Your Account may be deactivated if you do not use your Account within twelve months after the date that it was created or for any continuous period of twelve months after creation. If you do not use your Account for twelve or more months, it may be removed and deleted by the Website administrator at their sole discretion.
I think the keyword here is "may." In the MMO business, it's generally very bad practice to delete accounts for inactivity, as doing so takes a customer who may come back and spend more money and turns them into a customer with no reason to ever come back and spend money.
Still yeah, I can understand the concern about this for someone who paid the lifetime subscription fee. Generally, that kind of investment says "I like something, so I'm pretty much in it for the long haul." I do hope they come and clarify this, even though I'm not a lifetime subscriber myself.
Please note that regardless of any notice, PWE reserves the right to discontinue the Service or to terminate or suspend your account at any time in its sole discretion for any reason, or for no reason.
This one, I wouldn't worry about at all. This is literally in every MMO's terms of service that I've ever seen. The only time an online gaming company like PWE is going to terminate your account (while it's in good standing, anyway) is if they go under or something along those lines happens which causes them to no longer be capable of providing service to customers. To do so for any other reason would essentially be business suicide.
This line exists to protect them from lawsuits when and if that time comes to pull the plug, not because they want to randomly terminate accounts that are in good standing.
Thank you for bringing this up -- the Customer Service team will look into it. But, Lifetime means Lifetime (unless you are breaking the ToS and/ or EULA -- inactivity does not fall into a Lifetime account purview).
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
.... Is no one else somewhat worried that cryptic didn't go over the new ToS when they switched?
surely this would have been one of the first things there legal department would have gone over BEFORE the switch was made???
This sort of language has been in the terms of use for just about every MMO ever created. Back with the original EQ I think it said they could erase it after 3 months, but maybe it was a year. However, in actuality you can log in with an account that hasn't been used in 13 years and your characters will still be there.
you don't need to worry unless you are actively going to breach TOS e.g by trying to sell your account on ebay etc. This would be the sort of activity that would possibly see a LTS member being excluded from the service.
Why should they? This is NORMAL WORDING. It does not mean what you think it means. That was said officially earlier in the thread.
Like I say, I think the best lawyerly answer is that awarding of a stipend qualifies as account activity for these purposes.
Still lets them ban people for things like cheating without having to supply a reason. These termination clauses exist to let them ban cheaters and free up DB space without having to deal with consumer protection laws that might allow cheaters to take them to court. They absolutely have to be free to ban people for any reason (even if their internal reasons are limited; they can't SAY this because it might allow cheaters to legally contest a ban). Freeing up database space makes sense for inactive free accounts with no high level characters on them but it could legally jeopardize them to specifically admit it would be limited to this.
For the sake of this, I REALLY think the best answer we could get is that award of a monthly stipend qualifies as account activity and therefore lifers and subscribers count as active.
Why should they? This is NORMAL WORDING. It does not mean what you think it means. That was said officially earlier in the thread.
Why? Because Branflakes said he would check up on it.
Though I appreciate your comment, if you are wrong, I do not think your "Sorry, lol, I was wrong..." would bring back my deleted toons.
Also, I do not know if Brandon's comment in this thread would qualify as a legally binding official stance. Just because he said "lifetime means lifetime" does not invalidate or counter the text in the TOS from what I can tell.
Perhaps Brandon can confirm that his "lifetime means lifetime" statement supersedes the TOS and that if any of my toons were deleted I could use that post on the forums for any compensation in arbitration or a court of law... Or perhaps the CS or Legal team could provide him the answer he said he would check up on instead.
It's not a breach of contract if your purchase involved you to acknowledging the ToS. Which is exactly what you did when you created your account.
This reminds me of a case I was involved in a few years back. A tenant had to clauses in his contract, one stating the landlord can enter the apartment and another saying he couldn?t. Later a court ruled the landlord had full rights to enter per the contract, and the whole section stating he couldn?t was voided. Later, I spoke with the plantiff's lawyer who said these come up every once in a while, and the chance of getting a favourable ruling is about 50/50 depending on the situation. So I would advise you not to jump to conclusions too quickly, context will matter if this is ever tested.
