Are these people serious!?
- Thread starter TheRundownRabbit
- Start date
I just view the majority of these people to be just underage kids who are probably the same or similar kids whose badmouth on online games.
Interesting to note that there weren't salty people who were banned on Day Z for using that tracking software thing.
Interesting to note that there weren't salty people who were banned on Day Z for using that tracking software thing.
Whats worse than paying customers being banned for breaking rules is paying customers who DON'T get banned for breaking rules. At least the staff give enough of a shit about their game to do something. 99% of all other MMOs or online games I play just don't bother, letting botters, hackers, item cloners and gold sellers just run rampant, destroying the game and overall making their legit players hate them.
There's already a thread for this. We don't need another one.
When you license a piece of software (You're not buying. Here's why.) you just get a license to use the software in the form it's provided. When you buy a game, like, through Steam, you don't own that game. You merely have a license to that game to use. BUYING the game implies that, yes, you own it, but if you owned the game then you would have the rights and access to it's source code. That, would be a disaster for a game like Overwatch. Maybe, in MY version of the game Roadhog had 6000HP?
When you license a game, you also have an End User License Agreement. You, the End User, must agree to the License terms. You are permitted to use this software provided you abide by these rules. Two rules should be noted... One of them is that you're not to use 3rd party software to modify the accessibility of the game. (Triggerbot.) and the other is that the owner of the software has the right to revoke your access to the software at any time. This is a simplified version, as we're not talking about Battle.Net here. These. Are. Legally. Binding. Contracts.
How is this any different, if, I, say... Pay for 5 hours of Go-Karting, and then ram the Go-Kart into the wall? I paid for 5 hours, yet you're kicking me out after 15 minutes?! What is this?!
As for why these people are reacting in the way they are? I have plenty of theories. But none of them are nice. There are tonnes of people out there who insist that they can do no wrong. Even when they realize that they shouldn't have done something, in their mind, they still so very, very strongly believe, "Well, It's my right! I can do no wrong!" Sovereign Citizens are also of a very similar mindset. It's still something I'm trying to understand.
Someone probably already mentioned this, but... Welcome to the Digital Age.JUMBO PALACE said:
When you license a piece of software (You're not buying. Here's why.) you just get a license to use the software in the form it's provided. When you buy a game, like, through Steam, you don't own that game. You merely have a license to that game to use. BUYING the game implies that, yes, you own it, but if you owned the game then you would have the rights and access to it's source code. That, would be a disaster for a game like Overwatch. Maybe, in MY version of the game Roadhog had 6000HP?
When you license a game, you also have an End User License Agreement. You, the End User, must agree to the License terms. You are permitted to use this software provided you abide by these rules. Two rules should be noted... One of them is that you're not to use 3rd party software to modify the accessibility of the game. (Triggerbot.) and the other is that the owner of the software has the right to revoke your access to the software at any time. This is a simplified version, as we're not talking about Battle.Net here. These. Are. Legally. Binding. Contracts.
How is this any different, if, I, say... Pay for 5 hours of Go-Karting, and then ram the Go-Kart into the wall? I paid for 5 hours, yet you're kicking me out after 15 minutes?! What is this?!
As for why these people are reacting in the way they are? I have plenty of theories. But none of them are nice. There are tonnes of people out there who insist that they can do no wrong. Even when they realize that they shouldn't have done something, in their mind, they still so very, very strongly believe, "Well, It's my right! I can do no wrong!" Sovereign Citizens are also of a very similar mindset. It's still something I'm trying to understand.
No they're not. 1) No legally binding contract can be signed by a minor (and many minors do sign off on EULAs). 2) As was mentioned previously, legally binding contracts need to be signed, normally with multiple signatures, dates, and witness signatures to make them legally binding. One of the reasons that EULA's are not binding is because they can be "signed" by your cat walking across your keyboard, or you dropping your controller. 3) EULAs do not override actual laws. If an EULA runs contrary to an existing law, then said EULA is invalid regardless of whoever signed it. There have been actual legal cases about this, particularly in Europe.BeerTent said:
What surprised me about the latest ban wave is how many people seem to be long time members of the Blizzard forum. You would think that after six or seven years there they would have realised that cheating wasn't allowed.
That's not how contract law works.Austin Manning said:
Any consensual agreement between two parties that involves some kind of exchange of or for something of value - called consideration - is a legally binding contract. You don't need paper, signatures, or witnesses to have a contract. What all those things do is help prove that a contract exists, so that if someone denies agreeing to the contract at a later date, you can sue them for breach.
End user license agreements are valid contracts in that they govern the terms by which the software is licensed to you by the software owner. The age of majority shouldn't be an issue. There's a presumption that the person signing the contract has the capacity to honour the contract; a minor who signed an EULA can't get out of it by pleading their age. There are also various types of contracts, such as employment contracts and contracts for necessities, that are considered enforceable on or by a minor; this is to stop people cheating minors out of work or products and then claiming the contract is void due to their age.
