Bot issues

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Originally Posted by Doozer

Oh good. Now I know you didn't read it. That makes leaving you to your ignorance a lot easier.

By the way, I'll repeat it again, in the agreement it says,



It's not "$100's of promissory digital services" because those things have no monetary value if you sign the agreement. Which you did. Ponder on that, because clearly I could copy and paste the whole agreement here and you would still say "uhhh I can't read, take a class on contract law please".

This is getting off topic anyway. Let's just move on. I'm getting tired of this. I can only show you the agreement in question so many times before it gets irritating that you're not even trying. You can argue against this, but I won't be here to see it.

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The items and characters have no monetary value, but your access to them does. Access to all of the digital content you paid for is the "$100's of promissory digital service," SE is supposed to be providing you for your money. Taking your money and yet denying you access "for no reason," is not legal.

You read the ToS, but you don't really understand what it's saying or what a contract actually is. Everything written in a contract has implied restrictions set by contract law. Being written in a contract doesn't make things like theft, slavery, murder, etc. legal. SE KNOWS that their ToS would NEVER hold up if they just took your money and "for no reason" decided not to provide you the service you paid for.

They're not denying you access for no reason, though. Their reason is that they banned you, which they do notify you when that happens. They don't need more of a reason than that.

A breach of contract would be a case where you can't log in, are given no reason why you can't log in, are unable to get any sort of reason from SE when you try to contact them, and yet they continue to charge you. Even then, good luck getting any kind of legal action taken against them.

I mean sure in theory you could sue them, and let us say you happen to have a case and can prove they broke the ToS.

What would be the point? Unless you have an endless supply of time and money do not see one coming out ahead in this lawsuit.

Cause only way i see one winning is if one could prove that they were falsely banned. Which would be hard to prove especially if the info regarding the ban is vague. Probably nof even worth time and effoet required.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

Oh good. Now I know you didn't read it. That makes leaving you to your ignorance a lot easier.

By the way, I'll repeat it again, in the agreement it says,



It's not "$100's of promissory digital services" because those things have no monetary value if you sign the agreement. Which you did. Ponder on that, because clearly I could copy and paste the whole agreement here and you would still say "uhhh I can't read, take a class on contract law please".

This is getting off topic anyway. Let's just move on. I'm getting tired of this. I can only show you the agreement in question so many times before it gets irritating that you're not even trying. You can argue against this, but I won't be here to see it.

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I believe that clause is there to protect SE from liability if something required or forced them to delete characters and accounts. Without that clause there SE is open for a lawsuit if an accident or malicious action destroys the character/account data or SE decides to prune inactive accounts and characters. That clause limits the possibility of a lawsuit if anything modified or removed character/account data.

Someone could still sue, but it would be much more of an uphill battle.

The ToS states your consumer rights are unaffected, even if you are banned (and the ToS spells all of this out quite clearly, which is useful). The consumer rights part does actually mean you can write to them, quite legally, to say their contract terms are untenable for... being banned, or whatever (see: https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rig...contract-terms) - note, I don't find SE's terms unfair. You can also access free legal advice if necessary if you feel you are unfairly treated/banned, as befits those consumer rights - in the UK, the easiest would be contacting the CAB (I mean, assuming they're still a thing. I've not lived there for 14 years). And on one hand I agree with @Awha - but with a caveat that I would think if the information regarding a ban was vague, said ban couldn't really be enforced - unless you mean vague because SE doesn't give the information to the banned player? They'd have to offer something in (small claims?) court if it came to it, surely? Not an expert, have no idea. I only have a smattering of knowledge in probably very outdated music law and pensions. And those pensions bring me to this:

The real issue is bots don't care about any of the above. Clearly the hateful, selfish and thoughtless people who use them know they're breaking their agreements. The fact there's potential money laundering in botting, which is obviously bad for global equality, which is bad for all of us in the end, not just honest players in a game, is what we should be looking at here. I don't like the "it's too difficult to get rid of them" school of thought at all - it really angers me - I just wish there was something more substantial that could be done to deter people from cheating like this, or that more staff could be utilised to enact bans or... just something! XD Really don't know how all of it works to have any suggestions, just want to voice solidarity.

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Originally Posted by Espritduo

They're not denying you access for no reason, though. Their reason is that they banned you, which they do notify you when that happens. They don't need more of a reason than that.

A breach of contract would be a case where you can't log in, are given no reason why you can't log in, are unable to get any sort of reason from SE when you try to contact them, and yet they continue to charge you. Even then, good luck getting any kind of legal action taken against them.

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Banning is just the act of denying access; it's not the reason. Banning you for no reason is what would be illegal, regardless of what's stated in the ToS. Hiding consumer rights violations in contract terms doesn't exempt you from them.

The fact that I can't promise a service, take your money, and then simply not perform that service is one of the most basic ones. I'd need a legitimate reason to abandon the arrangement and still keep your money, and me sneaking the words "I can steal from you" onto the contract you signed wouldn't hold up.

