Is a gaming consumer watch dog needed?

MumboJumbo · 13 Apr 2011 at 13:57

orderoftheflame said:
VAC bans only ban you from VAC secured servers. You can play offline or on unsecured servers.

There is literally not single player to most valve games. No one buys them for the single player. Furthermore this is not true. He said he cannot access the games at at all. Valve have taken away his right to play the games he paid for over some VAC error.

orderoftheflame · 13 Apr 2011 at 14:08

8igdave said:
There is literally not single player to most valve games. No one buys them for the single player. Furthermore this is not true. He said he cannot access the games at at all. Valve have taken away his right to play the games he paid for over some VAC error.

If he can't even launch his games it's unlikely to be a VAC ban. VAC standing is only authenticated on connecting to a VAC secured server.

If he's been VAC banned, his Steam community profile will state he has bans on record.

As to what did happen to your friend, I've no idea. But I doubt Valves reply to whatever he asked them was "stop cheating".

paradisiac · 13 Apr 2011 at 14:44

8igdave said:
Upon contacting valve they told him to simply stop cheating then.

how can they stop cheating if they can no longer play. seems a bit odd to me.
i dont think cheating is an offence that would result in the account being permanently banned, just a server suspension or ban on that particular game.

either way, if there was a watchdog, what would they be able to do, its your friends word again a multi-million pound organisations as to whether he breached their terms and conditions. im sure that valve have the right to remove someone from their servers if they feel that it is ruining it for genuine users. im not sure though if they would be allowed to stop them playing any games whatsoever. also im not saying your friend was cheating, but can he prove that he wasnt, as im sure valve would, if it went to court, be able to provide some statistics to show otherwise else they would not of made the claim.

EDIT : VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat)

valve said:
If a cheat is found the player's Steam account will be flagged as cheating immediately, but the player will not receive any indication of the detection. It is only after a delay of "days or even weeks"[6] that the account is permanently banned from "VAC Secure" servers[7] for that game, along with other games that use the same engine. (e.g. Valve's Source games, GoldSrc games, Unreal engine games). Valve never discloses which cheat was detected.

nothing to say the steam account is removed along with all games. just server suspension.

Tefal · 13 Apr 2011 at 14:56

MagicBoy said:
It's multinational, therefore unenforceable.

Most developers make you sign up to TOS. If you don't read them properly then it's nobody else's fault.

No you usually sign up to an EULA which is often unenforceable.

paradisiac · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:00

Tefal said:
No you usually sign up to an EULA which is often unenforceable.

but how many games, updates and patches would you say are released on a weekly/monthly basis with a EULA clause across europe? and how many pages does each of these have? do you really think they are going to pay people to sit down and read through them all, pick out whats not legal, and then take the company to court to get them to remove it?
that would cost billions of pounds, and who is going to fund that?

Tefal · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:04

paradisiac said:
but how many games, updates and patches would you say are released on a weekly/monthly basis with a EULA clause across europe? and how many pages does each of these have? do you really think they are going to pay people to sit down and read through them all, pick out whats not legal, and then take the company to court to get them to remove it?
that would cost billions of pounds, and who is going to fund that?

no you just wait till someone gets banned/their account removed and then they contest the clause that was used, it's then decided if that is legal or not (which means the company checks that clause in future in every eula they ever make as the legal precedent would make them pretty vulnerable to getting screwed over)

Same as every contract in legal history.

It's just no one ever bothers, because it's not worth the hassle.

Mattyjw · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:05

It would be difficult to police and publishers could choose not to release games in territories that have harsh or many penalties.

Tefal · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:11

Mattyjw said:
It would be difficult to police and publishers could choose not to release games in territories that have harsh or many penalties.

depends what the territory is.

if its the usa or the EU then no not releasing a game in either of those markets would be suicide for a publisher.

especially in the FPs market.

paradisiac · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:11

Mattyjw said:
It would be difficult to police and publishers could choose not to release games in territories that have harsh or many penalties.

exactly. if there was an easy route for people to moan about something, then devs would just stop making the games as it would be too much of a headache.
i would say for the millions, if not billions of people that play games on either consoles or pc, the minority actually experience issues that cannot be resolved with the company. or that dont deserve it through abuse of the system.
its a harsh reality, and i admit if it happened to me i would moan too, but on the whole, there are more happy customers than there are people that have had a genuine mistake that is not over turned.

Evilsod · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:14

Mattyjw said:
It would be difficult to police and publishers could choose not to release games in territories that have harsh or many penalties.

