General Discussion

While attending the 2008 Indie MMO Developer's Conference in Minneapolis, Community Manager Laura Genender sat in on a round table discussion about the ever-popular End User License Agreement (EULA).

Every time I log into my MMO I’m faced with a wall of legal text, scrolling down for 5 long pages of information overload. Covering every topic from third-party software to account ownership rights to password protection, this EULA is your standard all-encompassing agreement between MMO provider and MMO players – but despite the fact that we click “I agree” buttons daily, how often do MMO players actually read through these endless License Agreements? And is it really worth it, considering the standard umbrella statements which leave the end user with little recourse?

This weekend at the Indie MMO Game Designer Conference, Erin Hoffman brought this discussion to the roundtable. Hoffman – a writer and game designer from philomathgames.com – is one of the leading forces behind Settlers of the New Virtual Worlds, an essay collection concerning player rights in virtual space and online games. Working in conjunction with Erik Bethke’s BetterEULA project (www.bettereula.com), Hoffman hopes to make the EULA more substantial and helpful to both developers and players.

Read it all here.

Hungry lawyers strike back! Another thing we have to thank WoW for - the game broth lawyers' attention to the market, showing potential money income.

lets see here, i have read my EULA's across all games a total of ZERO times. they are not negotiable, if they had a "play anyway" button maybe i would actually bother ;)

wow, a step ahead indeed for the players rights, but, even so, the so called CCP Steller Management is nothing more than a stop gap for CCP. They only put it in action, after they were found to have Devs/GMs who were not only playing Eve, but, were actually assisting certain corps and alliances and throwing the balance of the game off for regular players, even now, CCP staff have promised many things to help ALL players, but, have failed to keep those same promises for a certain core of the players, I do agree the game is more pvp than any other, but, in a great many cases, they always seem to have the pvp players better interest over the casual passive player. The old saying goes in Eve, you want to mine, then, we will allow you to have your ore stolen from you, but, hell with you if you for trying to defend your ore, or, your mission wrecks.

And, what about SWG, the casual way that SOE/LA entirely replaced the game play, just because they rewrote the EULA to thier liking. Absolutely no regard to players in any context, or, fairness to the players who wanted SOE/LA not to change the game play at all, but, in many forum posts only wanted SOE/LA to keep thier promises of fixing the game bugs, and advance the game play.

But, SOE/LA instead went ahead, and cared so little about thier own subscribers that they refused to believe that such an exudose from the game would happen, now, its 3 years, and they still are ignoring thier player base, all in the name of the EULA

Originally posted by Stradden

While attending the 2008 Indie MMO Developer's Conference in Minneapolis, Community Manager Laura Genender sat in on a round table discussion about the ever-popular End User License Agreement (EULA).

Every time I log into my MMO I’m faced with a wall of legal text, scrolling down for 5 long pages of information overload. Covering every topic from third-party software to account ownership rights to password protection, this EULA is your standard all-encompassing agreement between MMO provider and MMO players – but despite the fact that we click “I agree” buttons daily, how often do MMO players actually read through these endless License Agreements? And is it really worth it, considering the standard umbrella statements which leave the end user with little recourse?

This weekend at the Indie MMO Game Designer Conference, Erin Hoffman brought this discussion to the roundtable. Hoffman – a writer and game designer from philomathgames.com – is one of the leading forces behind Settlers of the New Virtual Worlds, an essay collection concerning player rights in virtual space and online games. Working in conjunction with Erik Bethke’s BetterEULA project (www.bettereula.com), Hoffman hopes to make the EULA more substantial and helpful to both developers and players.

Read it all here.

This is an important discussion.  EULA's and their uses and abuses unfortunately require some attention.

For instance, a EULA may say that a game company can make changes to their game over time.  Before agreeing, a player should know clearly what kind of changes the company is talking about.  Language like enhancement is used in some EULA's, but what does this mean?  What is a reasonable definition of enhancement?

Many would assume that enhancement means additional content, improved functionality, and modest modifications to game mechanics to improve the fun factor of a game.  Many would also assume that "fun factor" improvements would be made in consultation with player representatives.

All of these assumptions, however, were proven false in the test case of the New Game Enhancements released by SOE in their StarWars MMO.  Bear with me as I look at this historic example in light of the present context of this thread.

Did the new enhancements add content?  No, in fact they deleted a quest-line related to "unraveling the mystery of the jedi" that players had been working through, in some cases, for 2 years.  Also deleted were more than 20 professions that players had mastered over a 2 year period.  Is this an enhancement?  Many would argue no, but "enhancement" isn't clearly defined in the EULA.  Frankly, it should be.

