifiable; they were transferable in‑game and therefore capable of assumption; and they possessed sufficient permanence and stability notwithstanding the publisher's powers to cap, remove, or delete them, because only a modest degree of permanence is required in law.
The Court also considered the notion of rivalrousness, which had been previously discussed by the Court of Appeal in the cryptocurrency context in Tulip Trading Ltd v Bitcoin Association BSV & others [2023] EWCA Civ 83. In Tulip Trading, the Court had referred to the Law Commission's Digital Assets Consultation Paper, which had defined a thing as rivalrous "if the use or consumption of the thing by a person, or of a specific group of persons, necessarily prejudices the use or consumption of that thing by one or more other persons", and the Court had indicated that a digital asset which is rivalrous may be considered proprietary.
The Court in R v Lakeman found that the gold pieces satisfied this rivalrousness requirement. If the gold pieces were used and consumed in the game by player A, they ceased to exist and could not be used by anyone else. If they were transferred to player B, they were not available to anyone other than player B. The use of usernames and passwords was designed to ensure the exclusivity of this use and consumption.
The significance of R v Lakeman
This decision is notable because it suggests that in-game assets/currency may be likely to satisfy the requirements for proprietary protection where appropriate, and that this reasoning may apply equally to civil cases. It demonstrates how the well-established tests for determining what is property and how it is characterised may be applied to in-game assets in the nuanced way described by the Law Commission. It also appears that contractual controls on the use and disposal of such assets will not necessarily prevent users from seeking to assert property rights in them, or prevent a real world value from being attributed to those assets.
The full implications of this decision will become clear as future cases and regulators consider the relevant principles as they apply outside of the criminal context. In the meantime, we would suggest that games companies carefully review existing approaches to EULA terms, platform mechanics (including trading), technical controls on off-platform behaviour, dispute resolution and regulatory compliance, and particularly those which assume that in-game assets and currencies are not property.
