You earn a license sure but you also pay for it, it's the same with any license that you pick up. You as a holder of that license have an obligation to uphold to your side by using it responsibly and not endangering anyone else with your license.
If I played Diablo 3 hacked and duped items from your account without your knowledge do you want me to keep playing or am I free to use third party programmes to lessen your experience of a game?
The licenses are there to protect the other consumers from people misusing their products and causing problems, so yes those people who hacked, cheated and duped could have their access revoked as per agreed upon sign up.
I know it's a standard practice, I'm just saying it shouldn't be. The problem is that you can lose your license that you paid at any time for no reason. You don't have to be using third party programs to reduce someone's enjoyment of the game, you can be banned anyway and have no legal right to complain. These companies can do whatever the hell they like and you just have to deal with it, and that is messed up. We have laws against it in fact, but they all just stop applying when it comes to software. When we protect ourselves against these very practices everywhere else then why not with software? We clearly realise it's wrong.
The licenses are there to allow companies to do whatever the hell they like to us and remove our rights as consumers. They literally allow software companies to take the item you have paid for at any time for any reason, and they also allow them to change this license without even notifying us and count it as though we'd agreed to it.
The driving license comparison doesn't work at all in my opinion. It's a very special case, and I've explained why it's different. I can't really argue against it, but I don't think it's relevant.
May as well use my accidental double post to post a further point.
Lunncal said:
Licenses still have to obey the law. Once they've accepted my money for a license (i.e. once I've bought the game), they must provide what was agreed upon or give me my money back. It's just like with other services, if I pay a builder to build me a wall and he doesn't do it then he's legally required to give me my money back. The whole license thing must be part of how they get away with it though, which is ridiculous. We made consumer rights laws in the first place to protect ourselves from these kinds of practices, why then do we not have similar laws for software licenses, or why do they mysteriously not apply?
Licenses can be revoked, driving licenses get revoked all the time because of misdemeanours and you're not going to receive payment for the lessons you took, the car you bought or the filing of the license.
So no, we're not entitled to our money back if we don't adhere to the agreements upon which we signed.
Oh, sorry, didn't realise you'd edited your second post.
I don't think this argument makes any sense at all. "License" in the sense of a driving license is legally (and just in general) a very different thing from software licenses or any other kind of commercial license, because it's to do with safety and it's controlled by the government. Consumer rights laws don't apply to driving licenses because we don't buy them, we earn them in order for the government to grant us the legal right to drive. Admittedly you end up paying lots of money for this, but it's not the same thing.
If you pay a corporation for a license to use their product, whether that's software or anything else, then you have lots of legal rights as a consumer meant to protect you from unfair practices. Rights that for no clear reason, you just don't get when buying software licenses. They have been loopholed out of existence somehow, and allow software companies to seemingly get away with whatever the hell they like. I don't know why that is, but it pisses me off, and I think it's incredibly unethical. We have those rights for a reason, but software gets a free pass to screw us over in ways that are illegal for every other industry, and I don't even know what it is that apparently grants them this special protection.
In actuality you are not considering the whole picture.
1. EULAs are well written and have very few consumer abusing stuff. BY THE WAY, EULAs fall under contracts in the eyes of the law, and contracts are not above the copyright law. If a contract breaks one of your rights as consumer, your right as consumer is upheld over the contract. THING IS BUDDY, EULAs almost never do this, but you perceive it as such because it slightly hassles you, but it never actually breaks your rights. They are really careful abotu that shit.
2.Think about this for a second. In this contract you sign with these games, who comes worse if the contract is not upheld or is abused by omeone? There are simply certain points in a contract where you cant please both sides of the deal, so it falls that one side must be beneficiated over the other. For example, say Blizzard wrote in their EULA they can change the EULA any time they want(BUT AS PER LAW, THEY WILL GIVE YOU A WARNING PRIOR TO CHANGING AND YOU HAVE THE CHOICE TO END THE CONTRACT, NO REFUND OF COURSE OTHERWISE PEOPLE WHO PLAY THE GAME, FINISH IT, SUDDENLY SEE A EULA CHANGE AND ASK THEIR MONEY BACK). In this case, if Blizzard gave customers the proof of faith, that is, if we change hte EULA you automatically can ask for a refund if you dont like it. Blizzard can stand to lose hundreds of thousands of moneyz from people who abuse this practice, not to mention the legal hassle it will get into with retailers who suddenly have to refund customers because of sth they had nth to do with. But lets see the alternative, wich is what they have in place. Blizzard holds the right to change it, you can stop accepting, by which you nullify contract and lose the game. How much do you stand to lose? 60 bucks? And you may be thinking oh but blizzard is rich n haz lots of moneyz, well blizzard is the exception, not the rule. they have leeway, most game companies dont. If they stood to lose hundreds of thousands, people get fired. Thats JOBS that get out of the window.
