Specifically the emulation part.
Emulators are not illegal, so fuck Sony.
What game is it? Is it Steam Deck EULA?
EDIT: nvm I’m blind it’s God of War.
Revoke my license then Sony, if you can’t then I don’t care about stupid unenforceable clauses in EULAs.
There should never be any sort of EULA needed to access software that isn’t networked. Requiring an agreement to an Acceptable Use Policy is reasonable and violation of those terms resulting in a network ban is reasonable. Otherwise software usage rights should be unlimited and you can prove I caused damage via copyright infringement or prosecute me via CFAA.
EULAs should be completely non-enforceable in a sane world. They are enormous, full of frivolous dispositions just to bloat them and discourage actual reading (like the infamous prohibition against using iTunes to help you build nuclear weapons) and rarely are they ever available before you’ve already purchased the software. Instead, they’re presented to you only as part of a setup program where the font is minuscule, Ctrl+F doesn’t work and which often doesn’t allow copying+pasting the EULA to a non-retarded text window somewhere else which actually allows you to read it comfortably, save it or even print it out. EULAs are a perfect example of contracting in bad faith and if any Law student anywhere ever created a EULA-like document as part of a Civil Law assignment, they would get a failing grade automatically because no professor in their right mind is going to read more than two paragraphs into that obviously malicious bullshit with 50 other papers to grade.
So if some company added to their software a short EULA, with no frivolous provisions, that you could ctrl+f in, and access after you’ve accepted and installed the program, that you can reasonably read before making a purchase, that you can copy to the clipboard or print, and that otherwise didn’t have any glaring things indicating it’s in bad faith, would you be down with EULAs?
Let’s say the whole text is something like:
Copyright 2024 Butthole Software LTD. All rights reserved. Our trademarks are ours and you don’t have any license to use them. This software is provided as-is with no warranty express or implied. We hope you enjoy our game but by accepting this EULA and installing it, you agree not to emulate it where “emulate” means to play it on any system (physical gaming console or operating system) other than the system(s) on which Butthole Software LTD officially released this game.
Or let’s say it was that text plus a plainly-stated contractually-binding prohibition against cheats and mods. Or a prohibition on streaming the game. Or a prohibition on playing any game by Ass Pucker LLC ever again.
You’re asking for a blanket statement from me but giving specific examples.
Regarding what you said before the quote block, yes. My generic objection to EULAs would be lifted in this case.
Regarding the obviously objectionable example clauses in the block and after it, I am opposed to those but they are a reason to reject the particular EULAs which contain them, just like any contract which contains similar dispositions (imagine having to agree never to eat at Burger King when you buy a Big Mac).
My previous comment was about things that are generally wrong with the practice of EULAs because they have become a de facto standard, and was not meant to imply that those are the only things that can possibly be wrong with any EULA ever.
Well at least I’d know where the boundaries are. I don’t want to have to distill a 10pg eula to it’s core tenets, is rather plain language for most of it, with technical legal language only where it’s critical, and not as an addendum or post script.
If people actually understand what the limits are, the creators can get useful feedback on what the community likes or doesn’t about the terms.
How clearly is emulation even defined? For example wine, while literally being called wine is not an emulator, could potentially be considered emulation by the legal system. Or maybe one could say dxvk emulates directx. Also aren’t you technically emulating the device and not the game? This seems very unspecified
WINE works on the same principle as the Boring Company™ Not A Flamethrower™.
(/s)
Fuck em
That’s some bullshit.
Fortunately, virtual machines these days usually use hardware virtualization, instead of emulation.
The problem is that the legal definition of what is or isn’t emulation doesn’t necessarily have to coincide with the technical one. Any EULA can include a statement to the effect of “for the purposes of this Agreement, emulation is defined as such and such”, but even if they don’t, all the company would have to do is convince a judge, practically all of whom are total laymen when it comes to computer technology, that using WINE or virtual machines or whatever other emulation-adjacent technology counts as emulation or, alternatively, that even though they aren’t technically emulation, since they accomplish a similar purpose, they are implied by the use of the word “emulation” in the EULA.
Legalese is largely characterized by vomiting every synonym you can think of to make absolutely sure that they are all included in the text, but that isn’t a requirement. It’s just to avoid having to debate whether something was included or not. Unless it is either explicitly included or explicitly excluded, its implicit inclusion is up for debate in a court of law, and the last word belongs to a judge who can’t tell a smartphone from a network switch.
