New EULA?

Search didn't work for me. Thanks though.

It's by no means unlawful (if you claim 'free speech!', I would like to inform you that NCSoft is not the US government). It's also not really all that different than other EULAs, and it just gives them explicit power that they already implicitly had.


Have you read the current EULA? Probably not, no one ever does Paragon could say that if you send a PM to Positron saying 'Bamboozled' that he'll personally farm you to 50 on every character you ever make, and more than likely it would be years before someone noticed.

Don't expect any real changes wrt how NCSoft/Paragon act in regards to the playerbase. Giving them the ability to ban someone for any reason doesn't mean they'll be banning them for any reason... after all, each ban is money lost... unless the banned account would have driven others away (i.e. they were a ****** bag... like me ).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

You mean the "THIRD PARTY TECHNOLOGY" section? That would be referring to, specifically, their usage of Cider (for OSX support), Qt (for the market's HTML rendering engine), and OpenSSL (for, you know, SSL).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

I hope he never plays an SOE game. Who knows what Sony would install under that clause (yay for CD_Rom disabling rootkits!)

Go read some game and application EULAs some other time, they're fantastically entertaining in a sort of "If I actually believed that any of this was literally enforceable I would never use a piece of software again in my life" sort of way.

My personal favourite clause is always the "We're not liable for anything, even if we do it intentionally and people have told us that it's going to screw things up".

What you'll usually find is that there is also a clause that essentially says "Except where local laws render this unenforceable", which usually accounts for about 80% of the EULA content.

I mean the privacy section.

NCSOFT HAS THE RIGHT, BUT NO OBLIGATION, TO MONITOR OPERATION OF ANY SERVICE, CONTENT OR SOFTWARE AT ANY TIME AND IN ANY MATTER, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO MONITORING COMMUNICATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS INTERFACES, STORAGE DEVICES, RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY OR CPU PROCESSES RELATED TO HARDWARE YOU USE WITH THE GAME. SUCH MONITORING MAY ALSO INCLUDE, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO, MONITORING FOR THE PURPOSES OF DETECTING SOFTWARE UNDER SECTION 8(c) or 8(e). YOU CONSENT TO THE FOREGOING MONITORING AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT NCSOFT MAY, AT ANY TIME, AND IN ANY MANNER, COMMUNICATE ANY INFORMATION BETWEEN HARDWARE YOU USE WITH THE GAME AND ANY MECHANISM NCSOFT MAY CHOOSE FOR SUCH COMMUNICATIONS. YOU ALSO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT AS A RESULT OF SUCH MONITORING NCSOFT MAY IN ITS SOLE AND ABSOLUTE DISCRETION TAKE ANY ACTION, OR NO ACTION WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO: (i) CHANGING ANY PORTION OF THE SERVICE, CONTENT OR SOFTWARE; (ii) SEEKING RECOURSE AGAINST YOU BY WAY OF ANY PROCEEDING NCSOFT DEEMS APPROPRIATE UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES; AND/OR (iii) DETERMINING THAT YOU ARE NOT IN COMPLIANCE WITH ALL PROVISIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT AND TERMINATING YOUR ACCOUNT UNDER SECTION 3(b) OR SECTION 3(c). NCSOFT HAS THE RIGHT, BUT NO OBLIGATION, TO PROVIDE YOU WITH NOTICE BEFORE SUCH TERMINATION.

Im considering unsubbing.

AKA, we might check to make sure you're not trying to cheat.

You have to understand that EULAs are written very broadly to provide the maximum legal protection to the company in question in the event that a user tries to sue them for doing something such as implementing anti-cheating measures. Irrespective of how legally enforceable EULAs as a concept may or may not be, they can *never* trump your local laws.

Do not think for one minute that what NCSoft are putting in their EULA is in any way "worse" than any other company providing any kind of software or IT service.

And whatever monitoring they will use will be exploitable. And for this old game a sandbox is not worth the effort.

