I won't get into heavy detail or start a debate with Mike cause he'll never admit to it anyways but what Kabam is threatening is illegal. You cannot ban somebody for account sharing, and thats why they haven't. And it doesn't matter what they print in the TOS because anybody that knows anything about business law knows that if the TOS is deemed unlawful, then the act itself cannot be punishable. Account sharing is no different then me handing you my phone and letting you play. They don't own the accounts, we do, they don't own the passwords, we do. They offered the service of accessing for a different mobile device so now they are stuck with it. And again, for all they people that will tell me I'm wrong, go look it up, there are plenty of internet gaming precedents out there. Once we start an account and dedicate time, money and effort into it, it's ours. They can close the game, but they don't own our saved info..... which is also why they legally can't stop us from selling our accounts. They just assume nobody has the time or money to sue them. Mods get banned because they are altering patented and copywrited material owned by Kabam, but that's where it stops. I'm not suggesting you let people do things for u, Kabam definitely isn't going to help u if you get scammed, but just know that not everything Mike and Kabam pitch is a strike.
There is so much wrong here, and none of it that hasn't been promulgated before by disgruntled MMO players with a poor understanding of the law.
1. The law governing your access to the game generally is contract law. Under contract law, you are not entitled to access and play the game unless you agree to the TOS. You cannot claim the TOS is "illegal" and so you don't have to follow it. Under contract law, if you believe the TOS is illegal and you will not honor it, you invalidate your permission to access the game. Deliberately playing the game while ignoring the TOS is theft of service under most contract law in most western jurisdictions, in particular in the US.
2. The law governing your ownership rights to the game generally is intellectual property law. Under US law, you technically own anything you create in the game under authorship rights. That would be things like user names. However, the TOS requires you to grant to Kabam an unlimited license to use those things, so you cannot forbid them from accessing your account. Meanwhile, there is no law that says Kabam must allow you to access that content. Intellectual property law contains no provision for access. If you make a stone carving of a statue using a giant rock on my property, you have content creator authorship rights owning that creation. I am under no legal obligation to ever allow you back onto my property to ever see it again.
3. Intellectual property law makes a distinction between content and medium. Kabam owns the servers. They own the game client software which you only have a license to use, not own. They can revoke your ability to use any of that infrastructure irrespective of any intellectual property rights.
4. How much money you spend on your account has absolutely no bearing on whether you are entitled to anything in the future. Virtual items in a video game are not currently considered to be material property under US and international law, so your money was spent on a service not a commodity. Spending money on MCOC is like spending money on a gardener for a rental home. No matter how much money you spend on that service, you still have no ownership rights to that property.
5. Outside of China, I am unaware of anyone that has successfully sued an MMO for being permanently banned or having their account revoked. And most lawyers that have commented on this publicly tend to say that the chance of winning such a lawsuit is extremely low and not worth the effort to try. And even if you somehow win, any service provider can terminate their relationship with you for any reason or no reason at all, so they could terminate your account even after losing the lawsuit. There's literally no way for a court to compel a service provider to give you access forever.
I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands of posts by players like you making these claims, a significant fraction of which claim they will seek legal action if banned. I'm unaware of any of them succeeding. And that's because it is mostly black letter law that they would likely fail on the merits of their case, which tend to revolve around their extremely poor understanding of the law.
Once again you're assuming that the TOS is legal in the first place. And no they don't own the accounts, they gave us the account in a free dl. It's doesn't matter, u can spew TOS garbage all day and night, both Game of War and Clash of Clans were sued (and they lost) and there have been multiple PC game lawsuits for similar things. Why do u think Diablo created its own auction and sales site for in game items? Gamers own characters they have paid for and built over time.