So:
1) Minors can sign some legally binding contracts, and there is a presumption that the signer has capacity. Many modern contracts will include a disclaimer that states that by signing, one also attests to their capacity to sign.
2) Signatures, dates, witnesses, documentation etc. do not validate a contract; they merely help prove that a contract exists. Any oral agreement can be a contract; you don't need a piece of paper with "CONTRACT" written on the top in bold type.
3) This is the part you're correct on; an EULA cannot override national law, in the same way that no contract can override national law (you cannot enter into a contract to perform a crime, for example) but any competent legal team will draft an EULA that is compliant with the law of the territories in which it is distributed. Lazy legal teams will just copy-paste an EULA from their primary jurisdiction and call it a day.
End user license agreements are valid contracts in that they govern the terms by which the software is licensed to you by the software owner. The age of majority shouldn't be an issue. There's a presumption that the person signing the contract has the capacity to honour the contract; a minor who signed an EULA can't get out of it by pleading their age. There are also various types of contracts, such as employment contracts and contracts for necessities, that are considered enforceable on or by a minor; this is to stop people cheating minors out of work or products and then claiming the contract is void due to their age.
So:
1) Minors can sign some legally binding contracts, and there is a presumption that the signer has capacity. Many modern contracts will include a disclaimer that states that by signing, one also attests to their capacity to sign.
2) Signatures, dates, witnesses, documentation etc. do not validate a contract; they merely help prove that a contract exists. Any oral agreement can be a contract; you don't need a piece of paper with "CONTRACT" written on the top in bold type.
3) This is the part you're correct on; an EULA cannot override national law, in the same way that no contract can override national law (you cannot enter into a contract to perform a crime, for example) but any competent legal team will draft an EULA that is compliant with the law of the territories in which it is distributed. Lazy legal teams will just copy-paste an EULA from their primary jurisdiction and call it a day.
Now, I'm not familiar with EU contract law, and it is a civil law jurisdiction, so it's entirely possible that I'm mistaken and the EU does things differently. But if I am, that doesn't change the fact that most of the people here - being English speakers - likely bought Overwatch under a common law jurisdiction.
Licensing is an entirely separate issue, but one I also see misinterpreted here, so:
No-one who purchases Overwatch "owns" Overwatch, in the sense of having property rights over Overwatch.
(Bear in mind that property rights are legally defined as the right to control access to or use of the property in question. When you understand that, you understand why it's hard to say that a person playing Overwatch "owns" it in the same way they might own, for example, their house.)
This is because software is not a material product you can physically control; it's just a series of ones and zeroes arranged in a particular configuration. That configuration is the intellectual property of the developer (here, Blizzard) under copyright law, the same way a person owns the copyright to a novel, which is just a series of letters arranged in a particular configuration and contained within a book.
However, unlike a novel - where there's a difference between the physical document and the information contained within - there is no difference between the software and the subject of the copyright. There's no "book"; the closest analogue is the computer that runs the software (which you obviously own.) That creates the problem that in order to "sell" the software, Blizzard has to literally sell the intellectual property of the program they created - that is, hand it over to someone else, who can then decide who gets to use it or not.
In order to sell software as a business model - you can thank Microsoft for this, they basically invented this process - companies like Blizzard sell licenses to use the software. These licenses are basically agreements to the effect of "Give us sixty dollars and we'll let you play Overwatch, which is our program that we own." It's kind of like charging a person money to borrow your car; you don't stop owning the car.
Now, those license agreements also stipulate terms by which you can use the software you've licensed. This is usually basic stuff, like not copying it, not taking it apart and reverse-engineering it, and not trying to re-sell it to someone else. But for video games like Overwatch, they throw in a term there saying that you can't cheat. If you do cheat, however they define it, you've breached the terms of the license agreement, and you lose access to the game.
There is no relevant distinction between online/offline components of software. There's just a practical obstacle, in that offline software is much harder for them to deny you access to (short of physically coming to your house and uninstalling it from your machine.) No software you have ever purchased in your entire life, online or otherwise, ever actually belonged to you.
(Bear in mind that property rights are legally defined as the right to control access to or use of the property in question. When you understand that, you understand why it's hard to say that a person playing Overwatch "owns" it in the same way they might own, for example, their house.)
This is because software is not a material product you can physically control; it's just a series of ones and zeroes arranged in a particular configuration. That configuration is the intellectual property of the developer (here, Blizzard) under copyright law, the same way a person owns the copyright to a novel, which is just a series of letters arranged in a particular configuration and contained within a book.