Presumably you don't use Steam then? Or play anything that needs Punkbuster? Or play any other MMOs? Or install and use anything like Mids' or Herostats or Titan Sentinel (or their equivalents for any other games)? Or, in fact, install any software, including operating systems, on your PC, or connect it to the internet?

You beat Westley by two minutes, but he was more certain.

I'm used to such things, though, and will take my chances.

Translation: No botting.

Of course it will- it's flat out impossible to fully trust software running on someone else's computer (hence why you never trust its input). That hasn't stopped countless companies and developers from trying (ever heard of Warden? you know, the anti-cheat software used by the most popular MMO ever created?) and most of which are fairly successful (the circumventer has to be right every time, the enforcer only once).

And I'm pretty sure Paragon has no intention of taking advantage of that clause (at most, I could see them doing something equivalent of the steam hardware survey... just get an impression of what systems the game is running on). If this game actually had a popular PvP community, that'd be one thing... but there's very little competitive nature. Things like the market are things that are far easier to secure on the server side (plus, ran by a third party AFAIK).


This actually reminds me of something from several years ago... I was visiting one of Bentley System's offices, the makers of the CAD program MicroStation, and during the presentation of how wonderful and advanced MicroStation was, the person started talking about how they used 'spyware technology' to enhance the product, by knowing what features the user uses so on and so forth. I thought it was quite amusing (and whoever opted to refer to it as that should be fired).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

Oh the if an employee of NCSoft/Paragon happens to be reading another board on their own time and sees you posting that your cheating in COH and you foolishly post information that makes it clear who you are then they ban you clause?

That clause?

Cute. I use steam yes but i can decide what it has access to. Ncsoft will have access to all my storage devices.
Someone said it better than me on another forum

Sure you can. If you believe you really can exert that kind of control over any software after you choose to allow it to install, you're dreaming.

If the whole thing freaks you out, then go ahead and unsub. Personally, I think that would be a ridiculously paranoid response. NCSoft has never done the kind of shady stuff you seem to be worried about. Plenty of other companies have, like Apple and Google tracking your location through your phone without your consent or knowledge, Sony with their rootkit, and countless others with flat-out spyware.

Fine. Then stop posting and cancel your sub. No one will miss you or the melodrama your trying to stir up. Here's the link to where you can log in and cancel your account.

https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-bin/accountManagement.pl

Minor nitpick, but Google tracked you with your full and express consent. Turning on the Google Location Services (that'd "track" you) would bring up a notification (each time) explicitly telling you so.


Oh, and as for Steam, this portion pretty much lets them do the exact same things: Steam and the Software may include functionality designed to identify software or hardware processes or functionality that may give a player an unfair competitive advantage when playing multiplayer versions of any Software, other Valve products, or modifications thereof ("Cheats").

(how do you think they would identify software or hardware? that's right, by monitoring "communications and communications interfaces, storage devices, random access memory or CPU processes related to hardware you use with the game"!)

Different wording, same exact power and results. Quite frankly, you have no idea what Steam or any other DRM mechanism is doing on your system. Most of them install some service or driver that runs with maximum privileges (such as Punkbuster) anyways. Obfuscation will make it absurdly hard to know for sure what it's actually doing.

And, again, I point you to the most popular MMO in history that has actively been monitoring the players, including sending information about the processes running on your system.

Unless CoX has an explosion in popularity, NCSoft is unlikely to blow the resources on such systems- they've got more important uses of their resources (like making the Mac client launchable after visiting the market once!).

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!

From the Steam Subscriber Agreement:
Which is even vaguer than the NCSoft EULA in that regard.

How is it vaguer when it specifies cheats?

How do you think they're going to figure out if you're cheating? Like I said, by doing the exact monitoring that the EULA lets NC do. They could sell any information about your actions to third parties under the guise determining if you're "cheating" just as easily as NC could, if that's what you're worried about.

The wording is different, but the power is really the same.


Quite frankly, how are you envisioning them abusing this ability? What specifically concerns you? You probably don't want to say, because we'll more likely than not point out craptons of software that gives the developers/publishers the exact same rights.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Originally Posted by ShadowNate ;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!