I won't get into heavy detail or start a debate with Mike cause he'll never admit to it anyways but what Kabam is threatening is illegal. You cannot ban somebody for account sharing, and thats why they haven't. And it doesn't matter what they print in the TOS because anybody that knows anything about business law knows that if the TOS is deemed unlawful, then the act itself cannot be punishable. Account sharing is no different then me handing you my phone and letting you play. They don't own the accounts, we do, they don't own the passwords, we do. They offered the service of accessing for a different mobile device so now they are stuck with it. And again, for all they people that will tell me I'm wrong, go look it up, there are plenty of internet gaming precedents out there. Once we start an account and dedicate time, money and effort into it, it's ours. They can close the game, but they don't own our saved info..... which is also why they legally can't stop us from selling our accounts. They just assume nobody has the time or money to sue them. Mods get banned because they are altering patented and copywrited material owned by Kabam, but that's where it stops. I'm not suggesting you let people do things for u, Kabam definitely isn't going to help u if you get scammed, but just know that not everything Mike and Kabam pitch is a strike.
There is so much wrong here, and none of it that hasn't been promulgated before by disgruntled MMO players with a poor understanding of the law.
1. The law governing your access to the game generally is contract law. Under contract law, you are not entitled to access and play the game unless you agree to the TOS. You cannot claim the TOS is "illegal" and so you don't have to follow it. Under contract law, if you believe the TOS is illegal and you will not honor it, you invalidate your permission to access the game. Deliberately playing the game while ignoring the TOS is theft of service under most contract law in most western jurisdictions, in particular in the US.
2. The law governing your ownership rights to the game generally is intellectual property law. Under US law, you technically own anything you create in the game under authorship rights. That would be things like user names. However, the TOS requires you to grant to Kabam an unlimited license to use those things, so you cannot forbid them from accessing your account. Meanwhile, there is no law that says Kabam must allow you to access that content. Intellectual property law contains no provision for access. If you make a stone carving of a statue using a giant rock on my property, you have content creator authorship rights owning that creation. I am under no legal obligation to ever allow you back onto my property to ever see it again.
3. Intellectual property law makes a distinction between content and medium. Kabam owns the servers. They own the game client software which you only have a license to use, not own. They can revoke your ability to use any of that infrastructure irrespective of any intellectual property rights.
4. How much money you spend on your account has absolutely no bearing on whether you are entitled to anything in the future. Virtual items in a video game are not currently considered to be material property under US and international law, so your money was spent on a service not a commodity. Spending money on MCOC is like spending money on a gardener for a rental home. No matter how much money you spend on that service, you still have no ownership rights to that property.
5. Outside of China, I am unaware of anyone that has successfully sued an MMO for being permanently banned or having their account revoked. And most lawyers that have commented on this publicly tend to say that the chance of winning such a lawsuit is extremely low and not worth the effort to try. And even if you somehow win, any service provider can terminate their relationship with you for any reason or no reason at all, so they could terminate your account even after losing the lawsuit. There's literally no way for a court to compel a service provider to give you access forever.
I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands of posts by players like you making these claims, a significant fraction of which claim they will seek legal action if banned. I'm unaware of any of them succeeding. And that's because it is mostly black letter law that they would likely fail on the merits of their case, which tend to revolve around their extremely poor understanding of the law.
Winner....the great contest of the longest post wins. Congrats and keep up the good work sir/madam.
Once again you're assuming that the TOS is legal in the first place. And no they don't own the accounts, they gave us the account in a free dl. It's doesn't matter, u can spew TOS garbage all day and night, both Game of War and Clash of Clans were sued (and they lost) and there have been multiple PC game lawsuits for similar things. Why do u think Diablo created its own auction and sales site for in game items? Gamers own characters they have paid for and built over time.
I'm only aware of Game of War becoming entangled in a class action suit claiming it was an illegal gambling service. That case was dismissed. Clash of Clans was involved in an issue regarding minors performing in-app spending on the Apple App store that ultimately involved Apple granting refunds. There is no evidence I can find that either company was sued by a banned player and had the ban reversed. I am also unable to find any evidence of either company being sued by someone claiming ownership rights to any in-game content and winning. Any such victory would be big news all over the place, and I'm reasonably certain I would have heard about it.
If you have some kind of evidence for your claims that those companies were sued and lost cases involving either account banning or account ownership, post a link. This would be legally earth-shattering news, so it shouldn't be difficult to find.
