News

EA's SimCity beta EULA threatens ban for 'failure to report bugs'
Posted: 22.01.2013 13:39 by Simon Priest Comments: 11
Fancy yourself a beta testing Mayor of the fair SimCity due this March? Well, you better damn well do your civic duty or the EA feds will slap your publically elected (not really) behind with an account ban.

According to section 6.2 of the SimCity beta EULA, it is consider 'exploiting a bug' if you 'fail to report a bug'. It is our "responsibility" to snitch on anything that looks like an 'undocumented feature'.

Now EULAs are already notorious for including rather strident language when it comes to this stuff, but EA claim to "reserve the right to treat you no differently" from an exploiter.

That's right, should you fail to report a bug you've come into knowledge of then you may as well have authored the dirty exploit yourself and be selling detailed 'how to' guides at $60 a time, fuelling your dirty, dirty lifestyle of depravity. Apparently this same type of language was in the Battlefield 3 beta EULA.

SimCity beta EULA section 6.2: "It is understood and agreed that, as part of your participation in the Beta Program, it is your responsibility to report all known bugs, abuse of ‘bugs’, ‘undocumented features’ or other defects and problems related to the Game and Beta Software to EA as soon as they are found (“Bugs”). If you know about a Bug or have heard about a Bug and fail to report the Bug to EA, we reserve the right to treat you no differently from someone who abuses the Bug. You acknowledge that EA reserve the right to lock anyone caught abusing a Bug out of all EA products.”

Fortunately these are only implied threats, and unless someone is blabbing precise details of how to screw over those innocent doe-eyed EA lines of code, then absolutely nothing will happen.

"So, it's a beta test, but if you end up hitting a bug and don't report it, EA reserves the right to ban you from all EA games," tweeted Dan Teasdale of Twisted Pixel. Of course the reason this is a rather abhorrent EULA clause is because an EA account ban would lock you out from accessing your Origin activated titles, all because of a bug.

SideQuesting has posted the full SimCity beta EULA and is yet to receive comment from EA or Maxis.

SimCity's beta officially commences this week on the 25th, and will let those accepted play for one hour sessions. It includes a tutorial that explains a number of new mechanics Sim Mayors will need to deal with.

SimCity releases on PC in early March.

Source: PC Gamer
Related games: SimCity (2013) (PC)

Comments

By SirRoderick (SI Elite) on Jan 22, 2013
SirRoderick
Unenforceable nonsense that they can use to permanently ban someone from all their games with a flimsy excuse?

Well I always THOUGHT EA was run by a fascist, but know I know for certain.
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Jan 22, 2013
herodotus
They aren't the first, with Stardock requesting, if not demanding the same of beta testers of "Sins of a Dark Age". There's no word of account bans, but the tester is required by agreeing to the EULA to report all bugs. Makes sense.
In EA's case however, banning accounts and equating non-reporting with exploitation - that's a disincentive to be a beta tester for EA.
By SirRoderick (SI Elite) on Jan 22, 2013
SirRoderick
Yeah, I wouldn't risk it :/
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Jan 22, 2013
herodotus
Nope, the proverbial ten foot pole has come out for this...
By danfreeman (SI Core) on Jan 22, 2013
danfreeman
Okay EA i don`t wanna do this,i really don`t but you forced my hand,the games that come from you and capcom i will never buy ever again,why? Because you treat your customers like crap and don`t even see us as customers,only wallets to siphon money from,i feel sorry for bioware and every company that has,is and will belong to EA but this is too much.

You CANNOT tell people how to play their games unless it`s a team based online game and while sim city is indeed an online one you cannot ban people that bought your game and may have forgotten to tell you what bugs your game has which by the way is your job to test and fix these things before you release it to the public.

Rot in hell EA.
By LukeDion1987 (SI Veteran Member) on Jan 22, 2013
LukeDion1987
Haha... No words on this... They just are better and better...
By SirRoderick (SI Elite) on Jan 22, 2013
SirRoderick
Looking forward to see this in TB's content patch. He'll have his usual brand of judgement to spew :)
By Hammerjinx (SI Veteran Member) on Jan 22, 2013
Hammerjinx
An open beta is a way to save money on testing. Instead of getting your internal QA guys working 100 hour weeks until they wish they were dead or hiring a bunch more guys, you get as many people as possible (also a wide variety of machines) playing it. No public guy is going to be anything like as efficient at bug hunting, but they're free and whatever then do report can be more thoroughly tested by a in-house goon.

Making threats of dire consequences if you do not report bugs is a sad-arse attempt to increase the efficiency of the public beta. Fact is, a *lot* of those guys just want to play the game for free, and have no interest in poking around for bugs. Shocker, I know.

I would guess the theory is that the number of people accessing the beta is pretty much set, so coercing the people you do have into doing work increases the value of running the beta.

Realistically there is no harm to EA in accepting that some people in the beta are going to be freeloaders. I'd guess that the real concern would be using the beta period to locate bugs, not reporting them, then exploiting them when the game goes live. Thing is, if you can do that then you can find the bug after it goes live also.

Ultimately I think they'd be better served offing a bribe to get more people in on the beta. A larger beta costs nothing. If the bribe is a 25% off one item via Origin then that costs them basically nothing *and* encourages people to check out their online store so could be seen as being a sensible investment even if no extra people joined the beta. If they wanted to be EA about it they could even limit the voucher from applying to certain titles.

I'd be pretty disgusted if they actually pressed this against people who aren't actively abusing the beta/game, but regardless; there are better ways to get what you want.
By SirRoderick (SI Elite) on Jan 22, 2013
SirRoderick
That's EA in a nutshell, constantly hammering on their customers with their big stick, whilst the carrot lies moldy and forgotten in the basement.
By FoolWolf (SI Elite) on Jan 24, 2013
FoolWolf
EA... well those two letters just seem to strive to be forever more related to evil praxis', stupid none-end-user-friendly-setups and simply put - crap.
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Jan 24, 2013
herodotus
*shakes head*
I must be the only one that still supports EA these days. When "BF3" was in closed beta, I'd say 99% of the players were actively reporting bugs and glitches on the Forums, and while not all were addressed by final release they have mostly been by now. When it went to open beta after a week or so, that's when many were just playing and only complaining in-game and not on the Forums. Still, they were few and far between.
The players who exploit,exploit,exploit almost ruined "BF3" until Dice could get some sort of handle on the situation, so of course EA are touchy about this. Hell, players do it constantly in "CoD" and Activision just sit back and do nothing.
Do you want over-reaction, followed by apologies and withdrawal of draconian measures, or a Publishers who sits idly by while exploits are carried out left, right and up the middle?
Then there is Blizzard....
I think you guys have your EA-HATE blinkers on.