So you see, EULAs arent perfect, but they dont break upon your right as a consumer, and its best things be like this than the alternative, wich puts companies in an even more dangerous risk(and by that jobs and lives depending on those companies). Remember, they wanna keep consumers happy. And honestly, its not a problem to them to uphold the rights of the consumer. Sometimes they have to do bad things for consumers, but thats because its the best alternative.(NOT DEFENDING BAD BUSINESS PRACTICES, JUST SAYING THEY AINT ILLEGAL, JUST STUPID PRACTICES. ME HATES DIABLO BEING ALWAYS ONLINE)
The difference is that software companies reserve the right to stop you from using their product, for literally any reason they want, even if you don't break their terms.
This is getting into the paranoid. If a company started banning accounts just for shits and giggles, word would spread like wildfire. EA came under enough fire when they would ban you in-game for breaking the rules on the forums, and quickly revoked that policy. Regardless of whether they can ban you "just because", game companies take bans VERY seriously, because if word gets out that they're locking accounts without good reason, they're done.
If word spread like it did when EA at least had an (albeit, shitty) excuse to ban people's game accounts, you better believe it'll spread even harder when it happens for literally no reason; and that will be the end of that company's reputation if they don't act fast with compensation.
It'd be understandable if they were banned from the multiplayer portion of the game, but if they can't log in to their Battle.net account they wouldn't be able to play the game at all, unless I've heard wrong. I think it's ridiculous that Blizzard can get away with something like this, but not surprising. Consumer rights don't seem to exist when it comes to video games, they were probably legislated out of existence by the mandatory post-purchase EULAs.
Blizzard has been very upfront for years now that Diablo is not a single player game any longer. It is an online game. It's not loke the EA fiasco's where they blocked play to what were very clearly single player games. Blizz did the due diligence ahead of time on this one, so yeah they can ban you from Battle.net.
While I loathe the always on internet requirements and DRM bullcrap, I fear that this actually comunicates exactly the opposite message from what some are assuming. The internet requirement does not prevent cheaters and botters and hackers from doing their thing. It lets the game runners detect and shut them down hard so they don't influence the economy or impact others game play like they could in previous games.
If someone pays for a product, and doesn't receive that product, they should be refunded. If it was a pure multiplayer game, and there was no option whatsoever for a singleplayer experience (as there actually is in this case) then obviously they can't just block you from the multiplayer and still let you keep the game, but then it is their duty to refund you the price. Like I was saying, it's basic consumer rights, only no-one seems to give a damn about them any more.
Most people do not take video-games as a hobby as far as people like me and you do, and they won't frequent The Escapist or whatever other sites and know this information in advance. They will buy the game, and then they will suddenly be presented with an EULA that says Blizzard can stop them playing this game (that they have already paid for) whenever they want. What if they don't agree with this? It's too bad, no game and no refund.
I'm certain this is illegal when it comes to most other products, and I don't know (or really care) what loophole software companies use to get away with this, but it's bullshit.
Not at all. You are failing to differentiate to separate components in this equation. There is the game Diablo III, and there is the service Battle.net. They make it clear that Diablo III is no longer a truly stand alone game, and that it requires a valid Battle.net account. The Battle.net has no service fee, but it does have very clear rules, and users may be shut down for clearly violating them.
A better analogy would be a theme park such as Disney World, or even a movie theater. They can toss you for misbehaving in violation of the services rules, and no they have no obligation to give you a refund for doing so. Paying your price of admission does not allow you to behave as you wish. And they have no obligation to then arrange things so you can watch the movie or ride the roller coaster in private. This is one of those little rules of reasonable social behavior that seems to have gotten completely lost on the modern "I have a right to do whatever I want" generation.
Once again it is perfectly legal for Blizzard to do this. It would be similarly legal for Steam to do it, SOE to do it, XBox Live to do it and EA Origin to do it.
It'd be understandable if they were banned from the multiplayer portion of the game, but if they can't log in to their Battle.net account they wouldn't be able to play the game at all, unless I've heard wrong. I think it's ridiculous that Blizzard can get away with something like this, but not surprising. Consumer rights don't seem to exist when it comes to video games, they were probably legislated out of existence by the mandatory post-purchase EULAs.
It'd be understandable if they were banned from the multiplayer portion of the game, but if they can't log in to their Battle.net account they wouldn't be able to play the game at all, unless I've heard wrong. I think it's ridiculous that Blizzard can get away with something like this, but not surprising. Consumer rights don't seem to exist when it comes to video games, they were probably legislated out of existence by the mandatory post-purchase EULAs.
I know it's a standard practice, I'm just saying it shouldn't be. The problem is that you can lose your license that you paid at any time for no reason. You don't have to be using third party programs to reduce someone's enjoyment of the game, you can be banned anyway and have no legal right to complain. These companies can do whatever the hell they like and you just have to deal with it, and that is messed up. We have laws against it in fact, but they all just stop applying when it comes to software. When we protect ourselves against these very practices everywhere else then why not with software? We clearly realise it's wrong.
