EA recants on company-wide ban for unreported SimCity bugs, changes EULA
By Tim Colwill on January 23, 2013 at 3:05 pm
EA has responded quickly to Monday’s news that users who failed to report SimCity beta bugs could be banned from all EA games.
“The clause in the EA Beta Agreement for the SimCity beta was intended to prohibit players from using known exploits to their advantage,” said an EA rep to Kotaku.
“However, the language as included is too broad. EA has never taken away access to a player’s games for failing to report a bug. We are now updating the Beta Agreement to remove this point.”
“Quite simply it’s not something we would ever do,” EA claimed in a follow-up comment. “Players don’t have anything to be concerned about there – just some language that was far too broad in the original agreement, and is being updated now.”
Source: Kotaku
SimCity Amusement Park expansion accidentally leaked, coming May 28
That sweet Ferris Wheel cash.
Will Wright speaks out about new SimCity, says server issues “inexcusable”
Wright sympathises with frustrated consumers.
SimCity 3.0 is coming, here’s what Maxis are planning to fix
Finally! No more backups on the highway.
You can use the following bbCode
[i], [b], [img], [quote], [url href="http://www.google.com/"]Google[/url]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
facebook
twitter
google+
rss
They only changed it because they got caught, they would be more than happy to take away all your rights if they could get away with it. :P
oh EA, I can’t stay mad at you.
Of course I don’t, and never will, have your “service” on my PC.
EA needs to fire their current legal team and bring in a new one that actually takes a good look at these EULAs and how they can be interpreted before signing off on them. I see this far too often.
They just need to change the EULA and say “don’t be a prick” and everything will be fine :D
Well they backed out of that pretty quick.
Meji EULA
If you are reading this you have bound yourself to the terms and conditions described within. Meji may ignore your post or comment (real or imagined) regardless of it being either factual or fictitious. Furthermore arbitrary restrictions will be placed upon offenders, co-offenders and/or potential offenders, most of which is largely unenforceable by Meji outside of Meji’s mind. Meji may choose to take your comments at face value or ascribe unintended meanings to your posts.
PalZer0,
Slight overreaction? How, exactly, has this actually affected anyone? Not at all.
Do you have any idea how boring it is reading one of those from start to finish? Now imagine writing one.
They’re mostly copy and paste jobbies that are adjusted when needed, or when some pedant actually picks up on stuff like this. Legal agreements are supposed to be scary anyway, otherwise we wouldn’t bother paying lawyers.
Company employs draconian EULA. Gaming community complains.
Company reacts to feedback in a positive way. Gaming community complains.
The issue is not that they’ve changed the EULA because of negative feedback. It’s that EA have done this multiple times which makes you wonder about the competence of their legal team.
How many blunders is it going to take before EA has to do a wholesale review of their legal team and their EULAs?
/shrugs
People can speculate till the cows come home about what really happened. Was that really the true intent? Or an accidental oversight?
In the end, it was picked up, corrected, and everything goes back to normal. And the world keeps turning.
Pretty much.
I actually think they’re being honest about it and it was just a wording issue. In the original article comments I said it was geared towards those who abuse exploits and don’t report them… I like being right.
ralphwiggum,
Again, my issue isn’t so much that it was picked up and corrected. It’s more to do with the fact that EA have been caught at least 3 times for having dodgy wording in their EULAs (at least twice for Origin, once for this). Given EA’s current form, I’m expecting them to get caught out a lot more often too.
How many wording blunders in EULAs is it going to take before EA does (or is forced to do) a full review of their legal team and EULAs? Surely you can’t get caught out that many times without facing some sort of scrutiny.
I guess the moral of the story is to not employ draconian EULAs.
Guys and girls, I think you’re missing the point. How many times has EA done stuff like this? I’m pretty certain that it’s all a part of their greater marketing plan. Put something shit in their EULA? If someone notices then it brings attention to their brand. If no-one does then they have a really shit reason to ban someone.
It’s all for the greater good…. the greater good!
LOL… I told you guys it would mean nothing.
Clearly you’ve never worked with lawyers before. Their job is to ensure that the company is protected six ways from Sunday from anything that might ever eventuate. Ever. This mentality leaks into everything they do and means that they word virtually everything broadly as a matter of course. Broad wording ensures that the company can be allowed to respond in any way they choose to. From the lawyer’s perspective, there’s nothing that compels the company to enforce every point of their EULA – so it’s just better to make broad sweeping statements and let the company decide what to actually do about a particular topic (in this case, a violation) if it ever comes up.
This was simply a matter of a lawyer speaking legalese and not really considering the ramifications for users if the wording was ever literally followed. Once again – EULAs are a device to protect the company, not the user – the lawyer isn’t paid to give a crap what you think.
Having said all that, EA noticed feedback about the wording and subsequently went back and told the lawyers to re-write it to read less draconian. Case closed. There’s no conspiracy here.