I won't get into heavy detail or start a debate with Mike cause he'll never admit to it anyways but what Kabam is threatening is illegal. You cannot ban somebody for account sharing, and thats why they haven't. And it doesn't matter what they print in the TOS because anybody that knows anything about business law knows that if the TOS is deemed unlawful, then the act itself cannot be punishable. Account sharing is no different then me handing you my phone and letting you play. They don't own the accounts, we do, they don't own the passwords, we do. They offered the service of accessing for a different mobile device so now they are stuck with it. And again, for all they people that will tell me I'm wrong, go look it up, there are plenty of internet gaming precedents out there. Once we start an account and dedicate time, money and effort into it, it's ours. They can close the game, but they don't own our saved info..... which is also why they legally can't stop us from selling our accounts. They just assume nobody has the time or money to sue them. Mods get banned because they are altering patented and copywrited material owned by Kabam, but that's where it stops. I'm not suggesting you let people do things for u, Kabam definitely isn't going to help u if you get scammed, but just know that not everything Mike and Kabam pitch
Many interesting points raised here but the reality is this. There are no bans for account sharing. Bans are only given for modding. It would be an interesting step forward for Kabam to ban mercs or people that purchase their services, however it simply hasn't happened.
I'm sure many will disagree. You have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid.
Many interesting points raised here but the reality is this. There are no bans for account sharing. Bans are only given for modding. It would be an interesting step forward for Kabam to ban mercs or people that purchase their services, however it simply hasn't happened.
Well, yes and no. It is difficult in the general case to detect account sharing in a vacuum, but there have been cases where a player shared their account details with someone else and that someone else used a mod that was detected. In this case, if the player appeals the ban claiming that they did not use a mod at all and anything Kabam detected wasn't them but someone else, then that player would be admitting to a bannable offense itself. In this case, the official reason for the ban is either that the player used a mod, or they shared their account.
The fact that they shared their account with someone that used a ban was how they were *detected* but the reason for the ban would be account sharing.
I personally don't know if they ever banned someone for using a merc as a form of account sharing. However, it would be a meaningless defense to argue that they hadn't done so in the past if they start doing it tomorrow.
Let them pay for it.. And let them try playing in a Tier 1 alliance, where it'll be obvious that they either bought their account or paid someone to enhance it. We had someone with a 100% LOL account in our alliance who always had use tons of items in map 5 and could barely get past 1 or 2 nodes in AW.
Many interesting points raised here but the reality is this. There are no bans for account sharing. Bans are only given for modding. It would be an interesting step forward for Kabam to ban mercs or people that purchase their services, however it simply hasn't happened.
I'm sure many will disagree. You have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid.
This is simply not true. In the last week or so, there have been a number of Posts asking to reinstate their Accounts with only Account Sharing as the transgressions. If you're under the impression that Account Sharing alone is not bannable, you would be wrong. It's always been agaisnt TOS. The fact that people still believe it's acceptable is baffling to me.
I'm wondering how the people who claim that there's been no bans for account sharing know? Do they have a special list from Kabam that shows every banned account and the reason for the ban? Or, are they just basing it off forum posts? If they're basing it off the latter, do they not know that only a fraction of banned people post on the forums... just like only a fraction of people who play this game post here?
Available for hire, just chuck me a pm. and I will get you sorted
Pure account sharing is not a ban-able offense. However sharing your password with someone who mods on your account is ban-able.
.....and the Award for Denial and Blatant Disregard goes to.....
Available for hire, just chuck me a pm. and I will get you sorted
Pure account sharing is not a ban-able offense. However sharing your password with someone who mods on your account is ban-able.
.....and the Award for Denial and Blatant Disregard goes to.....
The dude just edited it to say "lol" after you posted this. I'm hoping they were just saying a kinda meh joke, but you can never be sure.
I'm wondering how the people who claim that there's been no bans for account sharing know? Do they have a special list from Kabam that shows every banned account and the reason for the ban? Or, are they just basing it off forum posts? If they're basing it off the latter, do they not know that only a fraction of banned people post on the forums... just like only a fraction of people who play this game post here?