The licenses are there to allow companies to do whatever the hell they like to us and remove our rights as consumers. They literally allow software companies to take the item you have paid for at any time for any reason, and they also allow them to change this license without even notifying us and count it as though we'd agreed to it.
The driving license comparison doesn't work at all in my opinion. It's a very special case, and I've explained why it's different. I can't really argue against it, but I don't think it's relevant.
I'm agreeing with WhiteTigerShiro, you're getting into Orwell territory here with the whole "They're out to get us" part about bans for no reasons.
This may happen very rarely like the case where someone was banned for displaying their orientation as Lesbian (which was reversed I believe) but yes they have that right, no they don't use it.
I've been gaming for several years of my life and I've never been b& from a game for no reason at all, infact I haven't been b& from anything I haven't deserved.
Themis Media owners of the Escapist and it's content probably have a similar clause in their EULA when you sign up and yet here we are unbanned and posting.
If something like that happened for no reason people would know about it and it would be fought against, so far companies have our trust for not abusing that power. Peoples accounts are locks and banned for legit reasons and if you want to play again you better buy another copy and make a new account.
I don't live in a state and it takes two seconds to check a persons profile as an fyi.
It's not a licence that requires a test though, it's a license to take home the game and play it without copying and distributing to others. It's also the same with films you take home and buy, there is a license attached to that film that you cannot distribute, play in public or copy.
It's also not a wet dream but a reality for a few companies who put miss use of their products as a reason for them to revoke your access, even Valve and steam will lock you out of your account if you're being a dick.
This isn't new, not even close.
Your first sentence: What the fuck are you talking about? A persons profile?
No see, what media companies want and what they can enforce are different things. Paramount may not want me to show my Star Trek DVD's to an audience but they can't prevent it. If I have 30 people over at my house and we decide to watch First Contact, who can stop me?
Most game companies don't have the kind of control that Blizzard has but just because Blizzard has that control does not make it right. For most companies this kind of control is a wet dream. I don't know how you could even argue that. There have been several stories about devs wishing they could do what Blizzard is doing.
ESCAPIST: REALLY, A FUCKIN CAPTCHA EVERY POST???????
I don't live in a state and it takes two seconds to check a persons profile as an fyi.
It's not a licence that requires a test though, it's a license to take home the game and play it without copying and distributing to others. It's also the same with films you take home and buy, there is a license attached to that film that you cannot distribute, play in public or copy.
It's also not a wet dream but a reality for a few companies who put miss use of their products as a reason for them to revoke your access, even Valve and steam will lock you out of your account if you're being a dick.
This isn't new, not even close.
Your first sentence: What the fuck are you talking about? A persons profile?
No see, what media companies want and what they can enforce are different things. Paramount may not want me to show my Star Trek DVD's to an audience but they can't prevent it. If I have 30 people over at my house and we decide to watch First Contact, who can stop me?
Most game companies don't have the kind of control that Blizzard has but just because Blizzard has that control does not make it right. For most companies this kind of control is a wet dream. I don't know how you could even argue that. There have been several stories about devs wishing they could do what Blizzard is doing.
ESCAPIST: REALLY, A FUCKIN CAPTCHA EVERY POST???????
You can just click on my username and view my escapist profile.
The first paragraph is fine because it's home use and you're not having people pay for entrance or considered large enough to be a public screening.
Companies are doing that other than Blizz, it's standard practice. If you mess around in game with third party programmes your account is lock and you have to buy the game again.
It's not uncommon at all.
In actuality you are not considering the whole picture.
1. EULAs are well written and have very few consumer abusing stuff. BY THE WAY, EULAs fall under contracts in the eyes of the law, and contracts are not above the copyright law. If a contract breaks one of your rights as consumer, your right as consumer is upheld over the contract. THING IS BUDDY, EULAs almost never do this, but you perceive it as such because it slightly hassles you.
Oh really, then how come I can (yet again) name and quote the exact law they seem to be breaking?
Unfair Terms
5.(1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer.
(2) A term shall always be regarded as not having been individually negotiated where it has been drafted in advance and the consumer has therefore not been able to influence the substance of the term.
(3) Notwithstanding that a specific term or certain aspects of it in a contract has been individually negotiated, these Regulations shall apply to the rest of a contract if an overall assessment of it indicates that it is a pre-formulated standard contract.
(4) It shall be for any seller or supplier who claims that a term was individually negotiated to show that it was.
(5) Schedule 2 to these Regulations contains an indicative and non-exhaustive list of the terms which may be regarded as unfair.
...
Effect of unfair term
8.-(1) An unfair term in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall not be binding on the consumer.
(2) The contract shall continue to bind the parties if it is capable of continuing in existence without the unfair term.
Read through that and see if you can honestly say they are not breaking these rights. For some reason these apparently don't apply when it comes to software, but they should. We have these protections for everything else, why not here? They're there for a reason.