However, unlike a novel - where there's a difference between the physical document and the information contained within - there is no difference between the software and the subject of the copyright. There's no "book"; the closest analogue is the computer that runs the software (which you obviously own.) That creates the problem that in order to "sell" the software, Blizzard has to literally sell the intellectual property of the program they created - that is, hand it over to someone else, who can then decide who gets to use it or not.
In order to sell software as a business model - you can thank Microsoft for this, they basically invented this process - companies like Blizzard sell licenses to use the software. These licenses are basically agreements to the effect of "Give us sixty dollars and we'll let you play Overwatch, which is our program that we own." It's kind of like charging a person money to borrow your car; you don't stop owning the car.
Now, those license agreements also stipulate terms by which you can use the software you've licensed. This is usually basic stuff, like not copying it, not taking it apart and reverse-engineering it, and not trying to re-sell it to someone else. But for video games like Overwatch, they throw in a term there saying that you can't cheat. If you do cheat, however they define it, you've breached the terms of the license agreement, and you lose access to the game.
There is no relevant distinction between online/offline components of software. There's just a practical obstacle, in that offline software is much harder for them to deny you access to (short of physically coming to your house and uninstalling it from your machine.) No software you have ever purchased in your entire life, online or otherwise, ever actually belonged to you.
With software in particular, it's more like paying for five hours of go-karting, crashing it into a wall, and then claiming that you own the go-kart and trying to take it home with you.BeerTent said:
Would these contracts have been taken to court if they have no legal recourse? It sounds like an awfully large waste of time of the European court system.Austin Manning said:
1. Every single EULA says, if you're below X age, or the legal age of consent in your country, then a parent or guardian needs to accept it. If you're 15 and you agree, that's actually a reason the licensee can revoke your access. Bringing this one up would be a legal shitstorm, but it would be interesting to see one day.
2. Clicking accept is as powerful as a signature. The date the EULA is accepted is kept by certain software. (Steam, Bnet, they log when your account has accepted the EULA.) Now, in the US specifically, you are right, as some states are retarded, and they instantly think as soon as you have a program on your computer, you're A-okay to decompile and fuck around with it willy-nilly. No shit that's a security risk.
3. No, they don't and they shouldn't. Contracts themselves shouldn't override laws. Most contracts I've signed have amounted to "You need to follow these laws in the tenancy act. We are going with So-and-so." Now, if a contract states that "You can never return this product once bought." and there's a problem with that in your country, you can very much take this to court, and challenge that. That's one of the reasons courts exist. Should this contract, be a thing? Yes? No? Should Valve be exempt from providing refunds for products offered through their services? The answer was no, which is why we got an updated EULA to agree to, and Steam got significantly more functionality. (Though, it IS buried.)
Contracts aren't this thing, where, you're A-okay to break the law if I agree to it. If we sign a contract, saying we have to plough each-other every day for a year, it's still extremely possible for one of us to commit sexual assault. Oh, well, the contract says we have to have sweaty man-sex! No, doesn't work that way. Contracts aren't. "We can ignore this law, and you're okay with that." That's a badly written one, and may fail to hold up in a court.
Most EULA's are well written though. Don't decompile, don't use this software for malicious purposes, These are the terms of your license. Oh, and we have plenty reason to revoke your access if we want.
bastardofmelbourne said:
You are correct, even for the law in the EU. Iirc here a contract is formed as soon as a valid proposal is accepted and thus both sides have stated their intend. Exchange of value is not needed, neither is a signature on paper. But enforcing oral contracts is a mess, so usually signatures are used
I don't think that is true in Europe. There are age barriers for certain forms of contracts and it is up to the merchant to enforce that their customers are allowed to buy. If they don't do, the contract is invalid and the merchant usually sits on any resulting losses. OTOH with at least 7 years you count as old enough for some contracts and with 14 for most. So it is rarely a big deal. But if some 11 year old starts a couple of online abbonements, it might be invalid and the only way for the merchant to get some of the money is claiming damages for lack of parental oversight or something.
correct. But the EU has a lot of pretty strict consumer protection laws and a lot of the standard EULA-clauses are invalid here. Sometimes it gets to court. Pretty often actually.
English is the new lingua franca. I don't think even half of the forum members are native speakers.
Theoretically true. But that is also something that is regularly challanged in European courts. While things like limiting the use for certain actions only and especcially forbidding decompiling and stuff is pretty much accepted, making the software unusable later (when it was not clearly time limited in the beginning) or forbidding reselling is quite often not tolerated. But that is a case by case stuff, really complicated.
If the contract was invalid, he would have the right to get his money back here. But yes, there are so many reasons why no one brings that up.BeerTent said:
That is a very bad example. Not only are laws around sexual stuff very different around the world (contraxt law has to work for international contracts, but this stuff is more local in scope and thus far more varied), it also touches all the strange laws that allow legal prostitution where it exists (and makes contracts with sexual stuff possible) and still maintain the crimes of sexual assault or rape.