EA: banning you from games you purchased for negative forum posts

[Nik]

Why don't you try and get back to us?

 

[Nik]

I'd like to see Nik request a EULA from EA and see how long it takes for him to get it, if he receives it at all.

Actually, took me 14 seconds to type ea.com, click support, type in eula, and click the first result

http://support.ea.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2096/kw/eula

EA TOOLS END USER LICENSE Electronic Arts Inc, and its subsidiaries, affiliates and licensors(collectively, "EA") grants you a non-transferable non-exclusive license to download and/or install and use one copy of the software tool ("Tool") and/or materials ("Materials") (collectively the "Tools & Materials") solely for your personal noncommercial use in connection with EA's products, in accordance with the terms below.EA owns all of the rights, title and interest in the Tools & Materials. You may not alter any of EA's trademarks or logos, or alter or remove any of EA's trademark or copyright notices included in or with the Tools & Materials or EA's products. Your right to use Tools & Materials is limited to the license grant above, and you may not otherwise copy, display, distribute, perform, publish, modify, create works from, or use any of the Tools & Materials. Without limiting the preceding sentence, you may not modify, reverse engineer, disassemble, license, transfer, distribute, create works from, or sell the Tool, or use the Tools & Materials to further any commercial purpose. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use the Tools & Materials to promote another product or business, or on any site that operates or promotes a server emulator. You may include materials created with the Tools & Materials on your personal noncommercial website for the noncommercial benefit of the fan community for EA's products and provided that if you do so, you must also post the following notice on your site on the same web page(s) where those materials are located:"This site is not endorsed by or affiliated with Electronic Arts, or its licensors. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Game content and materials copyright Electronic Arts Inc. and its licensors.
"All Rights Reserved." You will not represent that your site is endorsed or approved by or affiliated with EA or our licensors or that any other content on your site is endorsed or approved by or affiliated with EA or our licensors.

THESE TOOLS & MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. EA SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
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At EA's request, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless EA from all liabilities, claims and expenses, including attorneys' fees,
arising from any breach of this License by you and/or your use or misuse of the Tools &Materials. EA may make the Tools & Materials available at its site(s) located in the United States and/or Canada and/or the European Union. You are solely responsible for knowing and complying with all federal, state, and local laws that may apply to your use of Tools & Materials in your own locale. By downloading any Tools & Materials, you warrant that you are not located in any country, or exporting the Tools & Materials to any person or place, to which the United States and/or Canada and/or European Union or its member countries has embargoed goods.EA may revoke or terminate this license at any time, for any reason or no reason, in its sole discretion. Upon termination, you must destroy or return to EA all Tools & Materials. This License is governed by United States Copyright and California law (without regard to conflicts of law), and is the entire agreement between EA and you regarding the Tools & Materials.

You have accepted these terms by installing the software.

You were saying?

 

[simonizor]

No one's forcing him to purchase the game.

No one's forcing him to purchase from Best Buy, since there are other options available.

The EULA is available from the company prior to purchase.

You lose.

If there's something about EA's EULA that you'd like to know, you should try educating yourself for a change instead of sitting there in your ignorance waiting for someone else to post the entire fucking thing and highlight it for your lazy ass.

You're just being an asshat. The average person that goes to buy a game knows nothing of EULAs or how to obtain them. They just want to play the game. Once they install the game and see this long page of ridiculous things that they have to agree to in order to play the game, they have basically no choice but to agree. The user cannot return the game, so the only choices are to let it sit there and collect dust, or accept the ridiculous agreement that says that the company has the right to take away their ability to play a game based upon something that they type.

It's bullshit and even trying to defend it for a second just makes you look like a gigantic asshat. Like I said above, the average consumer has no freaking idea what a EULA is, so they aren't going to go out of their way to obtain one before purchasing every game. That's not reasonable. That's like saying that before you purchase food, you should have to go do research to find out what's in that food instead of having the place you purchased it from tell you what's in it.

Can you think of a single other product besides computer software that has an agreement that you have to agree to after you've purchased it and only once you try to use it?

 

[Nik]

The user being able to return the game or not is up to the selling establishment, NOT EA. As I've said, there ARE companies out there that WILL accept the game back and give you either cash or in-store credit.

Your argument is completely, 100% moot.

 

[Nik]

Interestingly enough, if you go somewhere, they're required by law to have nutritional information available upon request.

Walk in to a Burger King some time and ask for a nutritional fact sheet. The'll give you one. I had to do a 5 paragraph essay in high school about fast food nutrition and this is exactly what I did.

You were saying?