2.Think about this for a second. In this contract you sign with these games, who comes worse if the contract is not upheld or is abused by omeone? There are simply certain points in a contract where you cant please both sides of the deal, so it falls that one side must be beneficiated over the other. For example, say Blizzard wrote in their EULA they can change the EULA any time they want(BUT AS PER LAW, THEY WILL GIVE YOU A WARNING PRIOR TO CHANGING AND YOU HAVE THE CHOICE TO END THE CONTRACT, NO REFUND OF COURSE OTHERWISE PEOPLE WHO PLAY THE GAME, FINISH IT, SUDDENLY SEE A EULA CHANGE AND ASK THEIR MONEY BACK). In this case, if Blizzard gave customers the proof of faith, that is, if we change hte EULA you automatically can ask for a refund if you dont like it. Blizzard can stand to lose hundreds of thousands of moneyz from people who abuse this practice, not to mention the legal hassle it will get into with retailers who suddenly have to refund customers because of sth they had nth to do with. But lets see the alternative, wich is what they have in place. Blizzard holds the right to change it, you can stop accepting, by which you nullify contract and lose the game. How much do you stand to lose? 60 bucks? And you may be thinking oh but blizzard is rich n haz lots of moneyz, well blizzard is the exception, not the rule. they have leeway, most game companies dont. If they stood to lose hundreds of thousands, people get fired. Thats JOBS that get out of the window.
If they change the EULA then we should have the right to a refund. Of course we should. they made this agreement, why should they be able to break it whenever they want with no recourse (by changing it whenever they want), but when we break it we lose everything. It's absurd.
So you see, EULAs arent perfect, but they dont break upon your right as a consumer, and its best things be like this than the alternative, wich puts companies in an even more dangerous risk(and by that jobs and lives depending on those companies).
Do I need to quote it again? These EULAs are literally a carte blanche for companies to do whatever they hell they like to us, while still keeping our money, and giving us no legal recourse whatsoever. They can change them to say anything they want without even notifying us. I think that's a pretty bad situation for consumers to be in, and considering the fact that consumer rights laws even exist I'd say other people agree, or at least they used to when those laws were formed.
faefrost said:
Not at all. You are failing to differentiate to separate components in this equation. There is the game Diablo III, and there is the service Battle.net. They make it clear that Diablo III is no longer a truly stand alone game, and that it requires a valid Battle.net account. The Battle.net has no service fee, but it does have very clear rules, and users may be shut down for clearly violating them.
A better analogy would be a theme park such as Disney World, or even a movie theater. They can toss you for misbehaving in violation of the services rules, and no they have no obligation to give you a refund for doing so. Paying your price of admission does not allow you to behave as you wish. And they have no obligation to then arrange things so you can watch the movie or ride the roller coaster in private. This is one of those little rules of reasonable social behavior that seems to have gotten completely lost on the modern "I have a right to do whatever I want" generation.
Once again it is perfectly legal for Blizzard to do this. It would be similarly legal for Steam to do it, SOE to do it, XBox Live to do it and EA Origin to do it.
You're right, it is perfectly legal for all of these companies to do this, but what I'm saying is that it shouldn't be. We used to have consumer laws protecting us from these practices, and in fact we still do, but for some bizarre reason they just don't seem to apply to software companies.
Disney World can toss us out for behaving in violation of the service's rules, but they cannot just take our money and then deny us access to the park anyway for no reason. Software companies can. They also cannot force us to agree to services after we've already paid and refuse to refund us if we don't agree. They cannot force us to sign a contract that they can change at any time they want for any reason they want without even notifying us. It's illegal, we have laws against it (see above).
Software companies can do all these things, and I don't know why. I doubt they would do it if it were illegal, but then why do they have the special legal ability to stomp all over the rights we get as consumers for every other industry? It's wrong, and whatever gives them this ability is wrong. Clearly we know it's wrong, because we made these laws in the first place, so why does software get a special free pass?
Lyri said:
I'm agreeing with WhiteTigerShiro, you're getting into Orwell territory here with the whole "They're out to get us" part about bans for no reasons.
This may happen very rarely like the case where someone was banned for displaying their orientation as Lesbian (which was reversed I believe) but yes they have that right, no they don't use it.
I've been gaming for several years of my life and I've never been b& from a game for no reason at all, infact I haven't been b& from anything I haven't deserved.
Themis Media owners of the Escapist and it's content probably have a similar clause in their EULA when you sign up and yet here we are unbanned and posting.
If something like that happened for no reason people would know about it and it would be fought against, so far companies have our trust for not abusing that power. Peoples accounts are locks and banned for legit reasons and if you want to play again you better buy another copy and make a new account.
It doesn't matter if it has happened (although it almost certainly has on occasion, at least accidentally). The point is that it is legal for them to do practically whatever they want to us and it shouldn't be. I'm not saying any company is ever actually going to start banning everyone as part of some evil scheme to screw everyone over, but they are (and have been) using these abilities to put consumers in bad positions and earn as much money for themselves as possible, and protecting themselves from legal repercussions when they do something (which should be) wrong. We have consumer rights and laws in order to attempt to stop corporations from being able to create unfair and unethical situations for consumers, but for some reason we seem to have lost (many of) them when it comes to software, and the effects are apparent. We can't just rely on a corporation's good will and susceptibility to PR pressure, because it doesn't always work, and abuses don't always come to the public eye. That's why we have to have these laws in the first place.
