In a move that is sure to make friends around the world, Microsoft has updated their Xbox terms of service to prevent gamers from suing the company, or engaging in a class action lawsuit. The new user agreement also limits damages to one month of service, or about $5 on Xbox Live. In other words, Microsoft is planning to screw you, and they are taking steps to protect themselves against the backlash. You might want to be angry about that. GameSpot has the story.
In theory, user agreements are not contracts, and companies can’t sidestep the law of the land just by saying it doesn’t apply to them. In practice, who knows? The point is, Microsoft is claiming they are above the law, and that you, the customer, have no rights except what they allow you to have. Isn’t that nice of them?
I was thinking about this lately. Sony did basically the same thing with their equally-problematic additional clause to the EULA.
These sort of intimidation tactics feel somewhat facile as it’s likely that the courts will not uphold them. If a company harms a bunch of their customers in the same fashion and they gather together as a class a corporation should not be able to just wave them away with words on a page simply because (as a class) they use their service.
Was going to say, Didn’t sony do the same thing?