R v Lakeman 2025
L was an employee of Jagex Ltd who worked as a content developer for the online video game Old School Runescape. L was not authorised to access players' accounts, as this function was limited to Jagex's account recovery team. The prosecution alleged that between 17 March and 29 July 2018, L hacked into or used credentials of members of the account recovery team to access 68 player accounts. L allegedly stripped these accounts of approximately 705 billion gold pieces with a real world trading value of £543,123. L allegedly transferred these gold pieces to purchasers, to whom he sold them off-line, receiving Bitcoin and fiat currency in return.
Old School Runescape is an online role-playing game where players accumulate in-game wealth in the form of "gold pieces" by performing tasks or trading with other players. Gold pieces have value within the game, allowing players to improve their avatar's capabilities and access additional levels. Players can obtain gold pieces by various means: performing in-game tasks, trading with other players through the "grand exchange" or direct transfers, or by purchasing "bonds" from Jagex (costing about £6 each, worth approximately 13 million gold pieces). While the game's rules expressly forbid selling gold pieces outside the game, such sales regularly occur through third-party websites or platforms like Discord. At the time of the alleged offence, gold pieces could be purchased off-line for approximately £2.70 for the same amount that would cost £6 if obtained through a bond purchased from Jagex.
L was charged with five counts: theft, securing unauthorised access to computer material with intent to commit an offence, and three money laundering offences. The defence made an application to dismiss the charges on the grounds that gold pieces were not property within the meaning of section 4 of the Theft Act. The trial judge ruled in favour of the defence, holding that gold pieces were not sufficiently rivalrous to be classified as intangible property.
The case came to the Court of Appeal following the prosecution's appeal against the judge's ruling, which had been made in a preparatory hearing under section 29(1) of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.
Held
Appeal allowed.
The Court of Appeal allowed the prosecution's appeal, holding that gold pieces within the Old School Runescape game are property which can be the subject of the offence of theft within the meaning of section 4 of the Theft Act 1968. The Court granted leave to appeal to the extent that the reasons went beyond the grounds for which the Judge gave leave. The preliminary issue of law was answered in favour of the prosecution, enabling the charges against L to proceed to trial. The Court clarified that this decision applied specifically to the gold pieces in the Runescape game and that other in-game assets might need to be examined on a case by case basis according to their idiosyncratic features.
The Court held that the definition of "property" in section 4 of the Theft Act is not exclusively governed by civil law concepts and should be interpreted with the widest ambit in the criminal context. They found it appropriate to consider whether gold pieces are property by reference to their nature as visual and functional things in the virtual world, rather than the coded data which creates them. The Court rejected the trial judge's conclusion that gold pieces were not sufficiently rivalrous, noting that the use and consumption of gold pieces by one player necessarily prejudices their use by others. They dismissed the argument that gold pieces needed to have a quality of "uniqueness" to qualify as property, noting that many forms of property (like paper clips) are identical yet still constitute property.
The Court found that the contractual prohibition on trading gold pieces outside the game did not prevent them being "freely" bought and sold in practice, drawing an analogy to illegally held drugs which are still property despite legal prohibitions on transfer. They held that Jagex's ability to withdraw or delete gold pieces did not preclude them having the necessary degree of permanence and stability to qualify as property.
The Court concluded that gold pieces are properly described as something which can be stolen as a matter of normal language usage, do not fall within established exceptions to property, and are not "pure knowledge" as they exist functionally as identifiable assets distinct from the code which gives rise to them. They observed that gold pieces have an ascertainable monetary value and are regularly traded for that value both within and outside the game. They also noted that there would be a surprising and unsatisfactory lacuna in the law if digital items of commercial value could not be the subject of theft or robbery charges.
The Court rejected arguments about regulatory implications, holding that whether something is property for the purposes of the Theft Act does not determine its treatment in different regulatory environments.
Reproduced with permission of Reed Elsevier (UK) Limited, trading as LexisNexis.
