TO Arrowhead Game Studios Legal information you should know.

[Malpherian]

I just thought as an Attorney in the US there are some things you need to know about your new policy:

1. Under consumer law in the US and the EU it is illegal to charge for a product or service, and then remove access to such for people who have already "signed" the contract or made the purchase. Due to a requirement, which falls under "Fraudulent contract alteration".

In the US and the EU, this is crime.

2. If the company wishes to maintain this policy, changes must be made to it in order to facilitate and maintain the current contract with the consumers, IE, you can make "new" players and customers purchasing your game follow the policy. However current customers MUST NOT be affected, nor their service interrupted, in order for such a policy to be legal within the US and the EU.

3. Consequences for going through with your current plan, will include but are not limited to:

~ Class action lawsuits against your company.

~ Criminal Fraud charges against your company for those individuals in countries where PlayStation does not service. And such an action classifies as "Piracy".

~ Other legal actions which may or may not be deemed criminal or civil, and to which may get your game banned entirely from said countries as well as sanction your studio and any game it produces in the future preventing you from legally selling such. These Countries will include the US Canada, AU, Japan, and most of the EU.

4. You are also in direct violation of consumer contract law, as well as US and EU identity theft laws. No company may put forth a policy, which will by the virtue of it's implementation requiring the signing of a 3rd party contract involving the dissemination of personal information to another company, in order to maintain a service, which has already been purchased (Before the requirement was made), without the individual consumers direct written consent.


Your company needs to seriously re-consider this move. And I advise strongly that you only make the requirement for "new" players.

Removing access to a paid product from a current customer in requirement of dissemination of personal information to a 3rd party is considered "Fraud", and actually once again... Falls under the Piracy clauses in most western countries.

Not only will you lose your consumer base, you may in fact lose your company. I doubt any serious criminal charges will be put forth, however, your definitely looking at bankruptcy and losing your studio, or it's right to publish and release games within the US and EU.

Sony can not legally require a Valve user on PC, to register on their platform, unless that user intends to use cross play. This is easily fixed by simply disabling the feature on account which does no register with PSN network etc.

Sony only has control over their products. And only over their networks. They can not legally require anyone from steam to use their network. Or make an account or take a product they purchased before such was made a requirement away from the consumer.

Theft, Fraud, and Piracy. Is what your new policy, contains. As I said above you need to seriously rethink this move.

[Malpherian]

Bump (Because of Forum Spam)

[TrumpVapes]

Originally posted by Malpherian:

I just thought as an Attorney in the US there are some things you need to know about your new policy:

1. Under consumer law in the US and the EU it is illegal to charge for a product or service, and then remove access to such for people who have already "signed" the contract or made the purchase. Due to a requirement, which falls under "Fraudulent contract alteration".

In the US and the EU, this is crime.

2. If the company wishes to maintain this policy, changes must be made to it in order to facilitate and maintain the current contract with the consumers, IE, you can make "new" players and customers purchasing your game follow the policy. However current customers MUST NOT be affected, nor their service interrupted, in order for such a policy to be legal within the US and the EU.

3. Consequences for going through with your current plan, will include but are not limited to:

~ Class action lawsuits against your company.

~ Criminal Fraud charges against your company for those individuals in countries where PlayStation does not service. And such an action classifies as "Piracy".

~ Other legal actions which may or may not be deemed criminal or civil, and to which may get your game banned entirely from said countries as well as sanction your studio and any game it produces in the future preventing you from legally selling such. These Countries will include the US Canada, AU, Japan, and most of the EU.

4. You are also in direct violation of consumer contract law, as well as US and EU identity theft laws. No company may put forth a policy, which will by the virtue of it's implementation requiring the signing of a 3rd party contract involving the dissemination of personal information to another company, in order to maintain a service, which has already been purchased (Before the requirement was made), without the individual consumers direct written consent.


Your company needs to seriously re-consider this move. And I advise strongly that you only make the requirement for "new" players.

Removing access to a paid product from a current customer in requirement of dissemination of personal information to a 3rd party is considered "Fraud", and actually once again... Falls under the Piracy clauses in most western countries.