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Originally Posted by Awha

I mean sure in theory you could sue them, and let us say you happen to have a case and can prove they broke the ToS.

What would be the point? Unless you have an endless supply of time and money do not see one coming out ahead in this lawsuit.

Cause only way i see one winning is if one could prove that they were falsely banned. Which would be hard to prove especially if the info regarding the ban is vague. Probably nof even worth time and effoet required.

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This is a different issue, but I agree for an individual it would be pointless. If you don't have the money and legal resources to fight a million dollar corporation it doesn't matter how right you are.

If SE were stupid enough to start mass banning bots with zero evidence or due diligence, however, they could end up involved in a class action lawsuit involving thousands of players.

There would never literally be no reason, though. If a human being is looking at your account and banning it, they are doing so for *some* reason. Realistically, if that reason was something stupid like "I was having a bad day and just felt like banning a random person" then you would be far more likely to see results by contacting SE and having that person reprimanded internally. Actually thinking you could successfully pursue a legal action against the entire company for something like this is silly, and you would never get it off the ground.

And not sure why you think they're taking your money when they ban you. They gave you the service up to the point you got banned. It's not like a banned person somehow retroactively has their game time taken from them when they're banned. Once they're banned, SE does not continue to charge you afterwards. Your account and subscription are canceled from that point on and no money is being taken out for a game you can no longer play. Really, you're just using extreme language like "stealing" and "theft" to make it sound like something that is incredibly mundane and commonplace is some heinous crime against humanity. It's not. It's a video game subscription and no court is going to care that you can't play your video game anymore.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

It's basic contract law, take a class if you're interested. All I'm willing to do is explain it to you in very simple terms.

So, try this. You "agreeing" to something doesn't make it legal. If SE added something to their ToS that stated SE reserves the right to enslave your family, slavery would still be illegal even if you clicked agree.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Eh no, they absolutely cannot ban you for any reason and just walk away with your money; that's very illegal. They have to be able to present a convincing case that your broke their ToS, and that is absolutely why every game like this goes through a time consuming process of accumulating circumstantial evidence before closing an account for botting.

That's why it's not as easy as just sitting in a popular botting area and banning everyone that's "clearly" a bot, as some of you think it should be.

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Yes they can. You agreed to the terms. If you don't agree, you void your right to play. It's not stealing. This is a service and they are providing a service. You DO NOT OWN anything. You don't own the game. You've paid for the right to play it. This is not your game. This is not your account. This is your permission to use them.

Also fun little fact for you. I've taken more than a class. I got my degree in music and a large part of it involved contracts. And funnily enough, the ToS was a topic that came up during that degree. That class told us exactly why you're wrong.

And you know what they said next? "You're welcome to challenge it legally. But they have more money than you, more lawyers than you and the law protects them over you. You agree every single time you continue to use their service. You do not own the service. You have permission to use the service. Nothing has been stolen from you."

Of course, your fear and defense over something that shouldn't be affecting you alarms me. This is about bots getting banned. Not about your fear of getting banned and your misconception on a very common law.

If they're not willing to resort to invasive monitoring programs (Which don't even work reliably) for bot detection, then they really don't have any option other then observing suspect accounts for red flags and banning them if it's highly likely they are botting.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to slap someone with a ban if a GM attempts to communicate with a suspect several times while they're actively gathering or doing some other activity but they refuse to respond.

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Originally Posted by Darkobra

Yes they can. You agreed to the terms. If you don't agree, you void your right to play. It's not stealing. This is a service and they are providing a service. You DO NOT OWN anything. You don't own the game. You've paid for the right to play it. This is not your game. This is not your account. This is your permission to use them.

Also fun little fact for you. I've taken more than a class. I got my degree in music and a large part of it involved contracts. And funnily enough, the ToS was a topic that came up during that degree. That class told us exactly why you're wrong.

And you know what they said next? "You're welcome to challenge it legally. But they have more money than you, more lawyers than you and the law protects them over you. You agree every single time you continue to use their service. You do not own the service. You have permission to use the service. Nothing has been stolen from you."

Of course, your fear and defense over something that shouldn't be affecting you alarms me. This is about bots getting banned. Not about your fear of getting banned and your misconception on a very common law.

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Dude, at least read the topic if you're going to chime in.

I wasn't having a discussion specifically about botting; I'm aware SE can ban people for botting since it's against the ToS. What people are saying is that SE can deny you access to their servers for no reason at all, while keeping your money. That's not true. If I paid the subscription and they denied me access just because they felt like it, I'd have grounds to sue and be legally in the right. Doesn't mean I'd win, because the rich can literally get away with murdering people in our legal system, but SE's actions would have been 100% illegal.

I don't care about bots; I'm just kind of amused that people think you can write literally anything on a form and as long as you throw an "agree" button on it it's perfectly legal. There are restrictions to what you can stipulate on a contract, and giving yourself permission to steal from customers definitely isn't something that would hold up at trial.