Never say that name, never ever begs ever…
Tbf, they can already technically sue anyone for slandering
Its not particularly hard. As far as contracts go this one is quite simple.
looks at how often I flamed ion on my discord
You MIGHT be on to something.
Ye but they can still decide not to take you even if youre fine as far as the contract is concerned.
I mean Blizzards definition means jackpoop as far as legal things are concerned.
Tbf I can also understand blizzard to not wanna negotiate and mess around like this without clear legal agreements. Contracts in real life should always go back and forth with lots of discussion though, so it’s good to criticize it, but you should also be specific, else your input is useless. In practice every first iteration of a contract is usually swayed heavily in the direction of the one initiating it
Personally, I think we should still not support this Discord thing. But for curiosity’s sake, I did a diff on the two documents.
I don’t know if there are other versions of this document (someone brought up something about UK version), but that is what I was seeing as a user from EU.
Change No.1:
The program is no longer EU-only (it’s either that, or they mean residents of EU but are currently residing in NA). Whatever I’m not a lawyer, but it is a difference in the document.
…provided that legal residents of the United States of America may join the Program upon individual written invitation by authorized representatives of Blizzard, in which case such territory shall be considered an Approved Territory for that individual.
Change No.2:
In the section “MEMBER AGREEMENT → B. Program Member Rules → 14”, they removed the text passage “or any other sentiment tracking software requested by Blizzard”. It also now includes a “(see below for details)” to further elaborate on the Discord bot further down in the document.
See page 4 of the new document to see the new passage yourself, it’s below point 19. (I don’t want to copypaste it all to keep this post as short as possible).
Change No.3:
In the section “MEMBER AGREEMENT → C. Program Member’s Representations and Warranties. → 7”, they changed the part about being critical about Blizzard Entertainment.
Old Version:
…shall not make any disparaging or negative statements or representations
New Version:
…shall not make any unlawful, untruthful, or intentionally misleading statements or representations
Change No.4:
In the section “MEMBER AGREEMENT → E. Program Member Content
. → 2”, the content that has to be removed should Blizzard request it, is now defined as “Blizzard Materials” and not just “Game Content”.
However, it also includes a clause for not having to comply should it “prevent the Program Member from expressing their thoughts and opinions in relation to the Game Content”.
The part about Game Content being retained by third parties even after takedown has been removed.
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That’s nice.
I’m sorry I’m lost 
… as interpreted by Blizzard who thinks they made a very, very nice game in all regards?
I don’t know exactly what this means, but I do know that if it means I have to moderate the Discord the same way Blizzard moderates this forum, that’s a no thank you.
I suppose that’s fair. Leaking content while being supported by Blizzard seems like a pretty toxic thing to do to them.
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Means Blizzard has to clarify what kind of bots (or any other software to observe the discord etc pp) they are using. To the bone.
Uhm… okay. And what’s the privacy policy on whatever it scans and does? Does this go all the way to “Can I see the source code?”
'Cause believe you me, I know how to read it, and I’m not the only one that I know personally.
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Doubtful they give you access to the source code. But they have to state what it does exactly rather than the previous “you install this. We dont tell you more. You have to.”.
Brought to you by the same crowd behind the amazing women in warcraft initiative. Speaking in context of body types 1 and 2 they’ve somehow successfully managed to water down this “minority” even further.
If I were an administrator of a larger discord community I wouldn’t let them anywhere near or offer server privileges of any kind in exchange for something miniscule such as loot for giveaways or early access to their promotional materials, which is in fact the most they can offer.
In other words, whatever you’ve managed to create doesn’t need their stamp of approval to attract an audience and existing communities are probably so popular only for the lack of Blizzard’s involvement in them.
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A negative statement in general would be - anything. An unlawful (so defamation - slander, meant to literally do harm), untruthful as in slander (you are meant to speak true, if you do not - you will go back and correct your stance when proven wrong, basically), intentionally misleading, slander in a different - is just not being a verbal fox, trying to get around the fence into the henhouse so to speak.
Hope this clarified it a bit. It is quite agreeable terms, far removed from the word ‘negative’. It is close to just saying: Just don’t blatantly lie about things on purpose. Something you hopefully already did not do by default.
The thing is you still have to follow suit what Isha complain about.
To be honest in your communication and not blatantly lie about or try to harm your ‘partner’, seems very agreable.
You are still allowed to say and mention negative things they do or have done. Be it previous happenings in the office environment or stamping down on unions. As long they are not clear fabrications, you can still be negatively inclined and criticise openly. You just can not say ‘blizzard sent puppies to the farm’ kind of lies, and then try to make others believe that to be true. Yet you could say, in a world where Blizzard kicked puppies - that they did, and you think that is wrong. Because it would in this scenario be true. In the old format ‘no negative’, you could not say blizzard kicking puppies is bad - because that would be a negative stance statement.
Examples push it far, but hopefully it gets you to see that this is not pure censorship in those lines of text - it is just an agreement of basic communication norms more than anything.
Thats not what he or me meant. We are talking about stuff like the forum rules. This is covered in said agreement.
And if we have to do it like how Blizzard moderates their forum as an example (be it EU or US) then ye good luck. They have probably one amongst the worst moderated forums amongst the leading gaming companies. If not even the worst.
I have not read a line that dictates that you shall moderate as if part of the blizzard forum. Could you link it?
In p3 to what I responded, it was all a change of text towards what you should push towards in moderation.
Basically, it went from, moderate all negative statements - to a more open avoid defamation and slander.
“In creating content, and in dealing with Blizzard’s users, follow all rules and content guidelines set forth by Blizzard, including in this Agreement;” This can and will include forum rules.
To avoid such grey areas they would need to clearly define clear rules for the discords and not this gibberish. Not an “including in this agreement” but “as stated in this agreement”.
They can still change in the future and have all the partners agree again (or disagree) if they want to update it with some stuff.
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Very true, but not what I responded to. Yet I do agree, any agreement that refers to another agreement document is usually a bad idea to sign. It becomes too convoluted.
This is why I state again, as I already have, we can’t really do a take of how bad this is before lawyers have spent a weeks time breaking it down. There are too many open parts.
Frankly -as long as blizz isn’t trying to create echo chambers of their own approval- I understand their desire to encourage communities that provide a higher quality of feedback.
The problem on this forum is that it’s a melting pot of every player type, and any discussion is immediately thwarted by the vastly different mentalities and preferences.
Promising discord groups more community manager presence and options for feedback sounds a bit sketchy though. I may have misunderstood it but it almost sounds like they intend to prioritize one part of their player base over the rest.
Hm? I mean isha said " if it means I have to moderate the Discord the same way Blizzard moderates this forum, that’s a no thank you.". Hes referring to what i said. He may have misunderstood it in regards of the quote from corrine but what he originally complained about was covered in the same section of the agreement.
I would have no idea to know, but I could guess the intention to be more specialised interactions.
So within the class discords, they want to talk to the relevant class devs and their opinions. On the art discord, art is the theme. And so on.
This would overall help blizzard interact with and get lower to the actual pulse of the playerbase at large, through taking part in smaller sections more intensly.
Or - they could just be grabbing for a leash, so they can more easily control narratives.
We don’t know.