Not only will you lose your consumer base, you may in fact lose your company. I doubt any serious criminal charges will be put forth, however, your definitely looking at bankruptcy and losing your studio, or it's right to publish and release games within the US and EU.

Sony can not legally require a Valve user on PC, to register on their platform, unless that user intends to use cross play. This is easily fixed by simply disabling the feature on account which does no register with PSN network etc.

Sony only has control over their products. And only over their networks. They can not legally require anyone from steam to use their network. Or make an account or take a product they purchased before such was made a requirement away from the consumer.

Theft, Fraud, and Piracy. Is what your new policy, contains. As I said above you need to seriously rethink this move.

big...meaty...CLAWS

[Spirit]

this need to be pinned , great that an ACTUAL attourney is looking into this means : sony has broken major laws in both the US and EU , not arrowhead
i´m not an expert in this matter but for me sony is guilty of market manipulation by forcing players to link steam to psn accounts AFTER the game is out for around 3 months , they even secretly changed the EULA on their website

[Lovecraft]

An actual attorney would know that AH won't be listening to legal advice from the Steam forum.

[Ninefinger]

So the game is dead and we should play as much now before its gone? or there is a chance no one will do anything about this and we take the L and have to sign up to play?

So devs are free from SONY contract because sticking to the contract now violates laws thus rendering the contract broken and so a new one must be made.

I feel like AH gonna get smacked by SONY and the people by this because making the option to SKIP breaks laws and the contract.

New negotiations must be made for new players only or optional to Corssplay enabled only and sony gonna have to change their wording back to not required for PC games lol.

[Elysium]

Love a good lawsuit

[Ninefinger]

Originally posted by Lovecraft:

An actual attorney would know that AH won't be listening to legal advice from the Steam forum.

When important advice is given its in their best interest to notice it even if its being whispered.

[OnePunchMan69]

Oh yes steam forum attorney hard at work

[pseudo]

Googled the name on OP's profile, the name does belong to an attorney in Knoxville.

[Psycho]

Lawsuit Hmmmmm?

[Queltis]

For a lawyer you have a terrible understanding of US consumer law.

[Breezie]

Do it.

[Mr. Tiddle Widdles]

Originally posted by Queltis:

For a lawyer you have a terrible understanding of US consumer law.

Care to enlighten us, o' wise one?

(Dumbass)

[Breezie]

Originally posted by Queltis:

For a lawyer you have a terrible understanding of US consumer law.

Your rebuttal is found desperately lacking. If you actually knew that, you would have at least provided a few solid, unshakable points.

[Breezie]

So. A lot of people are dismissing the security threat outright, and saying it's an over-reaction. Let me paint you a picture that shows why it's not.

nProtect has had breaches (CVN-2005-0295. It let ANY process tell it what to do. Very bad design for a kernel level program. There are undoubtedly more vulns.), and is a VERY powerful piece of software. Finding a new vulnerability is completely feasible, if not expected in the future. Sony has a terrible track record on security.

So. What does this change? How about we think it through a bit.

A new exploit regarding nProtect on its own wouldn't be too terrible, as you could hide in the sea of internet connected devices. Your chances of being compromised is pretty low.

So Sony only has your email address right? Wrong. How do you think they can find out if someone is using a VPN? They're also gathering telemetry data. Things to include your IP, which is used to geolocate you. If you use a VPN, you're violating the terms of service, and will be banned if caught.

So here's the thing so many of we PC players are concerned about. Sony gets compromised again, and the telemetry data gets got. That's now a target list to leverage any nProtect vulnerability / exploit and build a bot net, as well as gather whatever is on your computer. And there's literally no way you or your system would know.


Do you want a key logger on your PC? Cause that's how you get a key logger on your PC.

A key logger can record you logging into you bank account. Is this game worth that risk? Someone being able to log into your bank from your computer?

This is a far more serious things than some are acknowledging, and I figured I'd spell it out for people.



This is, in my opinion, either negligence, or maleficence in regard to those commenting, and arguably could extend to ArrowHead and Sony.