You make it sound like very shakey EULA clauses are used to ban people regularly. It wouldn't affect the market in the slightest. Its not the same thing as what happens in Germany with its draconian regulations.

Tefal · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:32

paradisiac said:
exactly. if there was an easy route for people to moan about something, then devs would just stop making the games as it would be too much of a headache.

not really, when games make hundreds of millions in profit people will always make them.

By your logic the tobacco, alcohol and porn industries should have died out decades ago.

Surfer · 13 Apr 2011 at 15:54

kylew said:
This is where people often get confused, Terms and Conditions are often not worth the paper they're printed on, same as EULAs, they're full of crap that they'd never be able to enforce in a million years. But they seem to think "you've agreed to it, so it's enforceable", to which it really isn't. "Contracts" can be null and void simply because of the outrageous terms in them, regardless of if you sign or not, and "you said mean things about us, so we're taking your property from you, because we think we own it because we manufactured it".

This - cannot be repeated enough on here. What a company scribbles down cannot override your consumer rights as they exist in UK law. Company EULAS are just what they think ie worthless. I generally ignore eulas and the like.

paradisiac · 13 Apr 2011 at 17:57

Tefal said:
not really, when games make hundreds of millions in profit people will always make them.

By your logic the tobacco, alcohol and porn industries should have died out decades ago.

tobacco, alcohol and porn do nothing illegal and from what i can presume do not really have anything to do with my comment.
how many people do you know that are doing absolultly nothing wrong, complain that the tobacco or pub has refused to serve them because they said something about a particular brand?
and you are saying if you posted something negative on a forum about porn, that they would cancel you ppv subscriptions and stop you watching porn?? i think not. how exactly do any of these industries cross over with people moaning about accounts being banned for something that they havent done, or said something out of line about the company. or some form of T&Cs having something illegal in them?

Tefal · 13 Apr 2011 at 18:31

paradisiac said:
tobacco, alcohol and porn do nothing illegal and from what i can presume do not really have anything to do with my comment.

they have a huge number of hurdles to jump through far more than games have (heck even German and Australian regulations on games are minor compared to them) yet like games they make billions in profits so the companies jump though those hoops.

there is no way devs would "stop making games because it's a headache" or stop selling in the big regions.

how many people do you know that are doing absolultly nothing wrong, complain that the tobacco or pub has refused to serve them because they said something about a particular brand?
and you are saying if you posted something negative on a forum about porn, that they would cancel you ppv subscriptions and stop you watching porn?? i think not. how exactly do any of these industries cross over with people moaning about accounts being banned for something that they havent done, or said something out of line about the company. or some form of T&Cs having something illegal in them?

that has nothing to do with what you said before and what i was referring to

exactly. if there was an easy route for people to moan about something, then devs would just stop making the games as it would be too much of a headache.

Sin_Chase · 13 Apr 2011 at 18:57

T and Cs are one thing.

Losing your bought games for having an opinion is not on however. Digital Distribution is digital distribution. Not rental...or is it a rental as per the T and Cs now?

paradisiac · 13 Apr 2011 at 19:27

Tefal, i think you are wrong. look at the US PS Store and the EU PS Store. because of all the hassel sony got from the EU (mainly germany) they have refused to put a lot of content on the EU store.
also, look at a lot of US based digital distribution sites (GFWL springs to mind) that have a lot more games and offers than the EU counterparts. this is down to all the hoops they have to jump through to get them released over here. add to that a watchdog that has people moaning to them every 5 mins because someone believes they were unfairly treated for (and bringing us back to why this thread was started) someone coming onto a forum and saying a company has banned them for doing nothing. only to turn out it was a software glitch and nothing to do with a ban.

im not anti watchdog, i just dont see what it will actually achieve. the EULAs might mean jack, and people might say they chose to ignore them. but if you break the rules they will generally punish you. and no one has the money to go up against them to fight it. simple answer is, dont break the rules and you have no need to worry.
can anyone actually hand on heart say they have been banned and lost their privilages through absolutly no wrong doing whatsoever, be it a legal rule or not?

kedge · 13 Apr 2011 at 20:33

xiphrex said:
You have the power to become the consumer watchdog yourself. Every one of us.

If you dont like what a developer is doing, hit them where it hurts the most.

Pirate every game you would have purchased from them if they had treated you with respect instead of concluding that all their customers are morons.

Oh right, so crime is your solution to the problem, tut tut.