Civ 5 - Why the protest?

[wolfigor]

Does steam collect personal information on you? It sure does...assuming by personal information you mean what game you're playing and for how long you played it. Does it scour your hard drive for child porn, illegal movies, or *gasp* Abba mp3's? No, never has nor never will. Why do i say this?

Steam's Privacy Policy
Steam's Subscriber Agreement

Steam states in their Subscribers Agreement that they have full right to do whatever they want with all the data they collect about you (and that's a pretty large amount of data):

7. USER GENERATED INFORMATION

"User Generated Information" means any information made available to other users through your use of multi-user features of Steam or to Valve through your use of the Steam Software. User Generated Information may include, but is not limited to, chat, forum posts, screen names, game selections, player performances, usage data, suggestions about Valve products or services, and error notifications. Subject to the Valve privacy policy referenced in Section 1 above, as applicable, you expressly grant Valve the complete and irrevocable right to use, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the User Generated Information and derivative works thereof in any form, anywhere, with or without attribution to you, and without any notice or compensation to you of any kind.

Pretty much they can do anything they want... even take your words, modify them, and use them for advertisement.

Because it would violate their own policies, which means if it were to happen, you could sue them

Not really...

11. INDEMNIFICATION

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Valve, its licensors and their affiliates from all liabilities, claims and expenses, including attorneys' fees, that arise from or in connection with breach of this Agreement, use of Steam or any Subscription, or any User Generated Information or Third Party Content, including, but not limited to, the creation, distribution, promotion and use of any Mods, by you or any person(s) using your Account. Valve reserves the right, at its own expense, to assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you. In that event, you shall have no further obligation to provide indemnification to Valve in that matter. This Section regarding Indemnification shall survive termination of this Agreement.

You are effectively giving away your right to sue Steam even in case steam break their own contract with you and their own policies.

What can the user do in case of problems with Steam?

YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY FOR ANY DISPUTE WITH VALVE WITH REGARD TO STEAM OR THE STEAM SOFTWARE IS TO DISCONTINUE USE OF STEAM AND CANCEL YOUR ACCOUNT.

Well... according to the agreement the user can only cancel the account (10.A) and do not expect any refund (13.B and 13.C)

 

[tom2050]

People keep saying over and over again that Steam is just a nice content delivery service. But in cases like using Steamworks, it is not just a nice delivery service. The EULA is a horrible thing to the end user. People have had their accounts locked by Valve and have had hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars of games 'lost' forever.

Do not put all your eggs into the Steam basket. In fact, don't put more than 1 egg in your Steam basket to be safe.

Steam has 'mods' of it's own that go around and if they see anyone break a rule (in MP games e.g.) they have the power to ban them permanently if they choose and user has no recourse against their lost purchases other than perhaps writing an email. Not sure if any official Appeals center is available.

Many accounts I have read of individuals whom have lost hundreds and hundreds of dollars of purchases on Steam; they have said they used to love Steam also. Steam is setup so you are guilty until proven innocent; and proving yourself innocent means nothing.

 

[Senethro]

Steam has 'mods' of it's own that go around and if they see anyone break a rule (in MP games e.g.) they have the power to ban them permanently if they choose and user has no recourse against their lost purchases other than perhaps writing an email. Not sure if any official Appeals center is available.

Aha, time for my favorite phrase: Prove it!

(Your statement is completely bloody rubbish and I'm going to bring it back again and again. Heres your chance to edit it out.)

Many accounts I have read of individuals whom have lost hundreds and hundreds of dollars of purchases on Steam; they have said they used to love Steam also. Steam is setup so you are guilty until proven innocent; and proving yourself innocent means nothing.

"Many". How many is many? On this forum there have been reference to people who lost their Steam password and email, people who tried to reverse payments to Steam and lost their accounts, people who couldn't buy games from a developing country cheaply and play them in a developed country, but not so many who lose them for no reason at all. I don't even understand why Steam would do such a thing as surely it would undermine consumer confidence and their business.

 

[Nick Danger]

tom2050 said:
Steam has 'mods' of it's own that go around and if they see anyone break a rule (in MP games e.g.) they have the power to ban them permanently if they choose and user has no recourse against their lost purchases other than perhaps writing an email. Not sure if any official Appeals center is available.

Senethro replied:
Aha, time for my favorite phrase: Prove it!

(Your statement is completely bloody rubbish and I'm going to bring it back again and again. Heres your chance to edit it out.)

Perhaps tom2050 was referring to this from Steamworks API Overview:
"Valve Anti-Cheat
see multiplayer auth headers: steam_gameserver.h, ISteamGameServer.h, ISteamUser.h

Integration work with the VAC Steamworks C++ API is simple, because the heavy-lifting is left to Steam. An advantage is that cheat detection is not handled directly by your game client. The only thing your game needs to do is use the API to find out whether or not a given user is VAC banned.

VAC is a component of Steamworks and the Steam client, and works by scanning the users system for cheats while your game is running. It works a lot like a virus scanner, and has a database of known cheats to detect."

All you folks that will be cheating while playing single-player offline Civ5 games beware -- you're busted!

 

[bjbrains]

Perhaps tom2050 was referring to this from Steamworks API Overview:
"Valve Anti-Cheat
see multiplayer auth headers: steam_gameserver.h, ISteamGameServer.h, ISteamUser.h

Integration work with the VAC Steamworks C++ API is simple, because the heavy-lifting is left to Steam. An advantage is that cheat detection is not handled directly by your game client. The only thing your game needs to do is use the API to find out whether or not a given user is VAC banned.

VAC is a component of Steamworks and the Steam client, and works by scanning the users system for cheats while your game is running. It works a lot like a virus scanner, and has a database of known cheats to detect."

All you folks that will be cheating while playing single-player offline Civ5 games beware -- you're busted!

VAC is only used during VAC-enabled multiplayer games, not just while the game is running.

 

[Senethro]

No, Nick Danger, thats not how it works. Its multiplayer cheat prevention only.

 

[Nick Danger]

No, Nick Danger, thats not how it works. Its multiplayer cheat prevention only.

If you and bjbrains are referring to my statement "All you folks that will be cheating while playing single-player offline Civ5 games beware -- you're busted!" -- that's humor-thru-sarcasm (that Groucho is the perfect emoticon for this! Kudos to the CivFanatics staff!).

That you both felt the need to seriously comment on it suggests I failed in the attempt.

In the future I shall endeavor to do better (where's Groucho's cigar?)

 

[phantom000]

I agree that it's only a game and even if it's horrible it's not the end of the world.

I just have a bad feeling about this next civilizations game. I read an interview with the main developer and it sounded like he hadn't played much of civilizations, he kept going on about Panzer General. As i read on the game he was describing...well it just didn't sound much like a civilizations game, sounded more like some out of the Generals Franchise.

Now maybe i am wrong and maybe it will still be a good game in and of itself. I just feel a bit concerned.