It kind of blows my mind that forced arbitration is legal at all.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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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
Right?
Amazes me how many people cheer on these class action suits, and when I remark that class action screws the consumer and benefits the company, lemmites downvote to oblivion.
I got my first class action reimbursement at age 19...for perhaps $5.
Today I see one about twice a year, again for about $5 each. I don't even bother replying to get my check - it's simply not worth the effort.
The class-action system is a scam to benefit the wrong-doers, not to give strength to a class. What company would prefer 2 million court cases vs a single case? They want to prevent that first individual case from happening, at all, let alone from winning. If one case wins, the ambulance chasing lawyers would crawl out of the wood work and line up for their payout. The legal fees alone would be 10x+ any class-action settlement.
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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.
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I think you are correct. A contract requires "consideration." You got nothing for agreeing to the new contract, so I don't think it is legal.
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.
Depends on the country. This wiki article goes over a bunch of countries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_clause
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.
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"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.
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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.
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Let me laugh if Blizzard's TOS change is because of a security breach they haven't disclosed yet.
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Fuck Blizzard. Haven't used them since the censorship bullshit they pulled over Hong Kong.
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This is not unique to Blizzard, and has nothing to do with their latest EULA changes. Binding arbitration has been part of their EULA for years, long before the latest one arrived. (The earliest copy I've found is from 2018, and I don't think it was new even then.)
For reference, here's a diff showing the latest changes:
https://rentry.co/yuu78kqd
Both that and the unilateral changing of terms post-sale are horrible practices that we should all pressure our legislators to make illegal, and perhaps reject by voting with our wallets, but singling out one company for it takes attention away from the larger issue: It has been widespread in the software industry for a long time.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
a sunk cost is a sum paid in the past that is no longer relevant to decisions about the future.
So due to sunk cost the better choice is to continue supporting bad behavior?
For me, not continue to support but use what I've paid for and not put any more money into it
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I played Vanilla WoW a week after launch and was with it all the way up through ~~Cataclysm~~ Mists. After hearing about the multiple shocking incidences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Blizzard and upper management's unwillingness to stop it, it was quite easy to delete my Battle.net account and walk away. (Yeah I hadn't played in a while, but I'd intended to come back eventually.)
There are plenty of other games out there. You vote with your dollars, and your vote shows your character.
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I understand why Louis likes privacy.com so much. But he really needs to stop telling people to use them as a means of stopping payment with scummy vendors and companies so frivolously without having a disclaimer that it can open that person up to getting their credit dinged for non-payment.
Maybe he doesn't care about such things, but his viewers might.
To get around the Blizzard dark pattern the "right way", agree to the EULA, login, cancel subscriptions, remove payment details, close account (if possible), stop using Battle.net, done. Now the EULA is irrelevant. This also has the knock on effect of being the path that Blizzard/Activision/MS will actually notice since it will cost them money at scale in a way they can't explain away as childish internet trolling.
Edit: a word (irreverent > irrelevant)
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The funny thing is by forcing you to agree to the new terms, the contract can be challenged since one side was coerced to sign it (and didn't get a chance to sign in voluntarily!).
US courts tend to favor corporations over end users, so there's still a strong chance a judge will throw the case out anyway, but because this is such an act of bad faith in US contract law, a judge might also rule in the end-user's favor just to make an example out of Blizzard for being such a dick.
PS: Steam did this a long time ago. I've never had any disagreements with Steam but some folks have. I don't know if anyone's had the account bricked, which Blizzard, EA and Ubisoft have done.
This seems to be the new norm, first Roku, now Blizzard.
How can they "force" anything if you dont sign? By not agreeing to new terms.. you dont agree to the terms. Wouldnt having it any other way just be insanity? Like i could write "contract" here that by viewing it you agree to it and if you dont agree, i could still claim that some part of it applies because it reads so in the contract. Or I have some other contract that is agreeable and someone signs it, then I change the terms and other party can't reject them all because of something in the first contract.
Internet companies usually have clauses that they can terminate the agreement at any time for any reason, including "because they feel like it". They usually don't have to tell you why, either.
Same deal with all the "licensing" things and "digital goods ownership". In two words: you don't.
But it's been that way for ages.
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As my lawyer used to tell me, "there is the contract and there is the law." Meaning anyone can say anything in a contract. If you have the legal ability you can find out what the law says about it.
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I have less reasons to feel bad about pirating everything day by day
This doesn't affect me, because I stopped buying Blizzard's shit games after the BnetD lawsuit.
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k, I'll continue to not ever buy their games
hopefully a class action lawsuit in the making. i wouldnt think doing this would hold up in court would it? INAL tho
Common Blizzard L
Don't buy games from such vultures
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