Mhm. They made their problem (preventing hackers gaining access to their system) the user's problem (forcing us to be online when we don't want to be, just to play the game we paid for) and still messed it up. We're left with a hack and cheat riddled game and DRM no one likes.
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.
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.)
Your words reminded me of when Sony changed the PS3 to disallow Linux. In that particular case, refunds were eventually given to those who wished it and purchased it before a certain date.
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'm pretty happy to avoid Diablo 3... forever and ever. Any game whose selling point is that you can earn money playing this game, really worries me. On one hand, you're getting paid to do something you like to do simply to amuse yourself, but it also makes the game feel like nothing more than a job. Not to mention, it makes their company super duper irritable over every god damn little thing when people wanna cheat on their game that they rightfully own. I'm annoyed enough that they "have single-player" but you've gotta be online, and other people can barge into your game play and mess with you. I dunno... most of my issues are purely from what I've seen and read, and since I've never played it, I can't say if all of my fears and hatred for the game is even well-founded, but I stick with I believe. Then again, such things like cheater purges have been done before, I just hope that Blizzard could just let them keep the ability to play single-player and just not let them be able to access the multiplayer... :/ At least, let them still be able to play the game they paid their hard earned money on.
Hm. None of this is exactly news to me. The usual argument of trainer users back in SC2's early days was that they were playing alone. Following that logic, it was supposedly unfair of Warden to flag their copies as having been tampered with. I've known a few dupers and botters in D2 in my time, and most more or less fell back to the same logic.
"But I'm playing alone; how does that bother anyone? I never even set foot on Open Battle.net!"
Sure, you don't. Until you do.
Predictably enough, the D3 forums turned into a hateful morass as soon as the news broke out. If you're happy with the game, then you're a subhuman zealot and a sheep. If you're not, then it's your right as a customer to whine because you don't understand that free authenticator apps for smartphones are precisely that - FREE.
That really astounds me. Blizzard gives you everything you need to try and make your experience secure and reminds you of several basic Internet practices we should all be using anyway (such as rotating passwords and never using the same password for different services) and people throw up a shit-storm in response.
Keep in mind that this doesn't excuse anything like always-online DRM. In fact, if the game had an offline portion where characters from SP mode could be used in multiplayer, we'd be seeing a lot more than just hacked toons and excessively priced items in the auction houses. We'd be seeing overpowered builds decked out in gear lowbies shouldn't conceivably be able to get their hands on.
Between both scenarios, I'm honestly preferring what we've got now.
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.
Pirates bypass DRM: Well they always get around it eventually, so clearly it was pointless and not worth trying ever again.
Hackers/Cheaters 'eventually get around' Security Measures (so clearly they were pointless and not worth trying ever again, according to the logic of the above): OMG Y U NO HAVE MORE SECURITY?! ADD MORE!!
Gamer Logic (I guess fights against somebody who will 'eventually get around' anything that gets sent their way seem like good ideas when you're the one who benefits from them.)
If you buy a car and get caught acting like a goon in it, you're not allowed to drive it. Simple as that. Same thing with this. You're caught being an idiot and cheating, botting, hacking, ect, you can't play. Easiest way to avoid this?
DON'T FUCKING CHEAT/MOD/HACK!
I enjoy the game, I find it entertaining and legitimately fun. The always online thing doesn't bother me, considering that I'm always online anyways. Plus I quite enjoy being able to have my friends hop in and play with me on a whim, not to mention that if I decide to do multiplayer I don't have to roll a new character and get thrust into a sea of players that are EXTREMELY over geared, but as another use said: because I'm happy with the product, I am going to be labeled a sheep for the company. Then so be it.
Why would it have been so bad to just delete all the offending account's characters and achievements? It would at least keep the accusations of Blizz stealing their money from cropping up.
It does not protet from BOTs (you know, the same as in any MMO), and tihs is their main attention of banhammer. removing them from being able to play the game for cheating is the best way to deal with it i think.
Lunncal said:
Is that even legal? Do they get a refund?
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.
Ofc its legal. D3 is like a MMO. You hack in MMO you get banned, and you can say good bye to your account. To get new one you have to pay new subscription fee (nto counting free ones, D3 isnt a free one either). you lost whatever you had on the old one. You cheat - you get removed. it is you who is doing the illegal thing, not the company.
Happy for me ToS and that stuff doesn't hold up in my country. Its completly worthless and whenever i've a nice customersupport guy on the phone and mention it, they suddenly and instantly try to cooperate with you, so you're happy.
Sure, binding contracts AFTER i bought your product. That they thought anyone is that gullible in the first place, when they started to add these things.
The logic is that because it still is an online character, you could use those cheated items to sell on the AH.
One more reason why I didn't buy D3. Cheating gets more tempting once you've beat the game a few times and want some good gear to rush you through the first few areas.
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.
If it's written in the terms of service (which I can only assume it is) then it's perfectly legal.
EA does something similar where if you get an Origin ban, you are locked out from accessing any game you might have in your Origin library for the duration of the ban. In the case of perma bans thats pretty horrible.
It doesn't make it right but a company as big as Blizzard no doubt has an small army of lawyers to ensure everything is on the up and up.
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.
Bots do not involve stealing from peoples' accounts, cheats do not involve stealing from peoples' accounts and mods do not involve stealing from peoples' accounts. Hacks may involve stealing from peoples' accounts sometimes. So... yeah, not sure what else to say. If it were just actual thieves who were affected it would be more understandable, but it isn't.
Well, when you get the game you have to accept to it's terms and conditions
Which in theirs must mention somewhere about doing such things results in instant bans without refund
I'm not too sure on the legal validity of the ol' 'click to verify all this junk you didn't read' but I'm sure someone trying to get a refund after hacking/botting wouldn't have a great case.
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