I don’t have time to check a video, but isn’t it true for any service that it you don’t agree to the new ToS, your contract is terminated?
What makes this case so special?
Edit: or is it that people only found out now that the games they bought were online-only and that they’re at the mercy of the publisher?
Paid-for games aren’t a service that should be able to be taken away in this manner
For software (like games) the usual rule is “use the old version if you don’t agree to the new terms”, but that’s not possible without piracy here
Stupid question and I honestly don’t know.
If Steam puts up a bunch of new Agreements, and you refuse to accept, you’ll continue using the non-updated version - correct?
Where in this scenario, Blizzard just locks you out of your account?
If Steam puts up a bunch of new Agreements, and you refuse to accept, you’ll continue using the non-updated version - correct?
In theory you could keep using the service that adheres to the old agreement - but they will only provide the service under the new agreement. So effectively, no.
Unfortunately, Diablo 3 is an online game - even singleplayer. In case of starcraft, it’s even worse - the only reason for it to be online is multiplayer (fair enough) and drm (boo!).
Yeah, I think that a EULA change should reasonably permit for some kind of refund. Maybe have some mechanism for deprecating the value of the service based on use – like, if you expect a typical online game to be online for 10 years and a user has used it for 5 and the service wants to change the EULA, mandate the option for a 50% refund in lieu of continued service under the new EULA or something.
That’d make games more expensive, but it’s a risk that companies could factor in when deciding on EULAs and the initial price.
Does Blizzard even make any single-purchase games that require a Blizzard account? WoW is a subscription, Overwatch is free-to-play, I doubt the old Starcraft games require accounts, and I don’t know much about Diablo.
Diablo is indeed a single purchase game (with tons of MTX and soon to be DLC of course, but the base game is a single purchase).
So no, it’s only subscription games that would be affected? So you just can’t use the service in the future, they’re not locking anyone out of a purchased product.
Diablo (at least 3 - excluding the console versions and 4, not sure about the older ones) is an online-only game, if they’re locking you out of your account, then you will not be able to authenticate to the game server and thus won’t be able to play.
Yeah, I suppose that sucks if you never stopped to think about it.
In my case, it’s the reason I never bought Diablo 3 - when they turn an offline game into a mandatory online game, I figured that sooner or later they’d pull something like this.
The funny thing is by forcing you to agree to the new terms, the contract can be challenged since one side was coerced to sign it (and didn’t get a chance to sign in voluntarily!).
US courts tend to favor corporations over end users, so there’s still a strong chance a judge will throw the case out anyway, but because this is such an act of bad faith in US contract law, a judge might also rule in the end-user’s favor just to make an example out of Blizzard for being such a dick.
PS: Steam did this a long time ago. I’ve never had any disagreements with Steam but some folks have. I don’t know if anyone’s had the account bricked, which Blizzard, EA and Ubisoft have done.
Praise Microsoft
This doesn’t affect me, because I stopped buying Blizzard’s shit games after the BnetD lawsuit.
For me it was during the development of Diablo 3 when Blizzard acted like a bunch of children over community comments/concerns about the art style/direction of the game. I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on much, honestly.
Fuck Blizzard. Haven’t used them since the censorship bullshit they pulled over Hong Kong.
At that point I tried to delete my account, but they made it impossible already. So they are “lucky” to “keep me” as a “customer”
I was able to close my account effectively, circa 2019 after big-dick Blitzchung got disrespected.
It kind of blows my mind that forced arbitration is legal at all.
The governments all around the world are probably in favor of it, because their big “donors” want it and it lowers costs for the judicial system for them. It’s a win-win from their perspective.
The real reason for arbitration is that it usually costs hundreds to initiate and the rules can be murky. In comparison most places in America you can file a small claims suit for $20 and are given help by the court/government.
I hadn’t considered small claims (though I’ve filed, and won, several small claims cases myself).
It would be great to teach people how to use the small-claims system - Imagine these companies having to deal with these courts in every state.
They’d probably default (not show up), and have judgements against them, then the complainant would be stuck trying to enforce the claim (it’s not automatic). In the end, Corp would see this as a win… Until it became a news story that “Corp X has hundreds of unresolved judgements”
I am sure everybody’s situation is different but luckily for me as a New York Resident, between long arm statues and the interconnectedness of banks/Wall st everybody has to pay or forfeit their bank access 🤣
It also creates no precedent. You lose, you pay out one angry customer, but the next one who tries, you get a fresh attempt to convince the arbitrators you were right.
In a real court, the first loss woukd be leveraged against you by everyone else in similar straits, even if it wasn’t a class action.
NAL and stare decisis is definitely not as strict in arbitration but arbitration generally has to follow state court rules or it will get invalidated including use of precedent. Most court decisions never get published anyway so its essentially the same loss.
It’s just a term of a contract. It’s only “forced” insofar as both parties agree to require it in order to settle disputes.