This is irrelevant. The court ruled that way because the landlord has to be able to enter the aparment for legal reasons. For instance, if a fire breaks out of if the tenant's bathtub is overflowing, causing damage to the structure of the building or someone else's property.
Last I checked, PWE does not need to get into my ship to turn off the engine because it is still running and might cause dangerous emissions build up in the starbase where I left it when I last logged. They can simply contact my Bridge or Duty officers on comms and have them do it.
The bottom line is that the TOS is a general agreement. The Lifetime agreement is a separate agreement that supercedes the normal terms. They sell the Lifetime subscriptions with the promise that the money you are paying guarantees you access to the game for the life of the game. That trumps any statement in the TOS that they can terminate anytime they want. Money has changed hands to guarantee a Lifetime subscription; therefore, they have to have cause to terminate that agreement. As I said, the whole point of the Lifetime agreement is that you can come and go as you like without risk of losing your status. They cannot sell the subscription on that basis, then change the terms as they please. No court will uphold that.
If it makes anyone feel any better, I can tell you from running a system with several million users that the first highlighted clause is put in place in case you have so many people that account numbers actually cause a drain on resources. It gives you the ability to get rid of the large amount of accounts that are what has been mentioned before, temp accounts that have never pad any money into the game and have not logged in for 5 years (or make up a long time frame).
The second highlighted line is there in case they decide to shut the game down, they don't have to pay people with active accounts anything.
Perhaps Brandon can confirm that his "lifetime means lifetime" statement supersedes the TOS and that if any of my toons were deleted I could use that post on the forums for any compensation in arbitration or a court of law... Or perhaps the CS or Legal team could provide him the answer he said he would check up on instead.
This is why you will NOT get a response about this. They will not give you anything you can use against them.
Like I say, in terms of "terminating for any reason", that needs to be in there and PWE won't do anything to eliminate that clause. Otherwise, you'll have weird stuff like hackers claiming that they are compelled to hack due to psychological disability or weird things like that to contest any and all forms of ban. PWE won't intentionally lose a customer but they do need to ban some people and not discussing the reasons means they aren't subject to bad behavior being defended by things like psychiatric disability claims or told by a court, for example, that they HAVE to let some guy go on pro-TRIBBLE rants in chat.
In terms of deleting for inactivity, all PWE has to do is say that they consider delivery of a stipend to be account activity, meaning that subscribers (gold or lifetime) who don't login aren't subject to the deletion policy because their account is active.
This is irrelevant. The court ruled that way because the landlord has to be able to enter the aparment for legal reasons. For instance, if a fire breaks out of if the tenant's bathtub is overflowing, causing damage to the structure of the building or someone else's property.
Last I checked, PWE does not need to get into my ship to turn off the engine because it is still running and might cause dangerous emissions build up in the starbase where I left it when I last logged. They can simply contact my Bridge or Duty officers on comms and have them do it.
The bottom line is that the TOS is a general agreement. The Lifetime agreement is a separate agreement that supercedes the normal terms. They sell the Lifetime subscriptions with the promise that the money you are paying guarantees you access to the game for the life of the game. That trumps any statement in the TOS that they can terminate anytime they want. Money has changed hands to guarantee a Lifetime subscription; therefore, they have to have cause to terminate that agreement. As I said, the whole point of the Lifetime agreement is that you can come and go as you like without risk of losing your status. They cannot sell the subscription on that basis, then change the terms as they please. No court will uphold that.
Actually, law is a funny thing. It doesn't matter what makes sense like letting your landlord in if there is a fire. It just what was agreed upon, especially if it was in writing. In many cases, addendums like the one I mentioned above are upheld (meaning landlord CANNOT enter premises). But in this case it was not. Why? Well, that's the real question and the answer isn't always the same.
It's even worse when you factor IT because TOS' can change at pretty much any time, even after a lawsuit was filed, without your signature. You may think your LTS is safe because it supercedes the "generic" agreement you signed when you started. But really it's up to the arguments made by lawyers and the ultimate interpretation of those arguments. What makes sense is irrelevant.
