EVE General Discussion

National laws > EULA. Oracle's EULA says you can't sell software. Court says you can. Oracle lose.

Software developers can put whatever they like in the EULA, it isn't going to make any difference if a court says otherwise in an area they sell the product. CCP quote the laws of Iceland, which is part of the EEA so they have to comply with EU court decisions if they wish to sell products within the EU.

EULAs aren't worth the paper they're written on in anywhere other than the USA, and even there its increasingly dodgy.

I like this idea a lot.
@Op - You agreed to the EULA whether you want to rationalise it otherwise or not. You went "click" and that was your consent.
Rant all you want, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I'd say yes and no, game accounts doesn't really fall under this category in my mind, but software licenses such as a Windows license would.

Steam already has the framework to transfer games between accounts for a year now.

On the other side, I'm pretty sure they will be sending the EU a bill for all the time spent recovering games from hacked accounts.

Also, LOL at OP trying to justify RMT. An account is not a piece of software, get over it.

The use of EVE requires three things: a software license, an account, and an internet connection.

The last one is entirely your problem and beyond the scope of what CCP can control — you establish that one with your local ISP.

The second one the thing that lets you log on to the servers and mess around with CCP's database content. This is what the EULA prohibits you from reselling. It is a service contract, and has nothing to do with software. As such, it is not covered by the ruling. It's this service that is (largely) the topic of the EULA, where the limits and limitations of the service are explained (such as an SLA where there are absolutely no QoS guarantees).

The first one is the $5 extra you probably paid to set up your very first account, in addition to the $15 for the first month. You can also get that license for free alongside the creation of a trial account through the buddy system or some other means. Technically, you're not allowed to run EVE without a license, but since there is no point in running the software without the service contract, which is sold alongside a license to use it, it's not like they're going to crack down on unlicensed use…

…but they might crack down in people trying to sell copies of the game client outside of their own retail channels (the Atari physical distribution and through download from the website or Steam). This is where the ruling steps in and says that you are allowed to resell that physical box you bought from the store and neither Atari nor CCP can come after you. If you try to sell the client download, they'll do nasty things to you because you'll have a very hard time proving that each download was a license you had bought and then resold.

Good post

No that was already established. This ruling (from an Oracle appeal) clarifies that it doesn't matter whether there was physical media or not, you have an absolute right to resell the software if you were granted a licence for an unlimited period.

Prior to the ruling you could only resell software which had physical install media. Now you can resell software which has no physical install media.

That's what this case was all about Tippia.

EA et al are in a world of trouble on this as online multiplayer games with no recurring fee most definitely ARE covered by the ruling.

Indeed. I can see why a recurring fee model might not apply, but anything else? I should be allowed to sell it to anyone.

People sell their accounts all the time for real money. There is more than one site that's dedicated to the auction of game accounts. No one cares about the EULA. Unless CCP is going to start buying up all the accounts and then reversing charges on them people will continue to sell for real $$.

Nah, Dust will fall into the same pattern as EVE: yes, you need a license to run the software, but you won't be able to actually play without a (non-transferable) service contract.

Here, the ruling rather means that, should you be able to extract the software from your PS3's hard drive, you can give it to someone else and they're allowed to run it (although I imagine that Sony will be slightly upset if you do for various other reasons). But here, too, it will be largely pointless to do such a transfer since anyone is free to download and use the software anyway. The kind of transfers the ruling allows is immensely more work than just creating a license of your own.


edit: Come to think of it, though, what it could mean for Dust is that those beta keys (as well as beta keys for other games) should be transferable — that's a license to use the beta software that doesn't (entirely) follow the rules of the full game. That could be subject to some details in the legalese though.