[MUD-Dev] Reality check ...(long) [was Re: Black Snow Revisited]

[Jeff Cole]

From: Fred Clift
> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Jeff Cole wrote:

>> I would also argue that liability management (with respect to any
>> supposed "damage" claims that might arise per Brad's concerns
>> above) is better handled in the EULA than is the extra-game
>> conduct of players.  If only because then the EULA deals solely
>> with ingame behaviour/activities (something in which a gaming
>> company's interest is more manifest).

> Why does the EULA have to 'deal solely with the ingame
> behavior/activities'?  or am I misunderstanding what you are
> saying here.  I would believe that any EULA could very well
> stipulate any (non-illegal) condition it wanted in game, or out of
> game.  "This licence is not valid for left-handed people.  If you
> are left-handed you are not welcome to play Right-World!"

Pardon the double post.  In the shower, after rinsing but before
repeating, a clarification occurred to me.

At the heart of the doom-and-gloom contingent's argument lies the
assumption that liability cannot be effectively managed (if at all?) 
through the EULA.  Since I cannot imagine that anyone would argue
that game companies spending millions of dollars on development do
not have lawyers enough to *draft* such provisions for the EULA, I
infer that they assume that such liabilities cannot be managed
through the EULA because they would somehow be unenforceable.

It seems to me, then, that by their own argument, the EULA
provisions managing in-game transactions incorporating extra-game
activity, would likewise be unenforceable.

They cannot have it both ways (EULA managing transacations
enforceable, EULA managing liability unenforceable).  Contract law
is simply not that capricious.

I was arguing that provisions managing liability are more
"reasonably" under the purview of an EULA than is micromanaging
player extra-game activity.

Yrs Afftcy.,
Jeff Cole

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