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I'm not defending the agreement, dipshit. I've said several times in this thread that I don't agree with that sort of activity. AGAIN, because you can't seem to REEEEEAAAAAD, it's their right to bar you from their servers if you act like a dick and if their games require server access to verify, you're shit out of luck and you reap what you sew.

Keep putting your fingers in your ears man that's how best to get through life; that you don't understand that you're in fact defending them is all the more sad. No amount of lalalala it's in the contract will actually make it hold up if challenged, which is why EA back track with claiming it was an accident so quickly. Other companies have gotten away with multiplayer bans because it's a service their actually providing, but with EA requiring it to play the game itself that they purchased it's just not going to work out for them in the end.

 

[Nik]

Keep putting your fingers in your ears man that's how best to get through life; that you don't understand that you're in fact defending them is all the more sad. No amount of lalalala it's in the contract will actually make it hold up if challenged, which is why EA back track with claiming it was an accident so quickly. Other companies have gotten away with multiplayer bans because it's a service their actually providing, but with EA requiring it to play the game itself that they purchased it's just not going to work out for them in the end.

You can say "you're defending them" until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't make your projection of your wanting me to be defending them any more true than it already isn't.

If you're so sure of yourself, click the class action lawsuit link above and get started. Since it's so clearly illegal, you'll be rich.

Come on, do it.

However, you know you won't, because you know you're wrong and I've proven it by finding and quoting EA's eula that you simply refuse to accept. Unfortunately, no amount of tempter tantrum throwing by you or anyone else is going to change that EA's eula is legal and binding.

 

[simonizor]

Interestingly enough, if you go somewhere, they're required by law to have nutritional information available upon request.

Walk in to a Burger King some time and ask for a nutritional fact sheet. The'll give you one. I had to do a 5 paragraph essay in high school about fast food nutrition and this is exactly what I did.

You were saying?

That's exactly what I was saying. The EULA is not presented to you before you purchase the game. You have to go out of your way to obtain it if you want to know about it. That's exactly the opposite of what you have to do at a Burger King. If you were to walk in to a gamestop and ask them for a copy of the EULA for Need for Speed: Shift, they'd probably laugh you out of the store.

 

[Nik]

Yes it is provided for you prior to purchase.

I just proved that it is.

GameStop is not the NFS:Shift manufacturer and it is not their obligation to provide you with the EULA (though I'm pretty sure somebody there would tell you that you can get it from the manufacturer's website). If I went to some guy on the street who has 100 burgers from BK and is reselling them and I asked him for nutritional info, he'd refer me to BK.

 

[Nik]

And, before you say yet another dumbass comment about how the end user can't possibly know ahead of time, here's BK's nutritional info. You don't even have to leave the house to get it.

http://www.bk.com/en/us/menu-nutrition/index.html

 

[simonizor]

Yes it is provided for you prior to purchase.

I just proved that it is.

GameStop is not the NFS:Shift manufacturer and it is not their obligation to provide you with the EULA (though I'm pretty sure somebody there would tell you that you can get it from the manufacturer's website).

That's not the point you fucking dolt. The point is that when you go to someplace like Burger King, the information is provided for you DIRECTLY AT THE POINT OF PURCHASE. When you go to a gamestop, walmart, whateverthefuckplaceyoubuyyourfuckingvideogamesat, there is absolutely no place to read the EULA DIRECTLY AT THE POINT OF PURCHASE. You have to go on the internet or call EA or something to that extent to obtain it. If you can't understand why that's not the same, then I'm not going to waste my finger strength here any more.

You're obviously too caught up in your argument to realize how ridiculous it is.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

That seems to be a EULA for something called "EA Tools," which I think is just that little program many of their games uses to configure settings and provide limited troubleshooting. See, even you don't know what EULAs you are agreeing to.

The real troublesome issue that this thread is tackling is the wholesale ability for them to deny your ability to use software you've already paid for for CoC bans. I don't think it's right that forum violations can cause you to lose you EA *online* access, but fine, I can see it their way on that. But a forum violation causing an EA account ban that removes your access to to not only all paid DLC for one particular game, but all games linked to the account? That is absolutely absurd.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

That's not the point you fucking dolt. The point is that when you go to someplace like Burger King, the information is provided for you DIRECTLY AT THE POINT OF PURCHASE. When you go to a gamestop, walmart, whateverthefuckplaceyoubuyyourfuckingvideogamesat, there is absolutely no place to read the EULA DIRECTLY AT THE POINT OF PURCHASE. You have to go on the internet or call EA or something to that extent to obtain it. If you can't understand why that's not the same, then I'm not going to waste my finger strength here any more.

You're obviously too caught up in your argument to realize how ridiculous it is.

Not to mention the obvious differences between requesting nutritional information and agreeing to a legal document.