...
Sorry if I've missed anyones' quotes by the way, there have been an awful lot of them. (17, I think, and they keep coming when I'm trying to write responses to other ones. This has gotten pretty big.)
I don't live in a state and it takes two seconds to check a persons profile as an fyi.
It's not a licence that requires a test though, it's a license to take home the game and play it without copying and distributing to others. It's also the same with films you take home and buy, there is a license attached to that film that you cannot distribute, play in public or copy.
It's also not a wet dream but a reality for a few companies who put miss use of their products as a reason for them to revoke your access, even Valve and steam will lock you out of your account if you're being a dick.
This isn't new, not even close.
Your first sentence: What the fuck are you talking about? A persons profile?
No see, what media companies want and what they can enforce are different things. Paramount may not want me to show my Star Trek DVD's to an audience but they can't prevent it. If I have 30 people over at my house and we decide to watch First Contact, who can stop me?
Most game companies don't have the kind of control that Blizzard has but just because Blizzard has that control does not make it right. For most companies this kind of control is a wet dream. I don't know how you could even argue that. There have been several stories about devs wishing they could do what Blizzard is doing.
ESCAPIST: REALLY, A FUCKIN CAPTCHA EVERY POST???????
You can just click on my username and view my escapist profile.
The first paragraph is fine because it's home use and you're not having people pay for entrance or considered large enough to be a public screening.
Companies are doing that other than Blizz, it's standard practice. If you mess around in game with third party programmes your account is lock and you have to buy the game again.
It's not uncommon at all.
First of all, you could just answer the damn question and not say "look at my profile". Secondly, your profile says nothing about your location anyway. Thirdly, I really don't care where you live, I was illustrating a point that getting a state issued license is very different from buying a game.
How do they know I am not charging people admission? If I were, what could they do about it? I could just claim I was charging for the Cheetos. Rest assured, if Paramount had the control Blizzard has, they would count heads and the DVD wouldn't play if there were more than say...five people. Ah, the future of Kinect.
When was the last time you heard of Valve doing mass bans? Does Valve ban you from HL2 if you cheat in single player mode?
In actuality you are not considering the whole picture.
1. EULAs are well written and have very few consumer abusing stuff. BY THE WAY, EULAs fall under contracts in the eyes of the law, and contracts are not above the copyright law. If a contract breaks one of your rights as consumer, your right as consumer is upheld over the contract. THING IS BUDDY, EULAs almost never do this, but you perceive it as such because it slightly hassles you.
Oh really, then how come I can (yet again) name and quote the exact law they seem to be breaking?
Unfair Terms
5.(1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer.
(2) A term shall always be regarded as not having been individually negotiated where it has been drafted in advance and the consumer has therefore not been able to influence the substance of the term.
(3) Notwithstanding that a specific term or certain aspects of it in a contract has been individually negotiated, these Regulations shall apply to the rest of a contract if an overall assessment of it indicates that it is a pre-formulated standard contract.
(4) It shall be for any seller or supplier who claims that a term was individually negotiated to show that it was.
(5) Schedule 2 to these Regulations contains an indicative and non-exhaustive list of the terms which may be regarded as unfair.
...
Effect of unfair term
8.-(1) An unfair term in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall not be binding on the consumer.
(2) The contract shall continue to bind the parties if it is capable of continuing in existence without the unfair term.
Read through that and see if you can honestly say they are not breaking these rights. For some reason these apparently don't apply when it comes to software, but they should. We have these protections for everything else, why not here? They're there for a reason.
2.Think about this for a second. In this contract you sign with these games, who comes worse if the contract is not upheld or is abused by omeone? There are simply certain points in a contract where you cant please both sides of the deal, so it falls that one side must be beneficiated over the other. For example, say Blizzard wrote in their EULA they can change the EULA any time they want(BUT AS PER LAW, THEY WILL GIVE YOU A WARNING PRIOR TO CHANGING AND YOU HAVE THE CHOICE TO END THE CONTRACT, NO REFUND OF COURSE OTHERWISE PEOPLE WHO PLAY THE GAME, FINISH IT, SUDDENLY SEE A EULA CHANGE AND ASK THEIR MONEY BACK). In this case, if Blizzard gave customers the proof of faith, that is, if we change hte EULA you automatically can ask for a refund if you dont like it. Blizzard can stand to lose hundreds of thousands of moneyz from people who abuse this practice, not to mention the legal hassle it will get into with retailers who suddenly have to refund customers because of sth they had nth to do with. But lets see the alternative, wich is what they have in place. Blizzard holds the right to change it, you can stop accepting, by which you nullify contract and lose the game. How much do you stand to lose? 60 bucks? And you may be thinking oh but blizzard is rich n haz lots of moneyz, well blizzard is the exception, not the rule. they have leeway, most game companies dont. If they stood to lose hundreds of thousands, people get fired. Thats JOBS that get out of the window.