Which shouldn’t be allowed in relation to consumer goods and services.
Meh, arbitration is cheaper and faster than actual litigation. I see clear advantages for both parties.
But also obvious disadvantages to the customer in cases like this. Why should the customer not have a right to refuse?
Corporations are people and they have so much more money and time to fund their interests than individuals do.
Somone said that it isn’t and isn’t enforceable to but no-one has the time money or will to fuck around with that.
Depends on the country. This wiki article goes over a bunch of countries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause
I think in the case of forced agreements (both Roku not having a way to select disagree and disabling all hardware functionality until you agree, and blizzard not allowing login to existing games including non-live service ones) no reasonable court should be viewing this as freely accepting the new conditions.
If you buy a new game with those conditions, sure you should be able to get a full refund though, and you could argue it for ongoing live service games where you pay monthly that it’s acceptable to change the conditions with some notice ahead of time. If you don’t accept you can no longer use the ongoing paid for features, I expect a court would allow that. But there’s no real justification for disabling hardware you already own or disabling single player games you already paid for in full.
It’ll be interesting to see any test cases that come from these examples.
The problem here is “reasonable court.” One party in the US has spent decades stacking the courts with unreasonable judges who will agree to anything a corporation hands them.
My brother in christ, both parties have been doing this for ages. You aren’t looking at the right lines. This one is about wealth, not about party affiliation.
If you had the money to put safeguards in place to protect you and your stuff in the event something went wrong, you probably would. It would be a mistake not to.
A simple example is keeping some money set aside as a savings or emergency fund. For rich people, lobbying for more favorable laws, and helping more friendly judges rise up the ranks is a similar thing. Some have went on to make and plan apocalypse bunkers too.
When you have enough money that you don’t have to worry about spending a certain amount, you just go and do it. Like people not worrying about spending on Starbucks every morning because it’s equivalent to 30 minutes of their time or less.
look at all the lefties down voting you. when are people going to learn?
I see 1 class action where the consumers get screwed and the company gets a slap on the wrist
Right?
Amazes me how many people cheer on these class action suits, and when I remark that class action screws the consumer and benefits the company, lemmites downvote to oblivion.
I got my first class action reimbursement at age 19…for perhaps $5.
Today I see one about twice a year, again for about $5 each. I don’t even bother replying to get my check - it’s simply not worth the effort.
The class-action system is a scam to benefit the wrong-doers, not to give strength to a class. What company would prefer 2 million court cases vs a single case? They want to prevent that first individual case from happening, at all, let alone from winning. If one case wins, the ambulance chasing lawyers would crawl out of the wood work and line up for their payout. The legal fees alone would be 10x+ any class-action settlement.
Correct.
I think you are correct. A contract requires “consideration.” You got nothing for agreeing to the new contract, so I don’t think it is legal.
Common Blizzard L
This is not unique to Blizzard, and has nothing to do with their latest EULA changes. Binding arbitration has been part of their EULA for years, long before the latest one arrived. (The earliest copy I’ve found is from 2018, and I don’t think it was new even then.)
For reference, here’s a diff showing the latest changes:
https://rentry.co/yuu78kqdBoth that and the unilateral changing of terms post-sale are horrible practices that we should all pressure our legislators to make illegal, and perhaps reject by voting with our wallets, but singling out one company for it takes attention away from the larger issue: It has been widespread in the software industry for a long time.
If EULAs are going to be legally binding, there should really be some standard mechanism, an API, on systems to display one such that the system can record a copy and you can see differences and such. Otherwise, you’re entering into a contract with some random party and only they have a copy or and see what changed across versions.
If such a display API is available on a given platform and isn’t used, could simply make the EULA automatically non-binding.
I’m willing to believe that there are legitimately cases where one does need license agreements to fix issues that extend beyond standard consumer law, but the current situation is simply a dumpster fire. Also, some EULAs have been held unenforceable, so even from the standpoint of the software company, it’s a mess as to whether their license is actually going to stand up; there are no clear lines to which a lawyer can conform to make their license hold up.
Some other possible tweaks:
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Require that prior to sale, existence of a EULA be prominently disclosed and be readable.
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I personally would much rather have industry adopting standard licenses than having every company creating ad-hoc licenses. Like, in the open-source world, the GPL and MIT licenses deal with a number of problems that open source software runs into, and I can learn once what each entails and quit looking at it. I’d rather have there be agreements for commercial software that work the same way. If industry needs flexibility, I think that it’s reasonable to say that they don’t all need to custom-craft solutions. I’d rather like legislation that encourages industry use of a limited number of widely-used agreements rather than hand-crafting them. Maybe add some kind of tax on non-standard EULAs, dunno.
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Disallow change-without-notice as a EULA condition; there should be no legitimate reason for this. If you got agreement once, you can get it again. Require that any change notice also provide a way to see the “delta” between the old license and the new license, just the changes.
