It kind of blows my mind that forced arbitration is legal at all.
Somone said that it isn’t and isn’t enforceable to but no-one has the time money or will to fuck around with that.
I think in the case of forced agreements (both Roku not having a way to select disagree and disabling all hardware functionality until you agree, and blizzard not allowing login to existing games including non-live service ones) no reasonable court should be viewing this as freely accepting the new conditions.
If you buy a new game with those conditions, sure you should be able to get a full refund though, and you could argue it for ongoing live service games where you pay monthly that it’s acceptable to change the conditions with some notice ahead of time. If you don’t accept you can no longer use the ongoing paid for features, I expect a court would allow that. But there’s no real justification for disabling hardware you already own or disabling single player games you already paid for in full.
It’ll be interesting to see any test cases that come from these examples.
I see 1 class action where the consumers get screwed and the company gets a slap on the wrist
The problem here is “reasonable court.” One party in the US has spent decades stacking the courts with unreasonable judges who will agree to anything a corporation hands them.
My brother in christ, both parties have been doing this for ages. You aren’t looking at the right lines. This one is about wealth, not about party affiliation.
If you had the money to put safeguards in place to protect you and your stuff in the event something went wrong, you probably would. It would be a mistake not to.
A simple example is keeping some money set aside as a savings or emergency fund. For rich people, lobbying for more favorable laws, and helping more friendly judges rise up the ranks is a similar thing. Some have went on to make and plan apocalypse bunkers too.
When you have enough money that you don’t have to worry about spending a certain amount, you just go and do it. Like people not worrying about spending on Starbucks every morning because it’s equivalent to 30 minutes of their time or less.
look at all the lefties down voting you. when are people going to learn?
The governments all around the world are probably in favor of it, because their big “donors” want it and it lowers costs for the judicial system for them. It’s a win-win from their perspective.
The real reason for arbitration is that it usually costs hundreds to initiate and the rules can be murky. In comparison most places in America you can file a small claims suit for $20 and are given help by the court/government.
It’s just a term of a contract. It’s only “forced” insofar as both parties agree to require it in order to settle disputes.
Which shouldn’t be allowed in relation to consumer goods and services.
Meh, arbitration is cheaper and faster than actual litigation. I see clear advantages for both parties.
But also obvious disadvantages to the customer in cases like this. Why should the customer not have a right to refuse?
Corporations are people and they have so much more money and time to fund their interests than individuals do.
First Roku did a quick force TOS change before a beach disclosure, now Blizzard is mysteriously forcing a change to their TOS. I have no idea what’s coming next. Seems like it’s going to become part of the breach playbook to minimize financial loss. Maybe there will be a law against it in… oh…15 years?
So i’m not a lawyer but isn’t there a law for unconsciability, When a contract is so one-sided, it’s obvious that me the signer has absolutely no rights.The entire contract is voided.
EULAs and TOSes are as legally binding as a secondhand piece of toiletpaper with a contract written in shit. Almost every single one will be thrown out in court. The problem is getting to that point in the first place, and incurring the (time, effort & money) costs while enduring. Most common people can’t afford that, which the companies know, so they keep making unenforceable EULAs.
That is true in US. In EU litigations cost are way lower and a single person could sue, win and not be financially broken.
Problem is only that in any case what you pay for a lawyer is more than you win, so it make no sense to sue in any case.
Almost like the Legal system is intentionally designed such that the wealthy are the only ones with any actual access.
I guess in return the signer gets the service?
The signer gets the service because they paid for it. Mostly these are changed after people ready bought the stuff.
Roku bought a beach?
In Arizona.
I should buy some oceanfront property there.
Is the beach the place where the breach happened?
Let me laugh if Blizzard’s TOS change is because of a security breach they haven’t disclosed yet.
my vizio has been stuck on a tos update acceptance screen since about the time of the recent roku shit. i haven’t had the time to deal with it, so it’s just been turned off.
“Maybe if Activision gets bought by Microsoft, Blizzard won’t be as scummy.”
Hahaha, nope.
Between the company rape culture and enabling internet & gambling addiction, Blizzard is dead to me.
Support your local private servers.
Have you found any good private server sublemmies? Whatever we’re calling them?
Communities.
If you build it, they will come.
This seems to be the new norm, first Roku, now Blizzard.
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I don’t have time to check a video, but isn’t it true for any service that it you don’t agree to the new ToS, your contract is terminated?
What makes this case so special?
Edit: or is it that people only found out now that the games they bought were online-only and that they’re at the mercy of the publisher?
Paid-for games aren’t a service that should be able to be taken away in this manner
For software (like games) the usual rule is “use the old version if you don’t agree to the new terms”, but that’s not possible without piracy here
Yeah, I suppose that sucks if you never stopped to think about it.
In my case, it’s the reason I never bought Diablo 3 - when they turn an offline game into a mandatory online game, I figured that sooner or later they’d pull something like this.
Does Blizzard even make any single-purchase games that require a Blizzard account? WoW is a subscription, Overwatch is free-to-play, I doubt the old Starcraft games require accounts, and I don’t know much about Diablo.
Diablo is indeed a single purchase game (with tons of MTX and soon to be DLC of course, but the base game is a single purchase).
So no, it’s only subscription games that would be affected? So you just can’t use the service in the future, they’re not locking anyone out of a purchased product.
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Hopefully the lesson people are slowly learning is to walk away from these systems.
It’s not that easy. My Blizzard account is over 10 years old - never thought they’d go down hill so much. What’s the solution, to never create accounts online anywhere? Even if a service looks good and you support it, a corporation like Activision can come along and have their asshole CEO infect everything.
Walking away from my account now means throwing away a lot of money spent on it.
What’s the solution, to never create accounts online anywhere?
Yes. I buy all my games either as physical releases on consoles or DRM-free on PC. If a game requires an account to play, I won’t play it.
Fuck people who want to play matchmade competitive games I guess
they are all ill moderated and implemented anyway. competitive gaming is a cancer on the gaming community.
idk, I’ve had some great experiences with competitive gaming, I don’t think generalizing it all as a cancer is reasonable.
Worthless company. Hope they go bankrupt.
They’re not worthless, I would love to take ownership and sell it for a pretty penny
