Blizzard locks you out of account if you don't agree to new terms; no ownership, forced arbitration
Blizzard locks you out of account if you don't agree to new terms; no ownership, forced arbitration
Blizzard locks you out of account if you don't agree to new terms; no ownership, forced arbitration
It kind of blows my mind that forced arbitration is legal at all.
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.
I see 1 class action where the consumers get screwed and the company gets a slap on the wrist
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.
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.
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
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.
Corporations are people and they have so much more money and time to fund their interests than individuals do.
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.
"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?
Communities.
If you build it, they will come.
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.
First Roku did a quick force TOS change before a beach disclosure, now Blizzard is mysteriously forcing a change to their TOS. I have no idea what's coming next. Seems like it's going to become part of the breach playbook to minimize financial loss. Maybe there will be a law against it in... oh...15 years?
So i'm not a lawyer but isn't there a law for unconsciability, When a contract is so one-sided, it's obvious that me the signer has absolutely no rights.The entire contract is voided.
EULAs and TOSes are as legally binding as a secondhand piece of toiletpaper with a contract written in shit. Almost every single one will be thrown out in court. The problem is getting to that point in the first place, and incurring the (time, effort & money) costs while enduring. Most common people can't afford that, which the companies know, so they keep making unenforceable EULAs.
I guess in return the signer gets the service?
Let me laugh if Blizzard's TOS change is because of a security breach they haven't disclosed yet.
Roku bought a beach?
In Arizona.
Is the beach the place where the breach happened?
my vizio has been stuck on a tos update acceptance screen since about the time of the recent roku shit. i haven't had the time to deal with it, so it's just been turned off.
Roku wasn't breached. They reported that a bunch of people who had reused passwords from other breached sites were compromised.
So you have all users sign a new TOS to force a password change? I'm not seeing the connection.
If I don't own the product after purchase, the button shouldn't say "buy/purchase" it should say "rent".
That’s the hilarious(ly depressing) thing about buying a digital movie, for example, to me.
If you rent it, you get it for a certain amount of time.
If you ‘buy’ it, you also rent it, just for an undisclosed amount of time that they may or may not retroactively take away from you at any point with no warning or compensation.
Your use of the Platform is licensed, not sold, to you, and you hereby acknowledge that no title or ownership with respect to the Platform or the Games is being transferred or assigned and this Agreement should not be construed as a sale of any rights.
From the Blizz terms.
WoW has always revolved around having a server handle everything and your client is just the textures/models viewer where you tell the server what to do, I have been fine with this. But I do agree, it should say something else on the button. Other games that are not MMO shouldn't be a "license" to play. If you buy it, you can play it whenever and wherever. Features that are not multiplayer should work regardless. Some things just shouldn't be tied to a server. I really despise modern gaming because of this.
Anecdotal experience: Gran Turismo Sport recently lost its servers. When they went down, the Mileage Exchange shop went with it. This means all the cosmetics for cars. and a few unique cars, are now unobtainable for future players. PD could have patched the shop to be a complete list of everything and you buy it with the plethora of points you will collect in the future as you race. But no, they didn't.
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.
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/yuu78kqd
Both 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:
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:
Just start sending your own terms back to them. They accepted the terms and provided the thing? Great!
Hopefully the lesson people are slowly learning is to walk away from these systems.
It's not that easy. My Blizzard account is over 10 years old - never thought they'd go down hill so much. What's the solution, to never create accounts online anywhere? Even if a service looks good and you support it, a corporation like Activision can come along and have their asshole CEO infect everything.
Walking away from my account now means throwing away a lot of money spent on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
a sunk cost is a sum paid in the past that is no longer relevant to decisions about the future.
So due to sunk cost the better choice is to continue supporting bad behavior?
I played Vanilla WoW a week after launch and was with it all the way up through Cataclysm Mists. After hearing about the multiple shocking incidences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Blizzard and upper management's unwillingness to stop it, it was quite easy to delete my Battle.net account and walk away. (Yeah I hadn't played in a while, but I'd intended to come back eventually.)
There are plenty of other games out there. You vote with your dollars, and your vote shows your character.
What’s the solution, to never create accounts online anywhere?
Yes. I buy all my games either as physical releases on consoles or DRM-free on PC. If a game requires an account to play, I won't play it.
I walked away from my account with the Hong Kong stuff after spending an uncomfortable amount on Overwatch. Every decision they've made since then has made writing it off easier. I still have my Starcraft and Brood War discs, I enjoyed my time with WoW, but I don't see a reality where I turn back to Blizzard without huge internal changes.