It's a justification that's been around for a long time. The problem is it jeopardizes people's Accounts. It's not allowed. It's not a lesser offense. It has, can, and will be banned, given sufficient evidence. Usually the people engaging in the behavior keep spreading the same rederick. "Sharing alone is not bannable. They wouldn't ban 90% of the Player Base. The Top Allies do it, so they don't mess with the ones paying......". Horsewash. It's not allowed. It's not a lesser offense. It's bannable. Has been and will be. Anything else is just an excuse to do it.
Infobot seems desperate for money. The recent bans most likely put a dent in their income, so they had to lower their prices and make assurances that nobody will get banned.
Are you having a laugh because you are playing on an account you bought after having the champions from your shared account sold? Are you that Harvard? Better hope that account had not modded prior to sale and Kabam hasn't caught up yet.
Many interesting points raised here but the reality is this. There are no bans for account sharing. Bans are only given for modding. It would be an interesting step forward for Kabam to ban mercs or people that purchase their services, however it simply hasn't happened.
I'm sure many will disagree. You have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid.
This is simply not true. In the last week or so, there have been a number of Posts asking to reinstate their Accounts with only Account Sharing as the transgressions. If you're under the impression that Account Sharing alone is not bannable, you would be wrong. It's always been agaisnt TOS. The fact that people still believe it's acceptable is baffling to me.
The amount of brown noseing You do is astonishing and amazing. You should get a reward. Your absolute conviction that you are right is grand. I too hope to have the self confidence to be so confident and yet also a gigantic tool at the same time.
Brown nosing? What, pray tell, do I get from stating the rules? People are misinformed about what is allowed and what is not. It is not. I'm not going to be judged for being honest. If you're justifying the wrong thing by discouraging those who stand up for the right thing, perhaps you need to take your own inventory.
Many interesting points raised here but the reality is this. There are no bans for account sharing. Bans are only given for modding. It would be an interesting step forward for Kabam to ban mercs or people that purchase their services, however it simply hasn't happened.
I'm sure many will disagree. You have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid.
This is simply not true. In the last week or so, there have been a number of Posts asking to reinstate their Accounts with only Account Sharing as the transgressions. If you're under the impression that Account Sharing alone is not bannable, you would be wrong. It's always been agaisnt TOS. The fact that people still believe it's acceptable is baffling to me.
Ugh, your naivety is astonishing. It is as @DNA3000 stated, people have been banned for account sharing because the person they they shared with was using a mod. There may have also been some people banned for account sharing who were running the arena for 24 hours a day back in the early days. I will reiterate, people do not get banned for simply sharing accounts. If they did 90% of those in a top 100 alliance would be banned. @GroundedWisdom please refrain from speaking on things you know nothing about.
Many interesting points raised here but the reality is this. There are no bans for account sharing. Bans are only given for modding. It would be an interesting step forward for Kabam to ban mercs or people that purchase their services, however it simply hasn't happened.
I'm sure many will disagree. You have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid.
This is simply not true. In the last week or so, there have been a number of Posts asking to reinstate their Accounts with only Account Sharing as the transgressions. If you're under the impression that Account Sharing alone is not bannable, you would be wrong. It's always been agaisnt TOS. The fact that people still believe it's acceptable is baffling to me.
Ugh, your naivety is astonishing. It is as @DNA3000 stated, people have been banned for account sharing because the person they they shared with was using a mod. There may have also been some people banned for account sharing who were running the arena for 24 hours a day back in the early days. I will reiterate, people do not get banned for simply sharing accounts. If they did 90% of those in a top 100 alliance would be banned. @GroundedWisdom please refrain from speaking on things you know nothing about.
All you did was provide an example of the exact misconception I just stated. I've been here, reading Posts. The most recent ones weren't just Modding. They were people who allowed others to log in for them. I know what I'm talking about. If you want to continue under that false pretense, that's up to you. I'm not going to let people think it's allowed. It's not. It is bannable. They have banned for Account Sharing alone. Sorry to break it to you, but any violation of TOS can be a bannable offense, and it's been done before.
