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Hellgate Adware, Hell of a EULA

[Oct 18, 2007, 9:51 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

I'll be honest, I don't always read the EULAs with my software, presuming they are only so draconian. However I'm not surprised to see comments in the forums about adware in Hellgate London, since the demo's EULA includes the following bit that stopped me cold:

3. Consent to Use of Data. You agree that EA, its affiliates, and each Related Party may collect, use, store and transmit technical and related information that identifies your computer, including without limitation your Internet Protocol address, operating system, application software and peripheral hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you, including online play. EA and/or the Related Parties may also use this information in the aggregate and, in a form which does not personally identify you, to improve our products and services and we may share that aggregate data with our third party service providers.

Seems to me collecting, using, storing, transmitting, and sharing what applications I own goes a little too far, and I don't own any illegal software myself.

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49.

Re: No subject

Oct 19, 2007, 01:44

ViRGE

As is usually the case with these ambiguous EULA's the uproar is more about what a company might or could do rather than what it has done or said it will do. That would appear to be the case. The EULA isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. EA isn't collecting any personally identifiable information (email address, name, home address, etc), and from what I can tell they're collecting the following: 1) IP Address: This is the result of simply connecting to them rather than anything malicious. Every website and service keeps a log of IP addresses, even Blue's. 2) Operating system: so that they can find out what OS their users are using. 3) Application software: the version of the game and any associated software (game lobby, etc) 4) Peripheral hardware: so that they can find out what hardware their users are using. #1 isn't anything special, #3 is required to handle game updates, #2 and #4 are in the same vein as the Valve hardware survey. The fact of the matter is that unless someone can come up with some proof of EA collecting personal information or collecting information on other aspects of the computer (mainly other installed applications), I don't really see a problem with this. None of this stuff is new in the gaming world.

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