EA Brings Back its Harsh Beta EULA

[Paularius]

EA Beta tests their games before launch?!
Half of them are buggy messes with patches not actually fixing anything you'd assume that the launch was the beta.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I'd like to think EA is above not banning people for failing to report known bugs, but this is the same company who banned someone from Origin (and their games) because someone else cussed at him.

That is a sure "don't have any contact with EA" sign. Just too bad that fanboys are blind.

Let them be blind. It'll sort itself out.

Its just Sim City, who cares if you cheat. It probably has built in cheat codes too.

EA in its infinite wisdom decided to go the route of extensive multiplayer intergration with it hence why they are probably going nuts with the EULA

I'd wager anything that's what they're aiming for.
Due to legal precedence mostly established by Blizzard (and a bit from Autodesk) in several legal battles, if you put the entire game on a mandatory server, you've legally secured your game against everything.

No Contracts of Adhesion. No 1st Sale Doctrine or Used Game market.

It allows for robust measures to discourage returns (by threatening your OTHER purchases with them, natch) without actually breaking any return/refund laws. Loopholes that can slip around some consumer-protection laws (though I do believe several countries outside of the US are cracking down on this).
It even enables planned obsolescence since if the game goes down, oh wells, guess the fans will have to buy the new one at full price again.

That would require Bathesda to bug test their games first ... badum tish (I love their games but by christ do they have some bugs in them).

On Topic....

Bugémon ... gotta catch em all.

That's OK, because Bethesda has been perfectly happy to just let their fanbase bug-test AND fix it for them.

 

[Erttheking]

And people wonder why I refuse to buy EA games

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

So EA not only wants to promote SimCity through the beta, but also get the game bug tested without paying anyone and then ban anyone they consider aren't doing a good enough job? I can't even get angry at EA any more, I just shake my head and tut disapprovingly.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

Is is even legal to ban you from all your PAID games for that??? If I were testing SimCity (for free, remember), I'd just disinstall and find something better to do with my time. In fact every one of them should quit until the EULA is modified.....now try to beta test your product on your own, idiots.

Yup, because the EULA states that they're licensing the game to you, not selling it. Clever, no?

& people will continue to buy there games until EA makes them literally unplayable. Not me though; Officially DONE with EA

 

[Twilight_guy]

EA mis-words something. Entire forum must comment with similar replies about how evil/stupid.corrupt/etc EA is. I would set my clock by it, but with how antsy the forum is to bash EA my clock would run faster each day.

EA wants to ensure its Beta tester actually report all bugs and not report some bugs but leave some unreported because the tester thinks its cool/funny/going to screw EA. As such they insert a clause that they will retaliate if you intentional don't report bugs. I imagine its mostly so they can get you if you do actually screw something up, much like a law against loitering that rarely get enforced but is useful if someone becomes a problem. The retaliation is a bit much, why not just ban them from the beta and then flag there account for extra monitoring on other games? That was EA's misstep. Though honestly they probably don't want some dick who's trying to screw their beta over playing their games anyways and maybe that was who the clause was meant for.

Honestly with how many people hate EA and are trying to screw them over I'm surprised they aren't more hostile. I can easily see some of my fellow gamers joining the beta just to try and make a mess and stick it to EA for... I dunno insert any recent news story about them.

 

[Zipa]

I want to know how they actually plan to prove someone encountered a particular bug (especially with things like the thousands of hardware configurations that exist in the PC world) and failed to report it on purpose.

Good luck EA, you will need it.

 

[Durgiun]

As if this will stop people from buying EA's games.

 

[Staskala]

Is is even legal to ban you from all your PAID games for that??? If I were testing SimCity (for free, remember), I'd just disinstall and find something better to do with my time. In fact every one of them should quit until the EULA is modified.....now try to beta test your product on your own, idiots.

Not really, ToS and EULAs don't override existing law and you can't just write whatever you want in them and somehow make them legally binding. The thing is though, who would actually battle EA's (or Valve's, for that matter) army of lawyers over maybe 300 bucks worth of video games? To my knowledge there's no precedent, no one ever sued over matters such as these, it just isn't worth the money and time. So they just get away with it.