Many interesting points raised here but the reality is this. There are no bans for account sharing. Bans are only given for modding. It would be an interesting step forward for Kabam to ban mercs or people that purchase their services, however it simply hasn't happened.
I'm sure many will disagree. You have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid.
This is simply not true. In the last week or so, there have been a number of Posts asking to reinstate their Accounts with only Account Sharing as the transgressions. If you're under the impression that Account Sharing alone is not bannable, you would be wrong. It's always been agaisnt TOS. The fact that people still believe it's acceptable is baffling to me.
Ugh, your naivety is astonishing. It is as @DNA3000 stated, people have been banned for account sharing because the person they they shared with was using a mod. There may have also been some people banned for account sharing who were running the arena for 24 hours a day back in the early days. I will reiterate, people do not get banned for simply sharing accounts. If they did 90% of those in a top 100 alliance would be banned. @GroundedWisdom please refrain from speaking on things you know nothing about.
All you did was provide an example of the exact misconception I just stated. I've been here, reading Posts. The most recent ones weren't just Modding. They were people who allowed others to log in for them. I know what I'm talking about. If you want to continue under that false pretense, that's up to you. I'm not going to let people think it's allowed. It's not. It is bannable. They have banned for Account Sharing alone. Sorry to break it to you, but any violation of TOS can be a bannable offense, and it's been done before.
You are wrong. And I can verify you are wrong simply by observing that all of the top alliances still exist. Or are you now insinuating that Kabam only bans people for account sharing who have no discernible impact on their income? Seems like you are in a tough spot here.
I think the difference is paying Merc services to do content. It's been stated here many times that it's bannable - it's also probably not hard to track.
So yes, Kabam bans people who have an impact on their projected income, and who disrupt the ranking system in a player v player game.
Yes they can tell account sharing by your IP location. If 99% of your gameplay is in one area than you sign half way across the world good chance your sharing account
Comments
Infobot is promoting account sharing, which is illegal
There is so much wrong here, and none of it that hasn't been promulgated before by disgruntled MMO players with a poor understanding of the law.
1. The law governing your access to the game generally is contract law. Under contract law, you are not entitled to access and play the game unless you agree to the TOS. You cannot claim the TOS is "illegal" and so you don't have to follow it. Under contract law, if you believe the TOS is illegal and you will not honor it, you invalidate your permission to access the game. Deliberately playing the game while ignoring the TOS is theft of service under most contract law in most western jurisdictions, in particular in the US.
2. The law governing your ownership rights to the game generally is intellectual property law. Under US law, you technically own anything you create in the game under authorship rights. That would be things like user names. However, the TOS requires you to grant to Kabam an unlimited license to use those things, so you cannot forbid them from accessing your account. Meanwhile, there is no law that says Kabam must allow you to access that content. Intellectual property law contains no provision for access. If you make a stone carving of a statue using a giant rock on my property, you have content creator authorship rights owning that creation. I am under no legal obligation to ever allow you back onto my property to ever see it again.
3. Intellectual property law makes a distinction between content and medium. Kabam owns the servers. They own the game client software which you only have a license to use, not own. They can revoke your ability to use any of that infrastructure irrespective of any intellectual property rights.
4. How much money you spend on your account has absolutely no bearing on whether you are entitled to anything in the future. Virtual items in a video game are not currently considered to be material property under US and international law, so your money was spent on a service not a commodity. Spending money on MCOC is like spending money on a gardener for a rental home. No matter how much money you spend on that service, you still have no ownership rights to that property.
5. Outside of China, I am unaware of anyone that has successfully sued an MMO for being permanently banned or having their account revoked. And most lawyers that have commented on this publicly tend to say that the chance of winning such a lawsuit is extremely low and not worth the effort to try. And even if you somehow win, any service provider can terminate their relationship with you for any reason or no reason at all, so they could terminate your account even after losing the lawsuit. There's literally no way for a court to compel a service provider to give you access forever.
