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[Neonivek]

Unfortunately it's not illegal to make these contracts even though they can be pretty ridiculous, however enforcement of contract can be challenged so it's not actually like South Park's Human Cent-iPad, if there is something silly in a EULA and the company tries to enforce it then that can be taken to court.

Once again it is entirely unenforceable in my country... Because you HAVE to read a contract for it to be enforced.

They can't change the conditions of a contract on you here.

[Sharp]

I don't think you have said which country you are from in this thread (or on your profile).

However I doubt it will be completely unenforceable depending on what the EULA is stipulating as the software provider would still be able to go to court to argue their case and if it's reasonable a judge might side with the software provider, of course it depends a lot what is trying to be enforced, the judge and any other relevant laws.

[BurnedToast]

The only reason customers get put through this is because they have no advocate on their behalf other than their wallet. And since there isn't any competition for SPECIFIC GAME X, gamers are treated like a captive audience with regards to any contract they're presented.

The problem with the crazy EULA clauses is not the company making them, but the fact that consumers don't read them (and/or simply don't give a crap).

Your wallet is the only advocate you need, giving up the latest greatest shooter (that's 95% the same as last year's shooter) is not a major hardship to ask of someone.  Video games are very much a non-essential luxury good, and if enough people boycotted call of battlefield black ops duty 90438948509 because of the shitty EULA you can be damn sure they'd change it.

[nenjin]

The only reason customers get put through this is because they have no advocate on their behalf other than their wallet. And since there isn't any competition for SPECIFIC GAME X, gamers are treated like a captive audience with regards to any contract they're presented.

The problem with the crazy EULA clauses is not the company making them, but the fact that consumers don't read them (and/or simply don't give a crap).

Your wallet is the only advocate you need, giving up the latest greatest shooter (that's 95% the same as last year's shooter) is not a major hardship to ask of someone.  Video games are very much a non-essential luxury good, and if enough people boycotted call of battlefield black ops duty 90438948509 because of the shitty EULA you can be damn sure they'd change it.

Most customers don't read EULAs because the results of signing it don't impact their life as they see it. That's the joke Southpark was making. EULAs exist as grounds to sue for violating copyright, trademarks, to stymie fair use and ensure all dollars for a product come back to them where possible. Which I think is generally fair (because I don't try to make a living off of Youtube.)

When Origins launched, people and media crawled all over their EULA and some stuff did change. So I don't disagree with you there. But, while it's not a hardship, having a good product shackled to a predatory EULA is unfair and bullshit. That's why people care enough to read them, because they care about the product and the thing they want and the rules of the people own it structure are not mutually inclusive.

I've always disliked the premise of "don't like it, walk away" because of instead of trying to assert your rights as a customer, you just stop being a customer. The idea of a mass boycott is nice and it does occasionally change something quickly to satisfy people. But it's generally a speed bump and not a wall to further abuses I think.

[alexandertnt]

Another issue is that people generally don't understand the EULA and its potential legal ramifications, so it's very difficult for individual consumers to be villigant about EULA's when they can't even understand them. It's unreasonable to expect each consumer to understand them as they can be quite complex. A consumers advocate here would be quite useful.

Plus don't forget to actively verbally criticize the product (and not just not purchase something and remain silent), Artsivision need to know why people stopped purchasing Battlefield Black Ops Duty in order to have any hope in improving it.

[JackOSpades]

 This games as a service is terrible, you realize of course that at least 25-50% of the games we are enjoying and going back to, things like the original X-com, king of dragon pass, wizardry 8, Alpha Centari (and that's just off the front page of the play with your buddies section.)
are old games which wouldn't and couldn't exist anymore had we had this system to begin with.
under the "games as a service" model once the company stops supporting a game it's gone forever

[BFEL]

 This games as a service is terrible, you realize of course that at least 25-50% of the games we are enjoying and going back to, things like the original X-com, king of dragon pass, wizardry 8, Alpha Centari (and that's just off the front page of the play with your buddies section.)
are old games which wouldn't and couldn't exist anymore had we had this system to begin with.
under the "games as a service" model once the company stops supporting a game it's gone forever

That's not the worst part Jack.


The worst part is that because games are art, and companies get do decide to just make them "go away forever" these companies are controlling the artistic drives of an entire generation.
And where do human beings get their culture? Their ideas of how to proceed into the future?

FUCKING ART.

GAME COMPANIES ARE LITERALLY MICROMANAGING THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY.

Do you REALLY trust THEM to be in control of our species development?

[Eagleon]

Better than I do Kesha (I refuse to use a dollar sign in her name)

Game developers need to eat, too. I look at it as practically the only form of DRM that actually works, both for my own levels of annoyance and as an incentive to buy a thing - if you're putting out new content in patches that actually adds to the game, which you didn't have time for or just didn't think of prior to launch (happens plenty), I have no problem buying the game to get anything else that might come along. Especially if they're adding features requested by the community into the modding support, like for instance Star Ruler - that's just pure love for a modding community, which means better mods, which is awesome.

It's a different story if they're purposefully holding back content to drop along as their sales projections fluctuate, but that tends to be fairly obvious if in the meantime their graphics artists' are out bumming for more work, or they're working on a different game already.

