New website provides online opt-out services for game EULAs

@(Unverified)
How? Especially when you waive your right to do so?

@dragonandante

You can easily state you did not understand what you were agreeing to (as long as that's provable). Not to mention, many minors agree to EULAs on a daily basis which of course voids it. There is also the argument that "my lawyer wasn't present." etc. I'm using extremely loose and lay-mans terms here but there are many loopholes in a EULA.

@dragonandante

As I understand it, Eula's aren't generally accepted as legally binding in most countries around the world. However a lot of this is down to them not being legally challenged. Then again I'm no lawyer.

Still, I wasn't aware that by signing up to these services I was forgoing my right to take legal action against these companies if they were, in some way to damage me through negligence. Mind you, the only thing I can think of right now is a failure to keep whatever data, personal or financial I might give them secure as the only real cause I might have for this sort of thing.

It's a pretty damn sneaky thing for EA and co to do, though hardly surprising. Still, I'm in no rush to hand over my log-in details to some website purporting to be acting in my interests that I never heard of before. It's not exactly reassuringly convincing that the second question they ask is Account Name.

@dragonandante
Federal laws protect consumers from just such clauses. They have been deemed unenforceable in the past due to the way they leave the consumers helpless in the face of product failure or lack of service delivery or in the most recent cases failure to protect customer data. (I'm looking at you SOE, yes, yes i am.)

@dragonandante

EULA's, in part or in whole, can be dismissed by a judge if they're considered unreasonable.

@Ceridith

Don't know how it is in USA , but in Poland , this kind of 'lawsuit prevention' won't work at all. Country law have always priority over things like that , besides if deal is deemed 'unfair' and in this case it is , those unfair parts of deal are null and void.

So EA, Blizzaerd , Sony or whoever can write whatever they want , even that I have to give them my kidney , that does not mean that it will hold ANY legal significance at all...

@Ceridith

Didn't Blockbuster try something similiar to Sony, and end up getting sued for doing it? Basically they've changed the rules of their services, and demand you accept, even though those binding terms weren't in the first contract you signed anyway when you originally bought and used the system. Had Sony had their current EULA, I would have never bought the PS3 in the first place.

I'm tired of companies trying to find legally binding ways of screwing their public. If they screw up, if they leave their defenses EASILY compromisable, if they LOSE YOUR PRIVATE INFORMATION, then you SHOULD be able to sue them. This is literally trying to destroy all forms of ability for a customer to protect themselves from the malpractice of a company. Shouldn't the Better Business Bureau intervene? Where the hell is the law to protect a company from holding your freaking console hostage when they change the terms on you?

We're not talking a single game, we're talking a $500 piece of junk that will lose ALL of it's online gaming functionality because you don't want to give Sony the ability to do whatever they want to you, whenever they want, and accept no responsibility when they DO screw up.

@dragonandante
Easily.

Imagine if there is a clause that states said company gains ownership of your firstborn or that under some circumstance you can be enslaved.

Illegal is illegal, legal is legal. No amount of words + signature can change such things.

dragonandante is right here. It was a recent supreme court decision and what Sony and EA are pulling is inspired by that decision. It gives them something to argue in court. If you think these changes in the EULAs can't do anything then you are incredibly mistaken. They are however not 100% solid and might not be upheld by the courts. My understanding is that you will see many more of them in the near future.

@dragonandante An ELUA is basically just a click-through. It's impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you as the registered account holder accepted the terms. It's possible, however unlikely, that your pet CAT could have accepted the terms. To say nothing of an over-eager nephew, daughter, neighbor or friend who was using your computer while you were out of the room.

Without an actual signature in ink or witnesses, it's difficult (if not impossible) to say who clicked the accept button. That's not even touching on the potential for lawsuits on other grounds or in jurisdictions where you simply can't sign away your right to be party to a class or suit.

@FrostPaw And they're getting more sophisticated, too. I've been getting quite a lot of very real and professional looking e-mails from "Blizzard" to please come try out Cataclysm. Flawless English and all. But when I then check where the e-mails are coming from, 9 out of 10 times it's some IP address in China or Korea.

On topic: I always thought those game EULAs were in no way, shape or form legally binding to begin with anyway.

@rockman0

That's what Sony does, actually. They delete your account and shut you off from online, effectively destroying any ability to use any of the online-only games you may have purchased. I'm under the assumption that, if they could, if you disagreed, they could just brick your PS3, and take the entire thing away from you.

@LaughingTarget Have you been keeping up with the news lately? The Supreme Court killed class-action lawsuits by consumers. You can still sue individually but can't harm the big corporations, not even nearly as you would otherwise. Just in June they blocked a massive class-action lawsuit against Walmart on behalf of 1.5m females if I remember correctly.