So, don't presume "no court would uphold that" unless you are a lawyer or can cite a specific case where this happened and would be a legitimate argument in a court of law.
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Join Date: Sept 2008
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I don't think they would arbitrarily ban someone because it would not promote their agenda of selling things.
All bans simply need to be arbitrary "on paper" to make sure there is no recourse.
But if you're buying things or enhancing the community in a way that leads to other people buying things, they would have no reason to ban anyone. So I do not understand the fear there because PWE could have no motive to do that.
I;d have to find it again but there's a thread where the player is getting a refund on his lifetimer account because PeeWee can't figure out he had one.
So I do not understand the fear there because PWE could have no motive to do that.
Because it is PWE, and honestly I think some of us are looking for a reason to fear the over lords. But the fact is most MMOs have rules like this in the TOS, and it extends to all accounts. But I think were looking for reasons to fear PWE...
But here are some examples.
BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF ******** ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or the EULA.
4. Account Suspension/Deletion. TURBINE MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE THE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. Most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this TOS.
TRION MAY SUSPEND, MODIFY, TERMINATE OR DELETE ANY ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. Accounts terminated by Trion for any type of abuse, including without limitation a violation of these Terms of Use, will not be reactivated for any reason. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or any applicable Game EULA.
So I don't know. Maybe we should all fear them because they seem the same. hey turbine sells life times. maybe they are out to make money by banning lifetime accounts... or worse
Because it is PWE, and honestly I think some of us are looking for a reason to fear the over lords. But the fact is most MMOs have rules like this in the TOS, and it extends to all accounts. But I think were looking for reasons to fear PWE...
But here are some examples.
BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF ******** ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or the EULA.
4. Account Suspension/Deletion. TURBINE MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE THE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. Most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this TOS.
TRION MAY SUSPEND, MODIFY, TERMINATE OR DELETE ANY ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. Accounts terminated by Trion for any type of abuse, including without limitation a violation of these Terms of Use, will not be reactivated for any reason. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or any applicable Game EULA.
So I don't know. Maybe we should all fear them because they seem the same. hey turbine sells life times. maybe they are out to make money by banning lifetime accounts... or worse
Well, "making money by banning lifetimes" misses the point of lifetimes.
Lifetimes, I'd venture, spend money. Probably more money on average.
Those lifers who don't spend money still stabilize the community, which creates sales. I'd even venture that a lifer who tells people not to buy anything generates more money for the game by being active than they cost the game by being negative and they can get a forum ban, if necessary, without a game ban.
The stipends don't really directly cost PWE money because the economy should be weighted to eat those up. (If anything, the presence of lifetimes just causes everyone else to pay a slightly higher rate to offset the stipends and requires some low value high volume things like lockboxes.)
PWE is a lot of things. Out of touch, perhaps, especially with western markets. (For example, a dated website which seems to target IE6 and doesn't play well with Chrome and Safari.) But I don't think they're stupid by any stretch. They're very calculating, just not necessarily culture savvy.
Like I say, I'd be totally satisfied if they'd just come out and define a stipend as account activity for deletion policy purposes.
I think that they have the TOS that were in existence when the account was purchased, deviating from those terms would be a breach of contract and Pwe would be liable for damages.......
I think that they have the TOS that were in existence when the account was purchased, deviating from those terms would be a breach of contract and Pwe would be liable for damages.......
The initial terms say they are subject to revision at Cryptic's discretion and basically just say that you'll be notified of and subject to any changes.
I've got an update for you Please rest assured that because Gold accounts receive a monthly stipend, they will not be defined as "inactive" - receiving the stipend counts as activity. This applies to Lifetime Accounts as well as those with a recurring subscription plan.
So this inactivity policy pertains to a Silver player's entire account, not just their online forum access? This was one of the vague points of interests in the thread.
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Your Account may be deactivated if you do not use your Account within twelve months after the date that it was created or for any continuous period of twelve months after creation. If you do not use your Account for twelve or more months, it may be removed and deleted by the Website administrator at their sole discretion. We will endeavor to use reasonable efforts to notify you by e-mail before we delete your Account, unless we are deleting your User ID for a violation of these terms or discontinuation of the Service. However, we will not be liable in any manner for any failure to give notice. If you advise us within five days of the notice that you want to keep your Account active, we will not delete it. If you do not so notify us, your Account may be permanently deleted, along with your User ID, records, ranks and service information. Please note that regardless of any notice, PWE reserves the right to discontinue the Service or to terminate or suspend your account at any time in its sole discretion for any reason, or for no reason.