If they change the EULA then we should have the right to a refund. Of course we should. they made this agreement, why should they be able to break it whenever they want with no recourse (by changing it whenever they want), but when we break it we lose everything. It's absurd.
So you see, EULAs arent perfect, but they dont break upon your right as a consumer, and its best things be like this than the alternative, wich puts companies in an even more dangerous risk(and by that jobs and lives depending on those companies).
Do I need to quote it again? These EULAs are literally a carte blanche for companies to do whatever they hell they like to us, while still keeping our money, and giving us no legal recourse whatsoever. They can change them to say anything they want without even notifying us. I think that's a pretty bad situation for consumers to be in, and considering the fact that consumer rights laws even exist I'd say other people agree, or at least they used to when those laws were formed.
faefrost said:
Not at all. You are failing to differentiate to separate components in this equation. There is the game Diablo III, and there is the service Battle.net. They make it clear that Diablo III is no longer a truly stand alone game, and that it requires a valid Battle.net account. The Battle.net has no service fee, but it does have very clear rules, and users may be shut down for clearly violating them.
A better analogy would be a theme park such as Disney World, or even a movie theater. They can toss you for misbehaving in violation of the services rules, and no they have no obligation to give you a refund for doing so. Paying your price of admission does not allow you to behave as you wish. And they have no obligation to then arrange things so you can watch the movie or ride the roller coaster in private. This is one of those little rules of reasonable social behavior that seems to have gotten completely lost on the modern "I have a right to do whatever I want" generation.
Once again it is perfectly legal for Blizzard to do this. It would be similarly legal for Steam to do it, SOE to do it, XBox Live to do it and EA Origin to do it.
You're right, it is perfectly legal for all of these companies to do this, but what I'm saying is that it shouldn't be. We used to have consumer laws protecting us from these practices, and in fact we still do, but for some bizarre reason they just don't seem to apply to software companies.
Disney World can toss us out for behaving in violation of the service's rules, but they cannot just take our money and then deny us access to the park anyway for no reason. Software companies can. They also cannot force us to agree to services after we've already paid and refuse to refund us if we don't agree. They cannot force us to sign a contract that they can change at any time they want for any reason they want without even notifying us. It's illegal, we have laws against it (see above).
Software companies can do all these things, and I don't know why. I doubt they would do it if it were illegal, but then why do they have the special legal ability to stomp all over the rights we get as consumers for every other industry? It's wrong, and whatever gives them this ability is wrong. Clearly we know it's wrong, because we made these laws in the first place, so why does software get a special free pass?
Lyri said:
I'm agreeing with WhiteTigerShiro, you're getting into Orwell territory here with the whole "They're out to get us" part about bans for no reasons.
This may happen very rarely like the case where someone was banned for displaying their orientation as Lesbian (which was reversed I believe) but yes they have that right, no they don't use it.
I've been gaming for several years of my life and I've never been b& from a game for no reason at all, infact I haven't been b& from anything I haven't deserved.
Themis Media owners of the Escapist and it's content probably have a similar clause in their EULA when you sign up and yet here we are unbanned and posting.
If something like that happened for no reason people would know about it and it would be fought against, so far companies have our trust for not abusing that power. Peoples accounts are locks and banned for legit reasons and if you want to play again you better buy another copy and make a new account.
It doesn't matter if it has happened (although it almost certainly has on occasion, at least accidentally). The point is that it is legal for them to do practically whatever they want to us and it shouldn't be. I'm not saying any company is ever actually going to start banning everyone as part of some evil scheme to screw everyone over, but they are (and have been) using these abilities to put consumers in bad positions and earn as much money for themselves as possible, and protecting themselves from legal repercussions when they do something (which should be) wrong. We have consumer rights and laws in order to attempt to stop corporations from being able to create unfair and unethical situations for consumers, but for some reason we seem to have lost (many of) them when it comes to software, and the effects are apparent. We can't just rely on a corporation's good will and susceptibility to PR pressure, because it doesn't always work, and abuses don't always come to the public eye. That's why we have to have these laws in the first place.
...
Sorry if I've missed anyones' quotes by the way, there have been an awful lot of them. (17, I think, and they keep coming when I'm trying to write responses to other ones. This has gotten pretty big.)
5.(1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer.
significant imbalance in the parties rights and obligations.
before you start quoting laws, study them.
What exactly are the parties rights and obligations when it comes to these contracts? And before you say its the things stipulated in the contract, no it isnt. Contracts do not write laws. Go find the laws about your rights as a consumer ok? Then we can talk. Also notice the word SIGNIFICANT. A subjective term, usually decided on a case by case basis.