Let's consider improved funtionality.  The new enhancements introduced new combat mechanics that simply didn't work.  You would click the icon, the timer on the icon would start, preventing you from using it again, but your character would not execute the skill.  Also, self-heal abilities would heal enemies as well as self.  Changes to the chat system rendered all players with multiple chat windows open unable to chat at all, and by some bizarre coding connection, also completely unable to move.  Players had to use the mail system to discover a work around, which we then shared with the developers.

Let's consider fun factor.  Is losing 2 years of quest progress and mastered professions fun?  What about combat functions that don't fire, heals that heal enemies, and being unable to chat or move?  These are of course rhetorical questions.

What about change made in consultation with player representatives?  No, this was all done secretly, and players were horribly surprised and disappointed.  This brings us to another abuse of EULAs by game companies, SOE in this case specifically.

SOE had just sold players a digital download expansion that included, among other things, new creatures for creature handlers to tame, and new loot for various professions.  Immediately after VISA payments for this expansion with these advertised features were finalized, SOE announced the new game enhancements.  These alleged "enhancements" removed the professions that could use the new loot and tame the new creatures.  In effect, the new features advertised and purchased, were rendered unuseable.  SOE's defence?  EULA.  They claimed the right to make changes to their game.  They used this alleged right to try to justify what has been called by many a blatant bait and switch, or more simply fraudulent advertising of game features that they knew they were going to delete immediately after purchase.

The fact the SOE offered refunds to all those who purchased the new expansion under false pretenses suggests that they were not entirely confident in their EULA defence.  I submit, however, that there should be no ambiguity on this point.  EULAs must be worded in such a way that they clearly cannot be used as a defense for fraud or false advertising.  "Enhancement" over time must be clearly defined so that players can make an informed choice about paying and/or playing.

Sadly, it is corporate abuses of EULAs that have made it necessary to examine this issue.  While I regret the time and energy this will require to address, it has become necessary.  I'm glad to see that this issue is being explored, and I hope that my comments may be helpful to the discussion.

You're not required to accept an EULA, but then you don't play. If you don't like the EULA, don't play, state you're not playing because the eula and spread the word to other players about the horrible rules they don't know they abide to. That's the best you can do.

And about the changes/enhancements, you must be young. Any contract you sign for power, internet, water, almost anything non specific, has a clause that states they can change it without refunding you, but at the time they change the contract, you have to sign it again, or stop using their service. That's how it goes. It's rare to find a contract/eula with a fair refunding policy.

EULA or not, RL is FFA PvP guys!  :P

The important thing to realize here, that these Eula's are contracts between you and the game company.  NO contract can violate state or federal laws.  With that in mind all you have to read some of these Eula's and laugh, because the lawyers writing them are quite evidently unaware of that fact.

Hence I don't pay too much attention to them much anymore.  Best to just use common sense, pretty evident what is wrong and what is right.

As to SOE's blatant attempt to use the Eula as a defense when it made the drastic change to SWG right after an expansion.  It would not hold up in court, that is why SOE backed down on the refunds.   Consumer protection laws would have made chop suey of their Eula if anyone brought a class action against them because you can't agree to a contract that violates such laws.   It makes the contract null and void.

EULAs are interesting beasts.  I know with Sword of the New World we spent about 3 months going through and writing, editing, re-writing and re-wording the EULA to make sure it fit Federal and International laws.  The biggest issue truely is 'ownership'.  Without our ownership clause I know we would have a lot of issues with removing players (even with it, there are myriad legal snaffoos with banning accounts).  The most important of which is not refunding an account blocked for violation of policies.

As a player I understand that there are rules and if I break said rules I lose my rights to any monies I spent on the game.  As a publisher this is critical since it opens up a whole can of legal worms.  Which is why the 'ownership' clause is important.

As far as content changes, I do feel that certain major changes deserve a refund but others do not.  We are not going to give you a refund because we nerfed a class (especially one that was clearly overpowered).  But when we made our move to Free2Play we did MAJOR compensations and infact refunded players who were no longer going to be playing our game due to the change.  But in reality that is more of a courtesy thing.  It is understandable that a major change like that would require fair compensation and sometimes full refund.  Unfortunately not every company is willing to make consessions for their players and that doesn't really have anything to do with a EULA, that has to do with basic customer satisfaction.