Sylveria said:
Therumancer said:
I go further on the latter point in saying that anyone who sells digital property should be in a similar situation (STEAM, GoG, etc...) not to mention MMOs. I was there when they took down the "Star Wars Galaxies" servers and there was really no excuse for that other than pure greed. Had they been required to back the game with a trust that would have been a non-issue.
To play devil's advocate a bit, when you get basically any online service, you have to agree to this big wall of text. Part of that wall of text says, in short, "we can turn this off whenever we want for whatever reason we come up with."
I certainly understand the anguish of SWG players. Those people were dedicated to that game for years and had large social circles based around it and now it's gone. But, I think we all have to realize that some day all that stuff we have online is gonna be gone. Sooner or later, they will stop supporting it. It's an inevitability. No company is going to write up a EULA that says they'll support the functionality of a game for all eternity.
If you oppose the prospect that the game/whatever will be shut off some day, perhaps it is not something you should get involved in. I didn't get Castlevania HD for the exact reason listed in this article.. I didn't know anyone who played it and I didn't think the player base would last. But, lord knows I've bought plenty of MMOs that are now ghost towns or gone. It's just the way things go. My TV can't display my SNES without me getting some elaborate switcher system to upscale it.... time and technology march forward.
Yes but as digital technology and virtual property become a bigger and bigger deal things need to change to ensure the continued value of those products, hence the comments about a trust system.
As far as EULAs go, they only stand because nobody has challenged them properly. Most attempts to do so have more or less been directed by idiots. Of course part of the problem is that most lawyers who specialize in such things probably work for game companies or have received enough money to be unable to take cases due to a "conflict of interests", a lot of bis businesses seed lawyers just for that reason.
Strictly speaking the EULA didn't appear until AFTER you paid money for a product and were unable to return the product. As such it was not a binding agreement made as part of the purchusing process, effectively just being text and a button with no meaning. While challenged nobody has yet attacked EULAs on these grounds and if someone did, they would probably win.
This is to say nothing of the language of the EULAs themselves being challenged. Drama aside there are actually laws in force to protect people from predatory contracts. Basically contracts need to be presented in very basic, consise, terms and in many places there are even laws about length, and requiring all relevent documentation to be present and attached to the contract rather than simply mentioned. In cases where a contract by it's very nature is going to be too complicated to fly, notaries are usually brought in to act as witnesses to the signing and the spirit of the contract. While this can be abused (with say people acting as their own notary) the basic idea being that in the case of a dispute the witnesses are brought in to explain their understanding of the agreement. This can limit loopholes and "fine print". No matter what a contract actually says if you can say get 3 out of 4 notaries on a big contract to say they agree with you, there is a good chance your going to win a dispute.
It's not my area of legal expertise but I know a little bit about it. Basically for a video game EULA to be binding you'd need to have someone at say Gamestop hand you a contract as part of the check out process, and you'd probably also need to have a notary or two on staff due to length and complexity.
Now, when it comes to digital purchuses where you sign off on the agreement as you pay that's a little differant, and would be harder to dispute.
At any rate, this is why I'm sort of cheering for the SWG suit it if goes through, the biggest issue there is the money to fight Sony and if they can find a lawyer who picks the right avenue of attack.
I'll also say that I think the whole situation is stupid, which is why I think games of this sort need to be backed by a trust to operate perpetually, and why any kind of digital business or service should be required by law to have such a guarantee behind it. Then it's a non-factor, even if the company decides it's not worth running anymore, the trust keeps it running in case someone decides to break out older hardware and enjoy something they paid for and should be entitled to.