And to top it all off, who told you EULAs are undisputable? I just told you that law is above a contract. And yet you yammered on in ignorance, about how you cant do anything about it. Want proof? Germany made EA change their EULA because it went against their country laws. EA stopped mining data on Origin. Law > Contract. Of course you need a solid case to make that happen. EULA changed. did the changes affect you significantly in a way that justifies you ending the contract? Take it to court then and tell them your case. Wanna know what happens? Game company will refund you. Wont even get to courts. HELL, you might not even have a solid case and youre just being a dick because they changed the grammar. Theyll still pay you so you can quit whining like a baby about it. They just wanna please you and make you stop saying bad things about them.
This aint a civil rights movement youre preaching ok? Relax and dont get worked up about it.
One last thing. I do not know American law very well, but from what ive gathered, its a very shitty law. My sayings are based on the European consumer law, wich is much much better than the american one(I WILL FUCKING DEBATE THIS SHIT TO HELL WITH YOU PEOPLE).
5.(1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer.
significant imbalance in the parties rights and obligations.
before you start quoting laws, study them.
What exactly are the parties rights and obligations when it comes to these contracts? And before you say its the things stipulated in the contract, no it isnt. Contracts do not write laws. Go find the laws about your rights as a consumer ok? Then we can talk. Also notice the word SIGNIFICANT. A subjective term, usually decided on a case by case basis.
And to top it all off, who told you EULAs are undisputable? I just told you that law is above a contract. And yet you yammered on in ignorance, about how you cant do anything about it. Want proof? Germany made EA change their EULA because it went against their country laws. EA stopped mining data on Origin. Law > Contract. Of course you need a solid case to make that happen. EULA changed. did the changes affect you significantly in a way that justifies you ending the contract? Take it to court then and tell them your case. Wanna know what happens? Game company will refund you. Wont even get to courts. HELL, you might not even have a solid case and youre just being a dick because they changed the grammar. Theyll still pay you so you can quit whining like a baby about it. They just wanna please you and make you stop saying bad things about them.
This aint a civil rights movement youre preaching ok? Relax and dont get worked up about it.
One last thing. I do not know American law very well, but from what ive gathered, its a very shitty law. My sayings are based on the European consumer law, wich is much much better than the american one(I WILL FUCKING DEBATE THIS SHIT TO HELL WITH YOU PEOPLE).
Don't worry about me getting "worked up about it", I wouldn't be posting this stuff if I didn't want to, and I'm perfectly relaxed. I argue because I enjoy it and the responses interest me, I can only assume you are the same (or else we wouldn't be having this conversation).
Now, a "significant imbalance in the parties rights and obligations". The developer has the right to change the EULA at any time without notifying you, and it is counted as you agreed to it if you continue using the product and don't send them a written notification telling them you don't. That is as significantly imbalanced as it can possibly be. As in there's literally no way you could write an EULA worse than that, because they have the right to change this one into whatever kind of agreement you think might have been worse.
Admittedly, this might not hold up in court (and I certainly don't think it should) but it hasn't been made explicitly illegal yet. Since none of us consumers have the money or the inclination to buy an army of lawyers we just have to deal with it. For all practical purposes it is legal, and if we disobey it we're almost certainly going to be the ones who are punished. Maybe you're right, and some day this will all go to the courts and all the really bad parts of these EULAs will be found invalid, but that hasn't happened yet so we still have to deal with it. I am saying this is wrong and should be fixed as soon as possible, and complaining about it certainly isn't going to do any harm. In fact if everyone complained about it (as I think they rightly should) maybe it could be fixed once and for all.
Oh, and I'm basing my info on UK law. I don't claim to be any kind of expert, though.
Seems that the issues of Diablo 3 all stem from the Auction House. Snow-Storm doesn't want cheaters/hackers/modders because they're a threat to the A-House. This obvious statement makes sense.
Yet, the A House itself never made much sense to me. I'll look into this again to be certain and anyone feel free to correct me, but any item sold in the auction can be found in the game right? Well why not just search for the stuff. A response I was given to that was "Instead spending your own time searching for specific items, you can just buy it and have it right away." True but, right after fighting waves of enemies, bosses and following a story to its end isn't looting and searching for stuff an important mechanic and part of the game? Seems to me that anyone using the auction is paying to not play part of the game. If people are using the auction because that part of the game isn't fun then that sounds like bad game design...or planned design, to have players pay to skip a boring, cumbersome part of the game. Well played Winter-Squall, well played indeed.
First of all, you could just answer the damn question and not say "look at my profile". Secondly, your profile says nothing about your location anyway. Thirdly, I really don't care where you live, I was illustrating a point that getting a state issued license is very different from buying a game.
How do they know I am not charging people admission? If I were, what could they do about it? I could just claim I was charging for the Cheetos. Rest assured, if Paramount had the control Blizzard has, they would count heads and the DVD wouldn't play if there were more than say...five people. Ah, the future of Kinect.
When was the last time you heard of Valve doing mass bans? Does Valve ban you from HL2 if you cheat in single player mode?
