EULA: Time For Change

[________Rentrenegade]

For those who haven't read the first section of the EULA. Primarilly directed at those of you who have a sister or brother playing on the same account as you.

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I don't see any reason why I should have to get two accounts to play this game if another family member were to play. I'm paying for the account, so why should I need to pay for a second account? In the EULA it says that only one person has the ability to play on an account. That is completely unfair to the families who have a brother and sister who play it. The EULA reads:

1. Accounts are available only to adults or, in their discretion, their minor children. If you are a minor, your parent(s) or guardian(s) must complete the registration process, in which case they will take full responsibility for all obligations under this Agreement. By clicking the "I Accept" button and providing us with a credit card number, you represent that you are an adult and are either accepting this Agreement on behalf of yourself or your child. Except as provided herein, you may not transfer or share your Account with anyone, except that if you are a parent or guardian, you may permit one child to use the Account instead of you (in which case you may not use that Account). You are liable for all activities conducted through the Account, and parents or guardians are liable for the activities of their child. Corporations and other entities are not eligible to procure accounts.

In which I've never seen a company not allow more than one family member to play on the same account (but I have for the exact same time). If it were noted AT A TIME I wouldn't be so pissed about this issue, but it clearly states that only one person may play on one account. This is completely wrong because the players are paying for this account and they should be able to share the account with their brother or sister. I understand sharing it with a friend, but what's the difference between sharing it within a family since the money is coming from the same family? The family shouldn't need to be robbed of an extra $10 (or $20 if 3 members want to play) just because my sister (I don't have one, I'm just using an example) who wants to play on the same account (After I'm done playing). If they wanted to play at the same time (impossible on a 56k) I'd understand, but not for at different times. I would like to request this to be changed for the better of Anarchy Online and Funcom.

[Oberan]

wanna know something

In the US contracts are unenforcable to minors (that means EULA's too)

But of course if your not a minor your SOL (and no not shadows of luclin eq's crap expansion)

[_____________Reiella]

Also in the US many software EULAs are illegal and not enforceable.

Very few contracts actually allow you to waive your civil liberties .

[_____________Mr Bean]

And if your not in the US the law gets even more muddy

EULA's are fun because while they look omniunus and they payed a lawyer a nice sum to write it out if you took it to court, Its pretty likely to be thrown out

[Ensignm]

To make it even more muddy it might just be you wouldn't be able to sue FC in the US because it's a) stated in the EULA the agreement is governed by the law of Switzerland. b) not clear where the agreement came in to existence, on the clients computer and thus in the clients country because thats probably where you bought the game, in Switzerland where FC HQ is, or in the country where the webserver is because that's where you register the game and thus indicate your willingness to enter an agreement with FC. I don't think that article is enforceable by FC, anyway because there's no way for FC to tell whether I or my brother/sister plays.

[________________Enau]

Well, how is Funcom going to know if you have more than one person playing the game? Or is this just a moral issue? If someone plays your character, or there are multiple characters, I don't understand how this could be detected. Just curious.... Don't ban me FC.

[cold]

To add to the fun, Blacksnow recently found out that parts of the EULA are enforcable.

I can only guess why the account is strictly personal.
* of course, they want you both to pay
* not having to deal with annoying brothers stealing stuff from you, hacking the game and getting you both banned and such things.


Well, it's their game, and they can make the rules I guess.

[________Rentrenegade]

If you noticed, I don't really post on these message boards for good reasons... in fact my only other post is located on the patch for 13.0 i think. Oh well, that's OOC...

Well, anyways... Even my friend was cracking up when I showed him the EULA, he said "That company is cheap <pause> That is so pathetic..." The only reason I remember that is because I was so fired up about reading the first part of the EULA (again). I've read that part 10 times, and I still get really angry about that part.

I must ask, how many people actually read that thing anyways? I feel like the only one that read it.

Where are all the ARKs and GMs? Aren't they supposed to monitor these message boards and respond to complaints like this?

The EULA is a bit screwed up as is. Curan, a major help bot on RK2, is supposedly "breaking" the EULA, but I haven't seen Curan do anything different from Helpbot and they both do the same things. If you ask me, if Curan gets banned so should Helpbot and Shopbot.

[____________IronTide]

There's probably no response #1 because this thread is in the wrong forum. It has jack-squat to do with Game Mechanics.

EULA's are enforcable in the sense that Funcom can choose to shut down your account. Whatever restrictions they list above are really moot since they can shut down your account for whatever reason they want (and they don't have to tell you).

EULA's are not enforcable in the sense that if you break them, Funcom will sue/fine you.

[ethernal3]

Originally posted by Rentrenegade


The EULA is a bit screwed up as is. Curan, a major help bot on RK2, is supposedly "breaking" the EULA, but I haven't seen Curan do anything different from Helpbot and they both do the same things. If you ask me, if Curan gets banned so should Helpbot and Shopbot.

Shopbot and Helpbot are both third party programs and therefore they all technically break the EULA.
~Chris

[FireC]

There has been discussion about this earlier when there was the "famous" hacking case. http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...highlight=EULA

Cz says:
"We won't try to track accounts down and ban them for this, but in a conflict of ownership or similar cases we might have to enforce this rule. To grab the example with boyfriend and girlfriend; what if they break up, and one logs into the other's account and delete all the characters? That could be the kind of issues where we will most likely let the owner carry the loss himself / herself."

I think it pretty much makes sense. You can basically share the account and not get banned for it but also which ever of the users the account belongs to is also very much responsible what that other person does in the game. I also would not take the risk of having a friend or my sister to screwup any of my characters...

[________Rentrenegade]

Originally posted by Megabio


Shopbot and Helpbot are both third party programs and therefore they all technically break the EULA.

I'd like to comment on that. Shopbot and Helpbot (and Curan on RK2) are all registered players using specially designed scripts. Although, none of them are over level above level 5, they are still registered characters and could level at any time. If your refering to their scripts that they run, you may be correct, but I haven't read the entire script because I don't have a Linux.

And I'm glad to see someone was finally able to get a hold of an ARK (I think Cz is an ARK, either that or GM). I've been trying to get a hold of an ARK for several days, finally got a hold of one, but not on this issue.

[Zarrot]

I haven't really read the EULA recently but my favorite part was where it talked about only being allowed to play if you had a copy of the AO CD. (Or something to that effect) This is really amusing to those of us who downloaded the game from FC's website and started via the free demo. We are all playing illegally. I payed my 19 dollars send me a CD and a box.