Hellgate London EULA Ruckus
Posted by Stropp on October 19, 2007I was just reading Blues News and came across a item about the EULA for Hellgate London. Apparently, accepting the EULA gives Electronic Arts the right, amongst other things, to collect personally identifiable information about the customer, the customers computer and IP, and all the applications on the computer. Not surprisingly the comments on the news are less than complementary.
EA also came under fire for using the Securom software (which acts like a rootkit) with Bioshock, and I expect that they will be using the same software for Hellgate London. The EULA though, in my opinion, really takes the cake for instrusiveness. I honestly don’t mind some copy protection on software, even if lately it is getting out of hand. But to insist on having access to all the information on my computer is a bit much.
3. Consent to Use of Data. You agree that EA, its affiliates, and each Related Party may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer, including without limitation your Internet Protocol address, operating system, application software and peripheral hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online play. EA and/or the Related Parties may also use this information in the aggregate and, in a form which does not personally identify you, to improve our products and services and we may share that aggregate data with our third party service providers.
Also not surprisingly, there a bunch of the commentors are saying that they will no longer purchase Hellgate London. I wonder how much of an effect this will have on game sales. If history is anything to go by, it probably won’t have much of an effect.
How about you?
Do unreasonable EULAs or onerous and intrusive copy protection mechanisms like Securom determine your final decision to purchase a game?
Or do you just decide to trust the publisher?
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DOH we just posted the exact same story.
JINX
I dont know man, I think I am still going to fire this one up, honestly I dont care. Microsoft probably spies on us every day anyway.
Umm, 2k Interactive published Bioshock, not EA.
@Pvthudson:Lol. Well, that’s the internet for you, lots of different views of the same news. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.;-)
I’m not sure myself if I’ll be trying Hellgate out. It’s not even the spyware side of things. For me, it’s simply so many games… so little time.
@CrumpyYes, you’re correct about that. Which makes it even worse that this securom software is becoming so widely used.
Is it weird that I don’t care? My love for the click, click, boom, loot action of the game has me willing to sell my soul to EA if they’d ask (exaggerating, yes).
Nope Bildo. Not weird at all. Like anything, it’s what you are willing to accept in order to participate. If you don’t care, that’s cool. I did a bit of reading up on Hellgate today, and I’m not sure that I won’t be buying it myself. I really enjoyed Diablo 2 and while this isn’t a sequel to that game it might be worth getting all the same.
Twas recently cleared up by Kaiser (dev) on the official site. General paranoid folks will likely still not accept the explanation, but it’s cool that Flagship came out already with a statement on it.
http://www.hellgatelondon.com
It’s the link on the left marked “EULA Clarification”
Thanks for the link Bildo.
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