I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands of posts by players like you making these claims, a significant fraction of which claim they will seek legal action if banned. I'm unaware of any of them succeeding. And that's because it is mostly black letter law that they would likely fail on the merits of their case, which tend to revolve around their extremely poor understanding of the law.
Now imagine paying people to do it for you, makes no sense, right?
Winner....the great contest of the longest post wins. Congrats and keep up the good work sir/madam.
I'm only aware of Game of War becoming entangled in a class action suit claiming it was an illegal gambling service. That case was dismissed. Clash of Clans was involved in an issue regarding minors performing in-app spending on the Apple App store that ultimately involved Apple granting refunds. There is no evidence I can find that either company was sued by a banned player and had the ban reversed. I am also unable to find any evidence of either company being sued by someone claiming ownership rights to any in-game content and winning. Any such victory would be big news all over the place, and I'm reasonably certain I would have heard about it.
If you have some kind of evidence for your claims that those companies were sued and lost cases involving either account banning or account ownership, post a link. This would be legally earth-shattering news, so it shouldn't be difficult to find.
I'm sure many will disagree. You have drunk too deeply of the Kool-Aid.
Well, yes and no. It is difficult in the general case to detect account sharing in a vacuum, but there have been cases where a player shared their account details with someone else and that someone else used a mod that was detected. In this case, if the player appeals the ban claiming that they did not use a mod at all and anything Kabam detected wasn't them but someone else, then that player would be admitting to a bannable offense itself. In this case, the official reason for the ban is either that the player used a mod, or they shared their account.
The fact that they shared their account with someone that used a ban was how they were *detected* but the reason for the ban would be account sharing.
I personally don't know if they ever banned someone for using a merc as a form of account sharing. However, it would be a meaningless defense to argue that they hadn't done so in the past if they start doing it tomorrow.
This is simply not true. In the last week or so, there have been a number of Posts asking to reinstate their Accounts with only Account Sharing as the transgressions. If you're under the impression that Account Sharing alone is not bannable, you would be wrong. It's always been agaisnt TOS. The fact that people still believe it's acceptable is baffling to me.
.....and the Award for Denial and Blatant Disregard goes to.....
It's a justification that's been around for a long time. The problem is it jeopardizes people's Accounts. It's not allowed. It's not a lesser offense. It has, can, and will be banned, given sufficient evidence. Usually the people engaging in the behavior keep spreading the same rederick. "Sharing alone is not bannable. They wouldn't ban 90% of the Player Base. The Top Allies do it, so they don't mess with the ones paying......". Horsewash. It's not allowed. It's not a lesser offense. It's bannable. Has been and will be. Anything else is just an excuse to do it.
Brown nosing? What, pray tell, do I get from stating the rules? People are misinformed about what is allowed and what is not. It is not. I'm not going to be judged for being honest. If you're justifying the wrong thing by discouraging those who stand up for the right thing, perhaps you need to take your own inventory.
Ugh, your naivety is astonishing. It is as @DNA3000 stated, people have been banned for account sharing because the person they they shared with was using a mod. There may have also been some people banned for account sharing who were running the arena for 24 hours a day back in the early days. I will reiterate, people do not get banned for simply sharing accounts. If they did 90% of those in a top 100 alliance would be banned. @GroundedWisdom please refrain from speaking on things you know nothing about.
Funny you laugh since you get paid to do LOL for people (I have screen shots too)
All you did was provide an example of the exact misconception I just stated. I've been here, reading Posts. The most recent ones weren't just Modding. They were people who allowed others to log in for them. I know what I'm talking about. If you want to continue under that false pretense, that's up to you. I'm not going to let people think it's allowed. It's not. It is bannable. They have banned for Account Sharing alone. Sorry to break it to you, but any violation of TOS can be a bannable offense, and it's been done before.
You are wrong. And I can verify you are wrong simply by observing that all of the top alliances still exist. Or are you now insinuating that Kabam only bans people for account sharing who have no discernible impact on their income? Seems like you are in a tough spot here.
Boom roasted. *wink
So yes, Kabam bans people who have an impact on their projected income, and who disrupt the ranking system in a player v player game.