EA can ban you from all Origin games if you don’t report bugs in SimCity beta
By Tim Colwill on January 21, 2013 at 2:38 pm
A post on SideQuesting points out that the End User License Agreemen for EA’s SimCity beta test contains some objectionable clauses, including this one which means EA can ban you from all game, forever, if you don’t report a bug you found.
“It is understood and agreed that, as part of your participation in the Beta Program, it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found (“Bugs”),” reads section 6.2.
“If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products.”
So there you go. EA has yet to issue an official comment on the matter, and it’s likely this is just a catch-all clause that allows them to retrospectively punish you if you let an exploit make it into the final game — but it’s still a little bit ominously worded and terrifying.
Source: SideQuesting via Blue’s News
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Anyone else thinking the Battlefield 4 Beta is going to be EA wondering around with their ban hammer smacking people for using unbalanced guns?
Annd.. now I’m not doing it – assuming I even get in the beta. As for Battlefield 4.. it’s going to be more of the same crap BF3 is no doubt.
Wow people do like fishing through those EULAs to find something ‘scary’.
The presence of anything in the EULA does not mean it will, or even legally can be, enforced.
Not sure if I understand this correctly, but since no money is changing hands for the beta testing, it’s fairly weak ground for enforcing any kind of agreement anyway.
DAE HATE EA?!
Seems fair enough I think, I am no EA lover but they have a right to set some terms to your Beta acceptance, and should you choose to take part then you should be expected to carry your end of the deal.
People seem to treat Betas as a free ride these days, like a meaningless demo of an unfinished product when really there is a task at hand and a reason for the Beta.
In all honesty the chances on them enacting a totally account ban/lockout are stupidly small and it is more a warning to those that seek to exploit the Beta. People just like to beat it up into something much bigger and get a hate train started
Somehow, I think this would go against the EULA for Origin in general. I can tell if they DID do this unfairly to people, EA would really be up shit creek without a paddle, and a potential disaster for business.
Steam reserve the right to block you from accessing your account for a variety of BS reasons, seems pretty similar to me? They are just covering their arses in the event they do decide to ban someone for exploiting a bug, which is very unlikely.
At least this way I suppose that it will encourage Beta testers to actually Beta test as it once was, as opposed to what Beta testing is now days ie – play the game before others for bragging rights, head starts on retail or as a glorified demo.
Just look at WoW’s past 3 expansions, massive Beta tests that pretty much full of people who just wanted to be “first” at whatever – world first chasers etc.. Not much bug reporting going on outside of the few who did participate to test.
To get a ban though you would have to be obviously be known to have exploited things, first few days of retail will show that though as soon as people suddenly have mega cities that function flawlessly with cash flowing everywhere I imagine.
ooshp,
Doesn’t mean they wont enforce it. It’s all well and good to say “it can’t be enforced here” but EA still may ban you from all your purchased games. Then ultimately you are left with no games anyway while trying to tell EA’s customer service that it is illegal in your part of the world.
Mainly because that’s what EA seems to treat their betas as.
Can they actually lock you out of all games you purchase? I’m sure it’s in the Origin EULA that they can, but would that stand up anywhere?
The problem is it would cost a ton of money to have overturned in court, despite being obviously illegal here.
Theyre betting on people not wanting to bother with a court case, where you have to pay everyones legal fees if you lose, and waste an absurd amount of your time to boot.
The good thing about stand-alone games is the consumer doesn’t have to worry about this EULA crap they change on their whim for their advantage.
To threaten unrelated game access is way over the line.
Once upon a time people were employed to beta test and they actually looked for bugs as part of their job. Companies that want random people to do free beta testing get what they pay for, random people, randomly sending in bug reports, if they feel like it.
Companies are all about the stick and no carrot. If they want better bug reporting, give people a carrot, do not belt people with a stick.
Not sure how the beta invites work or Origin, but what is stopping people from creating a few new Origin accounts and exploiting the hell out of it. The more accounts the more chances of an invite?
Um… pretty much every Beta ULA says you HAVE to report bugs, so I am not sure why your all complain about it… In fact that’s WHY THEY DO BETAS. I mean, really? OH NOS IF I DON’T DO WHAT I AGREED I WOULD DO IN THE BETA THEY WILL BAN MES! lol. your all wimps.
See that post above you? that’s why. We’re not being payed to test THEIR beta, we’re HOPEFULLY not paying them for it either. If they want real testing, they need to get off their money grubbing rear ends and actually hire people. It’s not we’re wimps, its EA are as lazy as a fat bloke on a rascal scooter. (see South Park for my reference)
Thats a bit unfair
Hold on a second chaps, my read on this is that if you find a bug that can be exploited (say, a glitch that lets you create free money or cost-less buildings) and you keep that to yourself, you can get banned.