 

[Nik]

That seems to be a EULA for something called "EA Tools," which I think is just that little program many of their games uses to configure settings and provide limited troubleshooting. See, even you don't know what EULAs you are agreeing to.

The real troublesome issue that this thread is tackling is the wholesale ability for them to deny your ability to use software you've already paid for for CoC bans. I don't think it's right that forum violations can cause you to lose you EA *online* access, but fine, I can see it their way on that. But a forum violation causing an EA account ban that removes your access to to not only all paid DLC for one particular game, but all games linked to the account? That is absolutely absurd.

Blah blah blah, EA's referring to all of their products. That's why "ea tools" isn't the only software product mentioned in the fucking eula.

Keep in mind that EA said their system made a mistake by banning him from playing the game itself and they corrected the mistake.

FUCKING READ.

 

[Nik]

Not to mention the obvious differences between requesting nutritional information and agreeing to a legal document.

The correlation is nothing more than "I am uninformed about a product I wish to purchase, how do I solve that problem."

I'm not relating buying food and a legal agreement in any other way.

Do you guys actually make an effort to be this stupid?

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Do you guys actually make an effort to be this stupid?

Do you?

 

[Maximilian]

The correlation is nothing more than "I am uninformed about a product I wish to purchase, how do I solve that problem."

I'm not relating buying food and a legal agreement in any other way.

Do you guys actually make an effort to be this stupid?

Its pathetic the length you are going to defending the flawed practice of banning people from games based on forum conduct... pathetic... :thumbsdown:

 

[Ross Ridge]

Do you guys actually make an effort to be this stupid?

Good thing you're not posting this on the EA forums. The moderators here are more tolerant and the consequences less severe.

 

[destrekor]

I don't understand how people are crying "is this legal?!" over this.

Multiplayer content is a feature of the license and content. Almost every single game that has multiplayer, the license agreement clearly states that any specific features are not required of them to be supported or provided to you indefinitely. That alone frees them to restrict your access when it comes to interactions with the gaming community. What you say in game can get your MP access banned, and is that really all that different from what is likely getting people banned [from MP access] based upon forum posts?

No developer or publisher has ever been required to maintain support of any single feature or product.

Just because it may be common expectations, does not mean you should assume you are granted natural rights to multiplayer content. It may be the common attraction, but it requires more of their effort over the long-run to maintain that feature. Since it is a feature composed of controlled systems under their control or guidance, it is a commodity you are "licensed" for a time, that, legally binding, is entirely determined by the provider of said commodity.

They can't legally restrict access to the content they don't control, i.e. local content (unless you abuse your license, which is a different matter and a little more messy)... but metered content, clearly defined in the terms of the license, they can legally ban you.

 

[taltamir]

I don't understand how people are crying "is this legal?!" over this.

Multiplayer content is a feature of the license and content.

Reread the thread.
The things people are saying are illegal are:
1. When EA bans you from their DISCUSSION FORUMS it DISABLES your ability to play your SINGLE PLAYER games because their DRM is linked to your forum account
2. If you buy the game at a store, there is no mention of EULA anywhere, when you take it home, open the box, and begin the installer THEN and only then do you see the EULA. If you refuse the EULA you cannot return the game, so they keep your money and you don't get to play the game.
3. The EULA contains a small print clause that says that they may change it at will and by agreeing to the current version you agree to any future changes they make to it.

 

[disappoint]

If I ever work for EA I'm gonna sneak in "EA reserves the right to your spleen for any reason." I expect Nik's spleen to arrive in a ziplock bag in a cooler packed in ice if he gets banned for posting the word "boo" on the EA forums.

 

[Nik]

Its pathetic the length you are going to defending the flawed practice of banning people from games based on forum conduct... pathetic... :thumbsdown:

Flawed logic. EA said the action was a MISTAKE and they CORRECTED the mistake.

 

[Larries]

Just curious, has any software company EULA been tested positive in court that they can, at their own discretion, revoke the "license" that the consumer paid for?

I remembered there was a ruling on someone reselling used license, but cannot remember the results.

 

[Howard]

You know how in real life if you were standing next to the guy and you made a not so nice comment about him and he turns to you and punches you in the face? Well, that is what happened to this guy. EA turned to him online and punched him in the face. Not saying I support EA (because I think it way over reacted) but that is what happens when you break their EULA and insult them in a forum. Just because something is online or in public does not give you complete immunity under the constitution.

This post is so stupid.

*wasted my once-a-month post in PC Gaming for this*

 

[JEDIYoda]

It's in their EULA, but i'm wondering how it could stand up in court... it's dumb because you give them your money first before you agree to the EULA.


__________________

Doesn`t matter how it would stand up in court.
Its their site they are the supreme masters!!