One thing to keep in mind, though. They have more money than we do and will use this extra step to make it that much harder for them to face any consequences of their negative actions
I do like the idea of industry standard license.
My thoughts are:
- They need to limit EULAs to something like 600 words.
- Make them binding and non-changing to the product purchased, only newly purchased products can get the updated EULA.
- They should make a Ethics Policy (things like no cheating, be kind, no swearing, etc.) separate from the EULA. This Ethics policy can be updated whenever.
Make them binding and non-changing to the product purchased, only newly purchased products can get the updated EULA.
So I think I see what you’re getting at, because I was thinking about it in another comment and considered that, but I think that that’s probably overly-strict. There are some cases where legislation requires that a service provider act differently, and their EULA may be incompatible with that. Or where they’ve made a legal error in their initial EULA – you gotta have some route to fix that. Though I suspect that it’s possible to carve a smaller hole for that than is currently the case.
I have another comment where I make one suggestion to tighten up that hole a bit:
https://lemmy.today/comment/6999434
Yeah, I think that a EULA change should reasonably permit for some kind of refund. Maybe have some mechanism for deprecating the value of the service based on use – like, if you expect a typical online game to be online for 10 years and a user has used it for 5 and the service wants to change the EULA, mandate the option for a 50% refund in lieu of continued service under the new EULA or something.
That’d make games more expensive, but it’s a risk that companies could factor in when deciding on EULAs and the initial price.
That avoids the possibility of a bait-and-switch where you agree to one (acceptable) EULA, but then the vendor places you in a position of either agreeing to a new EULA or losing your money.
We already do things like that to evaluate how much an old vehicle is worth or how much life insurance is worth or something like that.
That being said, it’d also make games with an online service component more of a formal commitment than is the case today, in consumer law. As things stand, that’s mostly done on the on the honor system or via publishers being concerned about loss of reputation, and…honestly, I’d say that in general, that works pretty well. Companies don’t usually just immediately shut down service. But in order to do that, you’d have to have some kind of minimum concept of service that a consumer is actually expecting to get when they buy a game so that you can value how much of that service they actually received.
EDIT: Honestly, think that there’s a fair argument that games like that should make money via “microsubscriptions”. Like, the problem is more that people pay for an up-front game and get free bundled service rather than pay for service, so we have to come up with some kind of totally artificial value of how much the service is worth. You can’t have every game have a subscription as things stand…I mean, game publishers are not gonna take subscription fees of 50 cents each month for a game, because the transaction costs will kill them, though that might well otherwise be perfectly profitable and a viable way to make money. Hmm. Maybe someone like Steam could aggregate subscription fees from all users on Steam, then dole out the subscription to the game services that a given user subscribes to.
Just start sending your own terms back to them. They accepted the terms and provided the thing? Great!
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hopefully a class action lawsuit in the making. i wouldnt think doing this would hold up in court would it? INAL tho
Worthless company. Hope they go bankrupt.
They’re not worthless, I would love to take ownership and sell it for a pretty penny
Nothing of value will be lost when Blizzard files for chapter 13 ;)
This seems to be the new norm, first Roku, now Blizzard.
I haven’t watched Louis’ video, but I do have a Blizzard account, and up until a couple of days ago I had an active WoW subscription (ended because I wanted to play other games, not to make a point).
I didn’t get presented with any new terms recently, presumably I will in the future should I decide to sign up again, or even dip in on a free trial account.
I did look up the terms though. I’m not in the US so it’s not clear if I’d be bound by it anyway but not only do they have an opt-out clause (11.A.vi) they’re actually less egregious than some EULAs, allowing opt-out via email, rather than requiring a mailed in letter (Roku) and being prominently highlighted at the top.
Lot of folks here dreaming about them going bankrupt, I have to say, I think that’s wishful thinking. The current WoW expansion has been very successful with the highest signups and retention in a long time as they’ve apparently figured out what players actually want. Even without their other IP’s they’re doing ok.
“Maybe if Activision gets bought by Microsoft, Blizzard won’t be as scummy.”
Hahaha, nope.
Between the company rape culture and enabling internet & gambling addiction, Blizzard is dead to me.
Support your local private servers.
Have you found any good private server sublemmies? Whatever we’re calling them?
If you build it, they will come.
deleted by creator
Communities.
Idk if there are any sublemmys for it but I’ll take this time to recommend the private server I’ve been enjoying for the last year. Wow-hc is a small tight knit community, we just cleared molton core a couple weeks ago and are slowly progressing through the content. It’s very blizzlike and the dev is active and fixes problems very fast. I know hardcore wow isn’t for everyone but deaths can be appealed in the event of disconnects and bugs which is what drew me to it, where other private servers if the server crashes you are just out of luck.
Darth Vader would be proud…
