I could write “Buying this item gives me the exclusive right to take custody of your first-born” in tiny text on a slip of paper when you buy one of my products, and it doesn’t mean a single thing.
Companies are, so far, seemingly allowed to just arbitrarily ban people from their online games, but that is only by the good grace of the politicians. If any company, especially a high profile one like Blizzard, just goes out and starts arbitrarily throwing around bans for no reason, lawmakers will come and they will cause a ruckus, believe you me.
And if you think lawmakers don’t pay attention to Blizzard, I’d just like to point out the governor of Texas had quite a few comments to Blizzard last year. So yeah, they do.
Furthermore, in the EU and many other juristictions, these EULA’s are written in language that are unreadable for people who actually “sign” them, and therefore they are entirely unenforceable. Apple has already been told a few times to shove their EULA, for instance, and Blizzard could easily get the same message.
You do not get to just delete people’s accounts for no reason - especially not if you literally say there is no reason.
Let’s start by acknowledging that nowadays games are a service. You buy access to the game, you don’t own the game. The only exceptions are games that don’t have online functionality which are slowly becoming obsolete.
But that’s not a valid comparison. What Blizzard has is an agreement with us. You pressed the accept button, doesn’t matter if you didn’t read it by choice. It goes the same if you sign a contract in real life without reading it.
Also taking custody of your first born would probably be an illegal clause in a contract while one sided service termination is not.
No, they don’t deserve anything because they do not own those accounts.
Blizzard is selling a licence to play their games and they can pull that licence from you whenever they want becasue this is what you’ve agreed to when you accepted end-user license agreement (EULA).
To be robbed you first need to own something and you do not own the game nor your account. EULA is a legal document which terms you accepted so everything is done according to law.
I know where you’re going with this, but you have purchased a perpetual license to the content within the game, and you are paying a recurring subscription for access to the server, knowing that it is recurring.
Blizzard needs to put the rules in front of you in a readable format, and then they need to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you have read and understood those license agreements, and they need to update you with specific differences as they update it in such a way that you can easily understand what has changed, and they need to give you some time to adjust.
That’s why they have this funny “By clicking accept you acknowledge that you have read and understood the terms yada yada” in EULA’s.
Anyway, putting in a very technical point that they can change the rules and then ban you 2 hours later in page 37 of an incredibly legalese EULA is not going to end well for Blizzard, and they know this. It won’t end well ethically, and it won’t end well legally.
They almost got their behinds sued over Warcraft 3: Reforged, because even when they say that the sales are final, their false advertising caused people to make the agreement under false pretenses, and therefore the agreement is invalid.
The same will apply if you change the rules for an account and then seek to close it. Indeed, in such a case they should refund the account cost at current value and then transfer all the characters to the account that remains, but none of this is necessary anyway.
Why? Because the sale was made under false pretenses. The purchaser made the purchase under the assumption that it could be used for multiboxing, and that is the reason for purchase. If this feature is removed, the seller made the sale under false pretenses, and that allows the buyer to revoke his purchase, i.e. get his money back.
It was the same thing with OtherOS on PS3, if anyone remembers. The military bought thousands of them for a supercomputer. Sony objected and removed the feature, and the military threatened to sue Sony into the ground over it.
That’s just how it goes.
I want to get rid of multiboxers, but getting rid of multiboxing means paying back some money. It just does. And that’s okay.
The comparison is completely apt, because it doesn’t actually matter what the specific clause is, provided that it is illegal. I made an exaggerated point by bringing up the first born, but that doesn’t mean Blizzard get to sell perpetual licenses to their products and then suddenly take them down with no due course.
Since Blizzard wrote the EULA with lawyers on the basis of law, they are assumed to be 100% knowledgeable of its contents. They do not get away with the same exceptions that consumers do. This has been upheld in courts of law time and time again.
If they sell perpetual, irrevocable licenses to their games, and that’s exactly what they do, they do not have a magical clause that allow them to step out unless under very specific circumstances that have been clearly communicated to you. They can’t just close your account whenever they feel like it.
There have been a few companies recently that have tried to pull this trick because they think it protects those that don’t cheat to not tell cheaters how and when they cheated. They’re already getting dragged into court. You can’t do it.
But they can. If let’s say the decide to close service to the entire EU region, or if they decide people who have 20+ accounts are bad for their business plan, or if they decide they want to deny you service because they don’t want you opening a new account after you’ve been banned on a previous one. It’s hard to imagine any laws preventing them for doing so.
Anyway it’s a moot point. Blizzard won’t ban you unless they have something to gain from it because they want you to keep paying. So unless you violate the EULA or some radical scenario like the ones I mentioned happens the it won’t ever happen.