[Neonivek]

What with them releasing games incredibly glitch and broken and often not fixing them, but still willing to release expansions.

Heck it used to be unique to The Sims where they would just release expansions without fixing their dang game (well excluding the original AND half of The Sims 2)... But then Warlock 2 came out and was a essentially a standalone expansion which had all the glitches and problems of the first game.

Add in unfinished content removed to make a deadline, on disk DLC (Capcom are the kings of on disk DLC), and even just not patching their games... and yeah...

I look at it as practically the only form of DRM that actually works

Which is ultimately where the problem is... if the above didn't give any indication. The Developers are insane and have absolutely no compulsion to aid their customers in anyway shape or form.

There is a reason why EA's unofficial music theme is the Darth Vader theme.

and EA is TERRIBLE at supporting their games after a few years.
It is the same reason why I don't want the entertainment industry to control social media (like they keep attempting... a LOT). Their interests are
not with us the consumer... All entertainment media will simply abuse the customers so long as the customers have no real ability to complain. The longer gamers have control over their games without the ability of any corporation to dictate their ownership the better.

[Sensei]

As BFEL and Neonivek.  I'd heard City of Heroes/Villains had become more accessible, and was ramping up to take a look--and then they started closing the servers.

NCSoft is particularly bad about doing this, planning to shut down games but trying to string the current players along and insisting they're going to keep it up. Ask anyone who was a fan of Auto Assault or Tabula Rasa. At least I got a free month of CoH/V when Auto Assault closed... oh wait.

[Eagleon]

I guess my definition of a service-model game varies and wanders over to the developers simply continuing support for their game in order to draw in new sales, not discontinuing your ability to play that game. 'Cause yeah, that sucks. Obviously there's not much to do there for MMOs. They're expensive to run, and they've always been done on a service model. But on the other hand, it's not as apocalyptic as you guys are making it out to be - if they fuck up, if their idea of service is to say "no, we aren't making money on DLC, so you can't play," you're free to move on to a different game made by a different person, sometimes Re: sci-fi minecraft clone #487 even in the same genre and setting. That's their compulsion to help you - there's ridiculous amounts of competition for your attention, even coming from their own archives (why do you think they've started reselling older games, like it's some huge favor to the old fans?), and you're free to walk.

What game-as-service is supposed to be selling is the coordination and organization to support a game successfully over a longer period, and there are bound to be people that think that it's easy or that they can just lie. Drawing from personal experience, cleaning companies do it all the time. They go through workers like used tissue, even though it pisses off their clients, because they go through clients like used tissue, because every other cleaning company does the same to cut costs down to nothing-as-possible. It takes a special kind of sociopath to run a cleaning company.

That doesn't mean you can't do awesome things with a service-based model. I think - I even hope on some level - it'll have its upswing, it'll backlash, we might have another market crash, lots of people will lose their jobs as people realize it's ok to not buy a game every other week if what's being put out there is going to be taken away like a dog-toy. C'est la vie. If games really are art, it's subject to the same sort of commercialization that art receives, and the exact same sort of backlash against that commercialization that's occurred throughout history. Right now most people are doing the equivalent of contracted portraiture, sure, but that doesn't mean we don't have Dali's and van Gogh's coming.

You're a moron if you're getting a game development degree right now anyway - most of them are just re-branded and watered down business/marketing degrees with maybe a splash of indoctrination into whatever idea your video game culture professor has about video game culture.

Do some digging. It's exactly the same with the music/entertainment "industry" right now - the good shit is being done without any concern for megaconglomorate capitalism. Marketing is pure evil. Marketing has every aspiration you could ever have towards mind-control. If marketing had a death ray, it'd point it at an orphanage and tell you to buy. In a really scary, sort of deep gravelly hypno-voice. Ignore it, look at who's making a game including whoever's doing the advertising. Not just how famous they are or what big things they've done but whether or not they're enjoying themselves. Or just play and enjoy older games, it's not like they're going away.

[BFEL]

Or just play and enjoy older games, it's not like they're going away.

That's exactly the problem. They ARE going away, at least on the console front, because the big companies that you seem to think "don't matter" are CHOOSING TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAY THEM.

The point of Microsoft and Playstation putting out a new console every year or two is so that they can systematically remove gamers ability to fall back on older games, so that they HAVE to buy the new stuff.

I have in my room right now a game I NEVER got to play, because the console that runs it broke at an inopportune time, and they NO LONGER MAKE THAT CONSOLE. How are you supposed to "just play the older stuff" if theres no support in place to continue playing said older stuff?

Granted, the answer to all this is basically "transfer all your game-playing to computer" and that is exactly what I'm doing, but you should be aware of how epically it sucks that most of my recent purchases are games I already own, but got them on the dickmachine 3000 and they made the dickmachine 4000 so now I have to buy them all again (For computer, because fuck that business model)

[Rez]

when are we gonna get that xbox emulator 

[Frumple]

Eventually *shrugs*

We've got a fairly functional PS2 one, after all. Xbox'll come. In due time, they'll all come home to the PC.

[genmac]

I was big on this until most of the early access games I actually bought turned into vaporware.  It's a good way for a dev/studio/publisher/whatever to get the money upfront, with no consequences for never delivering!