Ezri was a spammer. Not a bot though. Just a really dangerously insane nutjob who thought he was running his own country and kept spamming links to his *cough* nation's empty forum.

GOG basically just doesn't ban anyone for anything that isn't spam.

It wasn't his country, it was his uncle's country, Johnatanland. His uncle, Johantan McDonald (i'm not making it up, honest), was also the prime minister on top of being the country's...uh...'owner'. 0_0

Anyway, Ezri was obnoxious as a poster and his ban from the boards was a clean one but he didn't strike me as mean sprited or anything like that, just a kid with some serious "hey, look at me" issues.

Heard about this a while ago, bullshit.

What they were banning people over was dumb as well, things like dissing EA.

I am reminded of... what was it called again? The Mystere incident in EverQuest.

Sounds about right.

That would be delicious!

The Eiffel Tower is too good for them. The Blackpool Tower will do.

I'm pretty sure mocking the bear outfits the members of the staff wear during office hours will do it.

Don't worry, Steam fanboys will happily shrug away mistaken VAC bans, should Steam realize their mistake or not, doesn't matter to them. Steam is awesome, can do no wrong, etc. I guess everyone has to like their pusher.

Any other serious Steam problems will be treated in the same manner.

I'm not sure if anyone's actually read the EULA for pretty much anything recently, but we agreed to this when we installed the game.

We have a licence but no rights to the game, EA own everything that we create while we're playing the game, they can utterly revoke your access to all entitlements on their services without notice and at its "sole discretion" as to whether you violated its terms of service.

Of course, unless you live in the EU or Quebec, you've agreed to have no recourse to resolve your disputes except their preferred Arbitrator.

Whether or not any of the above is legal in your country, or at all, remains a good question.

Some of that stuff's not even in the EULA document, but in the referenced Terms of Service.

This is why I haven't bought a AAA title in years except with a gift voucher or when it costs about $10.

It isn't legal in any EU country. Consumer protection rights are pretty strong in the EU and they are getting stronger with each passed legislation. Any ToS or EULAs are void the second they contradict EU law. And by void i mean VOID, no "prevelance reduction". The violating part of the EULA becomes non existand.

A general rule of thumb concerning ToS and EULAs is, that whenever a clause is so "surprising" that you won't agree to it in a normally negoiated contract, it is void.

All this Arbitrator stuff might be relevant for companies like GOG, but for the end consumer it doesn't matter. In nearly every law system that is out there, you go to court in the district the damages occured or the claimant lives.

We all are pretty damn well protected by the law. Invoking your rights is a whole different matter. For many people the pursuit of their rights is to much of a hassle to do, and many companies know that. Hell, whole businesses are build on de facto non binding contracts that the claimant simply wont pursue (think mobile ringtone subscriptions).

My experience are that huge companies usually shun the direct lights of courtrooms and unless you are going up against a central element of their business strategy(like in the Half-Life 2 case in Germany), they will try their best to pursue an out of court settlement.

All this digital selling and downloading stuff is very new, especially to something like the judical system (fun fact, most of the property laws in the western law systems are directly derived from Roman slave trade laws). Therefore there are no real precedences, but the EU is catching up.

My advice would be to always remember that you are a customer, not an addict and Origin, Steam etc. are your contractual partners and not your pusher.

Yeah, it's the same thing I have learnt about the legal system in most European states. Even if you have signed a contract that allows certain actions by your boss or a service that you used - if you get treated badly (particularly in a way that contradicts common sense or the expectations of the regular person) the legal system will most likely protect you.

RPS = (w)Retchedly Pro Steam.

it sucks because RPS is pretty much the only dedicated PC gaming blog site ever since "Big D" got teh axe (fucking Joystiq), but anymore all they do is ride Steam/Valve's nutsack.

back when I first started paying attention to them (after Big D closed) they used to be pretty balanced and would bitch about Steam when it was due (not exactly hatting, but defiantly not Pro-Steam either). however ever since EA popped up with origin (maybe a little before that) it's like all they will cover is Steam releases and a few Indie titles that uasually end up on steam anyway.

each and every article I have read from them about Origin has been nothing but a big pot of stirred up shit, overblown assumptions, and out of context statements.

I can't say that I have got all that many Origin linked titles, but for what I do I haven't had any problems with the service itself (the actual games is another story, fucking Deadspace) and I can personally confirm that outside of the initial activation Alice behaves like it's got no DRM at all.

Not true, as a matter of record both GR and Damuna were banned for a little flamewar they were having. In practice Mr. Gog isn't particularly heavy handed in terms of moderation.

As a side note, they banned what was possibly the only spambot to ever pass the Turing test.