Just as an addition, here’s another article from the EULA
Anyway I don’t want to argue about this anymore but I will admit defeat if you show me the actual US law that deems this illegal.
But if most are multiboxing than the price of a herb will drop to near zero… How will they make gold if herbs are worthless? They wont…
Looking at the price of zinanthid and consumables, there is room for some more multiboxers… Thats why they operate - because there is huge demand, and prices only reflect this. And there is still too few of them apparently, prices are high.
One proper m+ run costs more than 5k gold in consumables… And this is now after the price dropped by 50%. Average player doesnt have 5 k to burn on one m+ run… So i dare to say herbing goods are still in great demand… economy doesnt seem to be breaking… And if it breaks i will gladly welcome all that flasks and pots nearly for free.
This they can do. If they close down the service entirely and give a means by which the game can be played without official servers, which has already been done for them even if it is against their wishes, then they’re in the clear.
True. It wouldn’t make any sense for them.
I’m just replying to the idea that they can and should just arbitrarily close people’s account because they exist and that person already has accounts. Even if you can legally do that, and it is not likely that you can, it’s just gonna be an awful PR move. They’ll never do that.
That has nothing to do with any of what I’ve said. It just tells you that you do not have resale rights. Blizzard, being the copyright holder, are absolutely within their right to deny you that, and based on that, they can terminate any contract with you if you violate those rules.
The point is that they cannot arbitrarily terminate a contract. “Arbitrarily” is very much the key word.
Doesn’t have to be a US court case. We’re Europeans, and Blizzard are knowingly selling to us. That means our consumer protection laws and our courts have a say as well. If Blizzard does not respect these laws, they may be banned from selling to anyone within the country, which is not something they want to risk. They’ll answer to Danish or German or UK or French courts, and so on.
Speaking of which, there’s a law in Germany that an EULA is not enforceable unless it is known prior to buying the game and is in a readable format. That’s why WoW has the “simplified game rules” pop-up when you launch it or when you make an account. If they don’t have that, things go very wrong for Blizzard indeed.
Multiboxing should be against the tos because it’s pay2win. Or Blizzard can make it slightly harder by allowing only one instance of WoW to run at the same time.
Totally agree, how multiboxing with 14 alts by having 14 accounts as 1 player isn’t against the TOS is just baffling.
The game was not designed to be played this way, it is starting to affect the people who want to play the game in the way it was designed so imo it is a serious problem and Blizzard should fix it.
Limit the accounts per players, forbid multiboxing software, i don’t care what but they have to fix it
I still can not take multiboxing threads serious because of stuff like this. I’ve never had problems with multiboxing while farming herbs in Nazjatar. There are plenty of multiboxers around but you can just fly ahead of them or change your route up and still get plenty of ZIn’antid.
A EULA is not a blank note that allows a company to do anything they want. Any EULA that that violates the law would be void. What you describe, like most other players who want Blizzard to ban multiboxers, probably any European judge will consider as a scam. Blizzard is gaining money by those accounts, they cant just change the EULA to ban people for using the service they are paying for up until now without breaking any previous rules, especially given by the fact that Blizzard is profiting by those accounts.
Like a lot of systems introduced to enhance the gameplay in the past, both in WoW and other MMO’s, there are a subset of gamers that find an a way to exploit it and end up spoiling the game for everyone.
Eventually the system gets changed to something less than what is was and everyone suffers.
My solution would be to go back to the original system of single use nodes.
ive seen a few of that in naz… i dont really understand why blizzard aint addressing it tbh… it is technically against the TOS because there exploiting a farm…
More so I often use my accounts as passive/follow, and not active MB, and over year have never done as a thing as use a proffanity in party chat. I have not rboken a single rule, and I do not - above all - herb. If i ever herb its during levelling my old druid lady, to have all professions maxed, but i don’t like farming things as its not ‘playing’ for me.
I am like every other normal player, nice, follow rules etc. I just happen to own multiple accounts and ability to i.e. solo dungeons and occasionally even M+ - when am super bored.
I have never given Blizzard nor other players reasons to complain. Only problem now is that some bots farm Naz herbs and I am seen as monster because of it. Even when 15 years I have been perfectly fine.
the problem is, whether you’re farming or not, is people create multiple characters with very similar names which puts it all to question…this isnt just about the farming aspect either.
Small tip ,farm “normal” herbs in Vol’dun. Yes those are way cheaper but there is zero competition and you actually make more gold per hour than wrestling with boxers in Nazj plus you get anchor weed every now and then.