Drop the attitude, it's not my problem you can't see the British Flag under my gender icon in plain sight. Forgive me for crediting you with the intelligence of understanding how the website worked and comprehension of an online profile, I shan't make that mistake again.
They don't do that because it's unreasonable to enforce and monitor, your statement is true you could say you're charging for the cheetos.
That doesn't happen though because it's not all that monitored.
Valve don't ban for cheating in single player because that isn't the issue here. They do ban though if you're being a dick online and causing grief for other players, through whatever means.
Scammers, hackers can all have their accounts locked and their games denied by Valve if they feel it necessary.
Lunncal said:
It doesn't matter if it has happened (although it almost certainly has on occasion, at least accidentally). The point is that it is legal for them to do practically whatever they want to us and it shouldn't be. I'm not saying any company is ever actually going to start banning everyone as part of some evil scheme to screw everyone over, but they are (and have been) using these abilities to put consumers in bad positions and earn as much money for themselves as possible, and protecting themselves from legal repercussions when they do something (which should be) wrong. We have consumer rights and laws in order to attempt to stop corporations from being able to create unfair and unethical situations for consumers, but for some reason we seem to have lost (many of) them when it comes to software, and the effects are apparent. We can't just rely on a corporation's good will and susceptibility to PR pressure, because it doesn't always work, and abuses don't always come to the public eye. That's why we have to have these laws in the first place.
I mean no disrespect here but you're continually dancing around the same point we've already concluded right now.
They do not have the power to do what they feel like, this is a fallacy and if you fee wronged by a company then you're entitled by consumer law to make a claim against them. Like the kid who was afraid of the outdoors tried to sue Sony for damages for banning his PS3 network access after he was caught doing something.
The end user license agreements are fine and not the boogieman you're trying to portray them as.
Part of me has a hard time caring. I literally stopped caring about anything Blizzard since I was playing WoW and got accused of buying gold two times in two weeks, each carrying a multiple day ban as a penalty. My character had like 100 gold on him. At that point I knew I was in danger of losing my account and there was nothing I could do about it. So, I took the initiative and cancelled my account and just never looked back. I played Rift for a year strait and that never happened.
If you buy Blizzard, you pay the price. And I definitely don't care about D3. I don't like to see gamers get wronged by a company, but until people stop supporting that company things like this are going to happen. I haven't played a AAA title that has come out this year, but I have bought lots of indie games. And I'm having a blast.
LOL! They dont have to refund anyones money because they waited until 30 days after the release to ban people. Just their way of keeping your money and screwing you!
It'd be understandable if they were banned from the multiplayer portion of the game, but if they can't log in to their Battle.net account they wouldn't be able to play the game at all, unless I've heard wrong. I think it's ridiculous that Blizzard can get away with something like this, but not surprising. Consumer rights don't seem to exist when it comes to video games, they were probably legislated out of existence by the mandatory post-purchase EULAs.
Blizzard has been very upfront for years now that Diablo is not a single player game any longer. It is an online game. It's not loke the EA fiasco's where they blocked play to what were very clearly single player games. Blizz did the due diligence ahead of time on this one, so yeah they can ban you from Battle.net.
While I loathe the always on internet requirements and DRM bullcrap, I fear that this actually comunicates exactly the opposite message from what some are assuming. The internet requirement does not prevent cheaters and botters and hackers from doing their thing. It lets the game runners detect and shut them down hard so they don't influence the economy or impact others game play like they could in previous games.
If someone pays for a product, and doesn't receive that product, they should be refunded. If it was a pure multiplayer game, and there was no option whatsoever for a singleplayer experience (as there actually is in this case) then obviously they can't just block you from the multiplayer and still let you keep the game, but then it is their duty to refund you the price. Like I was saying, it's basic consumer rights, only no-one seems to give a damn about them any more.
Most people do not take video-games as a hobby as far as people like me and you do, and they won't frequent The Escapist or whatever other sites and know this information in advance. They will buy the game, and then they will suddenly be presented with an EULA that says Blizzard can stop them playing this game (that they have already paid for) whenever they want. What if they don't agree with this? It's too bad, no game and no refund.
I'm certain this is illegal when it comes to most other products, and I don't know (or really care) what loophole software companies use to get away with this, but it's bullshit.
I fail to see the problem. When you register the game, you accept the ToS of the game. When the ToS are violated, you get banned. The article also states that you can't login to battle.net to play D3, it doesn't mention other games. Also, you are incorrect about there being a single player portion...you can play solo but that doesn't make it a single player game. You can play by yourself in WoW too.
These people are also hurting the economy of the other players. There are crap items on the AH currently for 200,000,000 gold. There is no way someone has got that much gold legit and there is no way a legit player can compete with those who aren't.
How about the fact that you don't see the ToS until AFTER you've installed the game and used up the code, and that no one will give you a refund on a PC game.
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Then we can talk. Also notice the word SIGNIFICANT. A subjective term, usually decided on a case by case basis.
