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I remembered a really batshit ToS/Privacy Policy I read almost 2 years ago and I wanted a place to log my favourite parts so here I am, I guess. This is quite possibly the least interesting hobby in existence but I find it stupidly fun anyways so honestly that's all that matters!
Also blah blah blah I'm not a lawyer, this is all from a layperson's perspective, etc.
It starts out relatively normal, with the general "We're allowed to change things in our app" stuff. Perfectly reasonable, on its own.
Again, pretty normal! This stuff is required to, well, provide the service. If they can't transmit the information, then it would have to remain local (aka you wouldn't be able to post anything in-game). The rest of it is mainly just "Yeah, if we want to post screencaps of the game and it includes something you said in the background, we don't have to pay you anything to do so"
What's not particularly normal is what they follow that up with. This is where it starts getting fun (for me).
If anything you post causes them any damages, you're on the line for reimbursing them the cost. I mean, this is technically reasonable in that like, if you posted death threats in-game or something and somehow the government got involved and took the servers down temporarily, that'd be your fault. But this is honestly vague enough that I'd be paranoid as hell that they'd interpret it broadly enough to mean "if we post something on social media that happens to include you in the background, and we get backlash from angry internet users that tanks our rating in the app stores, we're gonna try and make you pay the damages".
This part is 100% reasonable, I'm just posting this as context for the next image. They just don't want people up their ass about if the game has to go into maintenance suddenly or whatever.
This part, though, is not particularly normal/common. It's not bad, per se, but it's incredibly specific in a way that very few other Terms of Services that I've read have ever done, and it made me lose it a little at them going "HEY SO LIKE. IF THE COUNTRY GETS INVOLVED IN A WAR, WE MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO CONTINUE RUNNING THIS GAME IN THE SAME CAPACITY AS WE DO NORMALLY. DON'T SUE US FOR THIS."
Okay, okay-- this next bit makes me lose it, and not in a particularly good way this time.
Look. I might be disparaging their good name or whatever, but... Man, I do not trust companies to objectively determine what is defamation is or not in regards to statements made about them. That plus the follow up...
4 is reasonable; they don't want to have to keep storing game data indefinitely for players that likely won't come back. Doesn't mean that they'll automatically delete an account after one year of inactivity, but they want the option to if they're starting to think their storage costs are getting too high or whatever. I just really don't like what 5 and 6 say when combined with the previous thing about defamation. Like, better keep your mouth shut if you spend anything in this game just in case they decide you're defaming them and just shut your account down with zero refunds for however much you just dropped on the game!
The next part is just normal stuff about data collection, so I'm not gonna post caps of it but like. Honestly, you'd be surprised at what random games collect from you in terms of data. Shoutout to the one game I played that wanted complete access to my Twitter account including the ability to tweet/delete tweets/follow/unfollow/block anyone and anything freely, for no good reason.
And hey! Now I'm getting to my favorite part of this ToS!
You're obligated to report any and all bugs you encounter (reasonable) but you aren't allowed to tell anyone at all about the bug! Not even its existence, even if you aren't telling people how to replicate it. You can't tell people how it's fixed either, if there is one that you're aware of. Fun~
THIS PART IS ABSOLUTELY FINE, I JUST CONTINUE TO GIGGLE OVER THEIR EXTREME SPECIFICATIONS LIKE. @ the poor ToS writer: how many times have people tried to advertise Pyramid schemes on your products. Do they haunt you in your nightmares? Do you wake up in a cold sweat wondering if the moderators have had to ban a hundred more people for pyramid schemes overnight? Do you ever lose hope in humanity for having to put this specific provision in your game?
Getting to this part gave me severe whiplash the first time I read it, though. Going from the reasonable (if amusing) one to other normal ones, and then landing directly on 25. It's back! You're not allowed to make people doubt their credibility in any way, even if it's justified! This is a completely normal thing that normal ToS's include for normal companies that do normal things (this is not normal.)
I see. Continuing the trend of "technically this is reasonable and they're just trying to cover their ass, but I'm still gonna side-eye the shit out of them" provisions...
You can read this as "If we mess up and say something not true, and you spend money based off of that, that's your issue, not ours <3 Also if our app gets compromised by a virus and it gets transmitted to your devices through it, that's also not our problem <3". Would that be absolutely horrible for their public image? Yes. Would they do that? Probably not. Did they reserve the right to do so anyways? They're trying to, at least!
Also if you ever manage to find a loophole and force them to acknowledge liability for damages done to you by their products, they're only ever going to pay back as much as you've paid to them in the past month. If you've never spent anything on their services and got fucked over by something they did? You're out of luck, according to them.
What a lovely way to round out their Terms of Service, am I right?
I was going to go into details about some things on their Privacy Policy as well, but this got uhh. A little longer than I expected so I'll just say like. 2 things:
1) I legitimately appreciate their thoroughness in describing their policies to keep your information safe, and in describing what information they gather from you. It's definitely not common, even when compared to other Privacy Policies I've read originating from the same country, and I might not personally like the amount of information they gather, but it's much more transparent than most companies, and I don't doubt that a good chunk of other apps available collect the exact same amount if not more, even if they don't outright state it.
2)
(Cost censored because it shows the currency. It's roughly equivalent to 10 USD/8.5 EUR)
If you want to know what information they have on you, you gotta pay them 10 USD! If you see something wrong and want it fixed, that's another 10 USD! They're technically not guaranteed to correct it either! Wonderful!
Anyways, that's a wrap for this (probably too long) blog entry. I don't even play this game (because of what I saw in this) so I'm not affected by any of it but it's still fun to pull out the parts that caught my eye the most.
Comments
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𝒔𝒖𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒎𝒔
I'm so curious as to what this game is. does it count as defamation if you just DM me the name of the game??
Oh-- I can DM you the name, yeah. I never actually agreed to the ToS/Privacy Policy so it doesn't particularly matter if it'd count as defamation or not in my case.
by Anam; ; Report
blackenze
tbh I wish I could read all ToS(s?) too but sometimes I just can't comprehend what are they saying with all the fancy terms
also for like the 9th picture for some reason I just imagined this being Tetris ToS for a sec
like can you just imagine wanting to play fun block game and accidentally getting into a pyramid scheme? das crazy fr
LMAOO that would be wild? Like "Weah, we're all arranging blocks here but also there's the people in the corner building a pyramid with those blocks that want your money. Be careful"
Also I get feeling like that, yeah! So many contracts and similar things are just written in the most confusing manner possible for people who aren't used to the phrasing and sometimes I end up having to reread a sentence over and over before I figure out what they're trying to say @_@
by Anam; ; Report
Nikita
If I had the brainpower to read this post I could probably read a ToS
I unfortunately suffer from "stupidly wordy and too lazy to format the screencaps/paragraphs in a more digestible manner" disease :pensive: Also don't worry, the most important part is just this part (according to my questionable sense of humor):
by Anam; ; Report
Websites should ban the phrase MLM on all platforms because it often can mean multi level marketing and I want to see gay people everywhere get banned
by Nikita; ; Report
(SpaceHey moderators I'm gay this is a joke pls no ban)
by Nikita; ; Report
I see you woke up today and chose chaos LMAO Also I'm thinking about all the people who see MLM and read it as like. Marxist-Leninist-(whatever the last word is, I cannot recall for the life of me). Like. It's quite a multipurpose acronym XD
by Anam; ; Report
Maoist
by Nikita; ; Report
OH YEAH. Thank you! Consider: Ban the acronym and just spin a roulette wheel to determine which one the ban is for every time someone asks for clarification.
by Anam; ; Report