Bonus rant: the webpage is one of those death row worthy websites that forces you into the localization it determines based on your IP address, rather than using the HTTP header that has been specifically defined for that purpose.
The header defines the language, but laws follow political borders, so it makes sense. E.g. which country's eula would you show for a German speaker Germany, Austria or Switzerland?
As far as the content of the EULA, sure, use the laws of the request's IP address; the rest of the website, however, does not allow you to select a different localization, only the place of origin.
Furthermore, rarely do I see EULAs that aren't written in English, and it's not like the EULA in question is not a generic one translated for my country:
[...] [non] influiscono su eventuali garanzie o garanzie legali dell'utente in qualità di consumatore ai sensi delle leggi locali applicabili (ad esempio, diritti dell'utente in caso di malfunzionamento del Software)
Non-lawyerly translation:
[...] [do not] affect the legal rights of the user as a consumer accoring to local applicable laws (for example, the rights of the user in case of Software malfunction)... which means either someone bothered localizing a generic EULA, or that excerpt is the legal version of "unless it's illegal idk im not a lawyer".
a good lawyer could probably argue that a user isn't bound to that eula.
heck a bad lawyer could probably too.
They're bound to the EULA, but the EULA is meaningless because it's just a URL. They're definitely not bound by whatever's at that URL.
This would be like having someone sign a contract when the contract was just a shopping list. Sure, they're bound by the "contract", but the contract doesn't specify anything they can or can't do.
Are any users actually bound, ever?
Depends on how paid off the judge is in the lawsuit.
I bet you could argue in court that the EULA is null and void, because you can't be reasonably expected to copy that link into a browser to read it
You can not, in fact, copy that link - I had to type it manually. It's relatively short and human-readable, but still...
Devil's advocate: I wouldn't accuse Sony (or friends) of intentionally making the text unselectable, that's on the Steam client.
The EULA isn't null and void, but it's pretty meaningless. Not because you can't reasonably be expected to copy that link into a browser to read it, but because there's no indication that you should or even must do that.
The EULA contains no terms, it doesn't contain any wording saying what you can or can't do. It doesn't say what your rights are. It just contains something that looks like a URL. So, you're still bound by the terms of the EULA (as much as you're bound by any EULA) but the EULA doesn't permit or forbid anything. It's effectively the same as if it were blank.
Modify your host and redirect the URL > 127.0.0.1. software without license:D
The site at the end of that URL will set a cookie. How else would such a mechanism be functional at all? A call to steams naviagtionTiming api confirming the last page load and nothing else at all? Hard to imagine a product manager agreeing to such a pointless exchange. So it cant be redirected to an ip, which I assume you mean is running its own webserver on loopback:443. It also implies the mechanism to verify allows cross site scripting, at least to that one other domain.
Yes, I accept that that is a URL.
Is an EULA presented this way considered binding? That seems really exploitable, like making people click hundreds of links to get to the real EULA so they don't actually read it.
It's pretty ridiculous.
What happens if you go there and Sony have moved their EULA page and it just 404s? Does that mean there is no EULA at all and you can play without terms? Doubt Sony woild see it that way lol.
EULA should be displayed within the same context it is accepted.
Imagine getting a 404 or 500 error. Then archiving that on archive.org (and screenshot that dialog on steam) and accept the terms. If there's any problem and they say you violated the EULA, point them to the terms you accepted.
making people click hundreds of links to get to the real EULA
This could be turned into a game with some kind of narrative like a Choose-Your-Own-E.U.L.Adventure. Players might try to exploit it though, so there should probably be some terms they have to agree to first.
I have read the URL in it's entirety. It's not an agreement. This query is invalid.
"I read the URL. It was not very informative."
Tangentially related: I really enjoyed the EULA of Baldur's Gate 3:
Somebody up at Sony had a Jira ticket to update all the eulas and it listed the URLs for each one, instead of going to the URLs and putting the content in each one of the eulas they just slaped the URLs in.
Edit: clarity
Not a lawyer but that does look like a very acceptable URL doesn't it? I mean has all the normal URL dots and slashes so I'd say accept
Same thing with Until Dawn. Why do I need a PSN account for a single player game?
Well, at least Steam quickly issued the refund.
I fucking hate that. I bought Forza 4 and needed a Microsoft account to play single player. At least I got my money back.
At least MS account may be slightly more useful (OS, software, school, work). There is literally no reason to have PSN account except a few exclusive games on PlayStation. Even worse are smaller game devs and pubs nagging for accounts.
Of course there is no great reason offline/SP/old games should require an account to play, and out of principle "nope" should be considered. But almost every goddamn thing requires an account these days. At least we have decent password managers now...
Steam does actually tell you on the game's page if the game requires a 3rd party account to play.
I didn't see it when I bought it. And honestly, a refund is a better protest than not buying it.
My wife just got the exact same pop up while playing God of War: Ragnarok. Weirdly though, she’d been playing it for a week before they sent this.
It's one of the "I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further" license changes that are popping up as of late.
Though, that topic is way more whan "mildly" infuriating.
That URL is asking to ddos'ed
Sony: Just send them the link and they can copy that in.
LOLOL