So if someone does not login to their paid "lifetime" account (which is in good standing) within 12 months, Cryptic / PWE can just delete it?
Or just delete my paid "lifetime" subscription in good standing for any old reason, or even no reason at all?
===UPDATE FROM PWE_BRANFLAKES - 7/19/12===
Greetings Captains,
I've got an update for you Please rest assured that because Gold accounts receive a monthly stipend, they will not be defined as "inactive" - receiving the stipend counts as activity. This applies to Lifetime Accounts as well as those with a recurring subscription plan.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
For those of you that didn't want to read the whole post there it is from Brandon. Gold and Lifetime are not affected.
Comments
Still yeah, I can understand the concern about this for someone who paid the lifetime subscription fee. Generally, that kind of investment says "I like something, so I'm pretty much in it for the long haul." I do hope they come and clarify this, even though I'm not a lifetime subscriber myself.
This one, I wouldn't worry about at all. This is literally in every MMO's terms of service that I've ever seen. The only time an online gaming company like PWE is going to terminate your account (while it's in good standing, anyway) is if they go under or something along those lines happens which causes them to no longer be capable of providing service to customers. To do so for any other reason would essentially be business suicide.
This line exists to protect them from lawsuits when and if that time comes to pull the plug, not because they want to randomly terminate accounts that are in good standing.
.... Is no one else somewhat worried that cryptic didn't go over the new ToS when they switched?
surely this would have been one of the first things there legal department would have gone over BEFORE the switch was made???
assuming cryptic has a legal department.
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I just found a big hole in the ToS that allows them to send emails concerning account security.
Oops.
Why should they? This is NORMAL WORDING. It does not mean what you think it means. That was said officially earlier in the thread.
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Ask Brandon. He was the one who said he was going to check into this.
The.Grand.Nagus
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Like I say, I think the best lawyerly answer is that awarding of a stipend qualifies as account activity for these purposes.
Still lets them ban people for things like cheating without having to supply a reason. These termination clauses exist to let them ban cheaters and free up DB space without having to deal with consumer protection laws that might allow cheaters to take them to court. They absolutely have to be free to ban people for any reason (even if their internal reasons are limited; they can't SAY this because it might allow cheaters to legally contest a ban). Freeing up database space makes sense for inactive free accounts with no high level characters on them but it could legally jeopardize them to specifically admit it would be limited to this.
For the sake of this, I REALLY think the best answer we could get is that award of a monthly stipend qualifies as account activity and therefore lifers and subscribers count as active.
Why? Because Branflakes said he would check up on it.
Though I appreciate your comment, if you are wrong, I do not think your "Sorry, lol, I was wrong..." would bring back my deleted toons.
Also, I do not know if Brandon's comment in this thread would qualify as a legally binding official stance. Just because he said "lifetime means lifetime" does not invalidate or counter the text in the TOS from what I can tell.
Perhaps Brandon can confirm that his "lifetime means lifetime" statement supersedes the TOS and that if any of my toons were deleted I could use that post on the forums for any compensation in arbitration or a court of law... Or perhaps the CS or Legal team could provide him the answer he said he would check up on instead.
and besides who reads ToS? just click accept :P
The Oil Industry?
so... they can do whatever they want anyway lol
This is irrelevant. The court ruled that way because the landlord has to be able to enter the aparment for legal reasons. For instance, if a fire breaks out of if the tenant's bathtub is overflowing, causing damage to the structure of the building or someone else's property.
Last I checked, PWE does not need to get into my ship to turn off the engine because it is still running and might cause dangerous emissions build up in the starbase where I left it when I last logged. They can simply contact my Bridge or Duty officers on comms and have them do it.