I don’t see that as unreasonable. “I’ll let you play my beta-game on the condition that you help me uncover possible exploits. If you do not help me with this, I reserve the right to not have you play my game.”
I can already hear the inevitable backlash from banned players, “I had no idea that using this little trick I found to get free buildings was a bug, I thought it was part of the mechanics?”
Of course, this really only makes sense if it can somehow impact another player’s gameplay (and the game is always Online so that may be possible). If not, then cost-less buildings or whatever else used to be achieved by in-game cheats so I hardly think it fair that players can’t have the same. It’s like DICE saying you can’t use a colour saturation mod in BF3, or as I prefer to think of it, “a game that kind of originally grew from a mod anyway”.
Well when you enter a beta you expect bugs, and are playing the game to test it so when it is released its an overall better experience (in a bug free manner). Its obviously aimed at people that find bugs and exploit them, so i say its fair enough
Murray Hibble,
While the hypothetical you posted is relatively reasonable, it seems to place a very high burden on the playeres. What if somebody encounters a bug without knowing it? Or they find a bug and forget to submit it? If the EULA is enforced as its written it seems like it will catch a lot of innocent playtesters in its dragnet.
Murray Hibble,
Mods are a “Bad Thing” as far as EA are concerned, if observing their total lack of giving a crap about the community around their games is any indication. I think mods are awesome, but EA at the very least don’t support them, or downright discourage them. Of course, real game companies have different attitudes, so…
That and you can’t use dedicated servers with EA games these days, so no room for using a mod between players for one match.
FYI they reserve the right to lock your Origin account and all your games on that account, not just the beta game.
I would say fair enough, locking you out of the beta for abusing the beta, but draw the line when you lose all your paid games.
You missed my point.
EVERY beta has something like that in it. EVERY SINGLE ONE. But they have never acted on it. So, really, its just EA trying to scare people. Its not a big deal. It never will be a big deal. The only reason it is one now is because silly people make a big fuss about it.
How can this remotely surprise anyone, its EA… they make even SOE look like pillars of virtue an intelligence.
To paraphrase a bunch of people here, “blah blah blah, systems like Steam and Origin are wonderful in every respect, stop whinging”.
This is one of many reasons why always on, net connected DRM is terrible. Why the hell should EA have any power to reach into your PC and disable software you have paid for the right to use simply because they don’t like how you’re using other, unrelated software? Without these types of DRM frameworks, they wouldn’t be able to do that.
Well put.
Meh. SimCity was off my radar anyway.
Why is it my job to do their job? and oh, whoops, didn’t do my job so well so, yeah, you know those other games we sold you, well, yeah, good payment for doing their job.
That is an opinion based on no fact at all. The SimCity mod community is incredibly dedicated and very hard-working and EA have acknowledge this on many occasions.
People seem to forget: if you are not paying a service than it is you that is being sold…
And EA has backpedalled and changed the beta EULA.
EA seriously need to fire their legal team and get a new one that looks at how these EULAs can be interpreted before signing off on them.
I would see the SimCity community as being a special case, as preventing them from creating that kind of content would be a dealbreaker to a lot of people. With the majority of EA games, they have made little to no effort at all to embrace community content such as mods, especially with the cross-platform games. Although Dragon Age was a welcome exception, Dragon Age 2 and the Mass Effect series are not exceptions, requiring significant work to modify those games at all.
Perhaps it was too much to say that EA dislike and discourage mods in general, but they usually don’t do anything to encourage it. And it is NOT an opinion based on no fact at all, it’s based on my personal experience with EA games.
I know that EA have already clarified this, but I just wanted to say that there’s such a negative view of corporations in public life. Yes, corporations want to make money from you, No, a corporation will not ban you from Origin for failing to report a bug that you didn’t even notice.
No, Origin doesn’t want to ban you so you have to re-buy your games catalogue. That kind of thing is the worst possible publicity. All corporations need to tread the line between profitable growth and customer satisfaction. Gaming in particular is a volatile market with a lot of competition, any company that truly did what most people in these comments think EA intended would simply not survive.
I work for a bank and I hear all the time from customers that their payment/refund/transaction/whatever has been delayed so we can use that money ‘on the short term market’. Apart from the illegality of doing so, I’m just aghast that someone would think I’d work for a company that would do something so abhorrently evil with their customers trust and money.