Let’s assume your son is a minor. We do allow a parent to purchase a game for a minor child. Once the account is purchased by a parent and turned over to the minor child, the child becomes the account owner. Basically, the account owner is the person who registers and then enables the account. The account owner normally is the buyer, but as you can see in this example, that is not not always the case.
It’s “one owner per account, forever.” No sales, trades, pass-alongs, give-aways, use as a prize, recycling… Once the original owner is done, the account will remain accessible to that person but cannot be supported for anyone else.
Sharing or passing-along game accounts is strictly forbidden by the User Agreement. The reasons are many, but it’s a solid business policy for a company that does not charge a monthly fee. Consider a admittedly-outlier situation: Someone buys an account, passes it to a friend, and then it is passed in turn to 48 others. We are supporting the use of that account for 50 people, and not the intended 1 person. Why does that matter? Because while some players play for years — and they are welcome to do so! — some will play for less time. That “average” is figured into our costs, into how we’re able to continue to support the game. If everyone passed along a used account, our costs would rise enormously, and that would have an extremely negative impact on our company and on our ability to continue to support a no-monthly-fee game.