The bottom line is that the TOS is a general agreement. The Lifetime agreement is a separate agreement that supercedes the normal terms. They sell the Lifetime subscriptions with the promise that the money you are paying guarantees you access to the game for the life of the game. That trumps any statement in the TOS that they can terminate anytime they want. Money has changed hands to guarantee a Lifetime subscription; therefore, they have to have cause to terminate that agreement. As I said, the whole point of the Lifetime agreement is that you can come and go as you like without risk of losing your status. They cannot sell the subscription on that basis, then change the terms as they please. No court will uphold that.
Every tos and aup has such a clause. Nothing new. Even the webhosting company I run has it.
The second highlighted line is there in case they decide to shut the game down, they don't have to pay people with active accounts anything.
This is why you will NOT get a response about this. They will not give you anything you can use against them.
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In terms of deleting for inactivity, all PWE has to do is say that they consider delivery of a stipend to be account activity, meaning that subscribers (gold or lifetime) who don't login aren't subject to the deletion policy because their account is active.
Actually, law is a funny thing. It doesn't matter what makes sense like letting your landlord in if there is a fire. It just what was agreed upon, especially if it was in writing. In many cases, addendums like the one I mentioned above are upheld (meaning landlord CANNOT enter premises). But in this case it was not. Why? Well, that's the real question and the answer isn't always the same.
It's even worse when you factor IT because TOS' can change at pretty much any time, even after a lawsuit was filed, without your signature. You may think your LTS is safe because it supercedes the "generic" agreement you signed when you started. But really it's up to the arguments made by lawyers and the ultimate interpretation of those arguments. What makes sense is irrelevant.
So, don't presume "no court would uphold that" unless you are a lawyer or can cite a specific case where this happened and would be a legitimate argument in a court of law.
Join Date: Sept 2008
"Holographic tissue paper for the holographic runny nose. Don't give them to patients." - The Doctor
All bans simply need to be arbitrary "on paper" to make sure there is no recourse.
But if you're buying things or enhancing the community in a way that leads to other people buying things, they would have no reason to ban anyone. So I do not understand the fear there because PWE could have no motive to do that.
Or something like that.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=317011
Because it is PWE, and honestly I think some of us are looking for a reason to fear the over lords. But the fact is most MMOs have rules like this in the TOS, and it extends to all accounts. But I think were looking for reasons to fear PWE...
But here are some examples.
BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY BNET ACCOUNT OR WORLD OF ******** ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or the EULA.
4. Account Suspension/Deletion. TURBINE MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE THE ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. Most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this TOS.
TRION MAY SUSPEND, MODIFY, TERMINATE OR DELETE ANY ACCOUNT AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. Accounts terminated by Trion for any type of abuse, including without limitation a violation of these Terms of Use, will not be reactivated for any reason. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or any applicable Game EULA.
So I don't know. Maybe we should all fear them because they seem the same. hey turbine sells life times. maybe they are out to make money by banning lifetime accounts... or worse
Blizzard, Trion, Turbine, CCP, and all the others are... OWNED BY PWE...
Well, "making money by banning lifetimes" misses the point of lifetimes.
Lifetimes, I'd venture, spend money. Probably more money on average.
Those lifers who don't spend money still stabilize the community, which creates sales. I'd even venture that a lifer who tells people not to buy anything generates more money for the game by being active than they cost the game by being negative and they can get a forum ban, if necessary, without a game ban.
The stipends don't really directly cost PWE money because the economy should be weighted to eat those up. (If anything, the presence of lifetimes just causes everyone else to pay a slightly higher rate to offset the stipends and requires some low value high volume things like lockboxes.)
PWE is a lot of things. Out of touch, perhaps, especially with western markets. (For example, a dated website which seems to target IE6 and doesn't play well with Chrome and Safari.) But I don't think they're stupid by any stretch. They're very calculating, just not necessarily culture savvy.
Like I say, I'd be totally satisfied if they'd just come out and define a stipend as account activity for deletion policy purposes.
The initial terms say they are subject to revision at Cryptic's discretion and basically just say that you'll be notified of and subject to any changes.
I've got an update for you
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
For those of you that didn't want to read the whole post there it is from Brandon. Gold and Lifetime are not affected.