It's no solution but the takeaway is this is always a possibility and maybe even inevitable.
I was playing WoW since 2005, just have to walk away. I left the game, and all Blizzard products, as they have just gone to absolute garbage.
There are better games out there.
This is what a vocal minority have been saying for years, but no one cares.
Don't use McDonalds or TB app anymore. Praying Dunkin don't pull this bs. Every few times I go to McDs and they ask I wanna respond, "no cause forced arbitration is dumb for just a hamburger"
And the cashier would have no fucking clue 😂
I understand why Louis likes privacy.com so much. But he really needs to stop telling people to use them as a means of stopping payment with scummy vendors and companies so frivolously without having a disclaimer that it can open that person up to getting their credit dinged for non-payment.
Maybe he doesn't care about such things, but his viewers might.
To get around the Blizzard dark pattern the "right way", agree to the EULA, login, cancel subscriptions, remove payment details, close account (if possible), stop using Battle.net, done. Now the EULA is irrelevant. This also has the knock on effect of being the path that Blizzard/Activision/MS will actually notice since it will cost them money at scale in a way they can't explain away as childish internet trolling.
Edit: a word (irreverent > irrelevant)
Now the EULA is irreverent.
True, but I think you meant "irrelevant".
Indeed I did sir/madam
I support this. Sadly I'm not subscribed but wish I was just so I could cancel 🥲
I can’t think of any reason why it would be inadvisable to cut off billing to an MMO subscription that was connected to a privacy.com card. Is there any basis for your concern? Do you know of someone who had “prevented Blizzard from billing them for WoW” on their credit report?
I can’t say I’ve ever had an MMO subscription - or any prepaid account, for that matter - show up on my credit report. Or that I know anyone who has. Even prepaid credit cards don’t show up on your credit report.
If a game, site, or app subscription fails to bill, the recourse the provider has is to cease providing the service. Standard industry practice is to suspend service and send out a notice, attempt re-billing a couple times, and to them consider the subscription canceled.
A debt can show up on your credit report, even if it’s not associated with a loan or line of credit… But with a prepaid account, like an MMO subscription, you’re never extended credit and you never incur a debt. The exception would be if you signed a contract for your prepaid account stating that you’d maintain it for a certain amount of time (common with phone plans, internet plans, leases, some shady gym memberships, etc.) or you caused damages to the provider. Without such an agreement, there are no damages from just causing them to be unable to continue billing your credit card. If you were paying by check or disputed an already posted payment, that would be different - but neither of those are relevant here.
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.
This seems to be the new norm, first Roku, now Blizzard.
Worthless company. Hope they go bankrupt.
They're not worthless, I would love to take ownership and sell it for a pretty penny
I have less reasons to feel bad about pirating everything day by day
How can they "force" anything if you dont sign? By not agreeing to new terms.. you dont agree to the terms. Wouldnt having it any other way just be insanity? Like i could write "contract" here that by viewing it you agree to it and if you dont agree, i could still claim that some part of it applies because it reads so in the contract. Or I have some other contract that is agreeable and someone signs it, then I change the terms and other party can't reject them all because of something in the first contract.
Internet companies usually have clauses that they can terminate the agreement at any time for any reason, including "because they feel like it". They usually don't have to tell you why, either.
Same deal with all the "licensing" things and "digital goods ownership". In two words: you don't.
But it's been that way for ages.
Especially if it's something free or subscription based. It's just a "our rules have changed, if you don't like it stop using it/paying for it"
It's get very dodgy when it's a physical thing you've bought like that Roku agreement a few weeks back, but I doubt they'll let that stop them.
People don’t read the contracts, so companies just exploit that habit.
As my lawyer used to tell me, "there is the contract and there is the law." Meaning anyone can say anything in a contract. If you have the legal ability you can find out what the law says about it.
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.
k, I'll continue to not ever buy their games
hopefully a class action lawsuit in the making. i wouldnt think doing this would hold up in court would it? INAL tho
Common Blizzard L
Let your House of Representative member know that you do not want forced arbitration.
That's very Roku of them
Don't buy games from such vultures
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
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.
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.
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?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/5YU8xw_Q_P8?si=-tfKQX43lds7yGBE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Hmm, now if they were forced to export your data, if you don't agree.
Btw, there should really be some sort of legal "usage license" you can use with other providers, since you don't own the game you buy. If not, it's just a scam.
OMG, Blizzard?! How could they?!? -.-
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.
Nothing of value will be lost when Blizzard files for chapter 13 ;)
Darth Vader would be proud...
Praise Microsoft
Well you don't own the games and they are just games