Silkroad Online Forums

does anybody here who wants to go to court actually know what they want from JM? or is this just complaining and big talk?

i mean.. once you got your lawyer and you sit in one room with some ppl from JM to discuss this matter and they ask you what exactly you want from em.. what would that be?

money? them saying sowwie to ya? them goin bankrupt and then play another free game to do the same ?

id like to know

Time to look into consumer protection laws then I guess.

I wonder what Joymax is thinking about all of this.

What would I like? ... as the person that started all of this? I would like for Joymax to "fix" SRO. I agree with Panties in how I really enjoy this game and see the potential it has. And until about Christmas time, things did seem to get a little better for a while or, at the very least, we were given hope. That has not be been the case for the past 3 months though.

I get tired of reading all the "boycott" silk threads ... and all the "I quit SRO and am off to play WoW, a name where they care about their customers" threads. So while grinding at planars and yetis I tired to think of other approaches to encourage Joymax to change and trying the legal system was one of those ideas. And so I brought that idea to the forums to get input and viewpoints from other people on SRO.

For the most part the discussion has been helpful and thoughtful and I am grateful for that.

This entire thread was kicked off by someone saying they want to sue JoyMax over the company's failure/refusal to enforce the Operation Policy/EULA.



Me: No one pays to play SRO. If you think purchasing Item Mall items is the same thing as paying for access to the game, you are stupid.

You: Virtual goods, such as those purchased from the Item Mall, are paid for with cash. The money given to JoyMax is payment, not a donation



I believe that JoyMax has more than sufficiently covered their tails in that event. Again, I think it is rather low of them to cheat folks like that, but I do not believe there is anything to be done about it.



Don't do that anymore. I have no problem clarifying things for people, even when I think they should be obvious to everyone. Just keep in mind that I have no beef with anyone here. It's the position that I am attacking, and I will do so aggressively.



Fair enough. I do not think Item Mall purchases are donations, either. I, perhaps, gave the audience too much credit and assumed they would already realize that.



Don't bring up OJ. Painful memories. Jury stacking, racism (going BOTH ways), prosecutors' budding romance, Cochran's circus, Kato's clown show....all those things stacked up like the planets aligning to make for a one in a trillion event.

Although, poetically, he is paying for it right now, isn't he? Karma can be a real bitch sometimes.



Again, OP wants to sue JoyMax for violation of what he believes is a contract, which in fact is an EULA



For all I know, you could be sending me on a wild goose chase, but just because I trust you are not a complete jackoff, I looked anyway. If you are referring to

you should look at what comes below it:


So in the event that number three can be dismissed on a technicality, it still doesn't do anything for the consumer. The agreement was made between JoyMax and PotMan420, not JoyMax and Samuel Harrison (both the ID and name are fictitious...if they belong to you or anyone you know, it is purely coincidental). That means if anyone can bring a legal grievance against JoyMax and before a court, it will have to be PotMan420. Any complaints from Samuel Harrison are irrelevant.

If the loophole you are talking about is


and you are implying that JoyMax cannot suddenly change the agreement to whatever suits them either because of "relevant laws" or the clause in Article 2.4 (look it up, people; I gave you its location) it still does not good. "Relevant laws" I'm sure are Korean laws. And if US (or other laws) apply, this is why I say it the idea's stupidity is exclusive of its inability to be won; JoyMax would probably close up the San Jose office (and really, why shouldn't they? They're wasting money on those slouches who don't do anything) to avoid the suit, and be wary of US players from that point on. That is, if the suit is filed in the US, by US residents.

If neither of those are what you were talking about it, you'll have to post it yourself. My legs are tired and wild geese can move fairly quickly, you know.


Then what was the point of the statements in bold:


Intentionally or not, you have expressed those two elements are being part of a single idea:
-The United States does not have a free-market system
-This is because of 7 day work weeks, insufficient wages to live on, children losing limbs in machinery, and other grotesquely negative features of sweatshops.
-Ergo, our system has consumer protections built in.

That is how I understood what you wrote. If I misunderstood it (and it appears I have, after reading your sentiment), then you must at least admit it was expressed vaguely enough for my conclusion to be considered valid.



No, it is not a hotel. Do not add more to the scenarios to suit your conclusion. JoyMax is your friend from church, the local bar, or Rex Kwon Do class. He is talking about the new house he has purchased, which is in fact a house, and has invited you to stay over, free of charge, for whatever reason I'll let you decide. In scenario 1, he is selling you girlscout cookies, which has nothing to do with the condition of you being at his house. He is also tolerating ADFDFDF's horrible behavior. In scenario 2, he has a large, but slummy house. You have purchased the cot from him to sleep on, and he transfers ownership of it to you. In scenario 3, you have paid him for the use of his own bed for a night while he goes off and gets lost exploring his ridiculously large house which could only exist in a hypothetical situation. In none of these scenarios do you pay JoyMax for the opportunity to spend 24+ hours in his house. Not only did you change the conditions of the scenarios, you created your own scenario and used it as reference to answer my questions about the scenarios already given!

I'm tired right now so I'm just going to address a few points right now.

No, it isn't like some guy you know at your church, because that analogy implies JM is some small time guy running this game out of his garage. Which skews the analogy because it makes the reader sub-consciously believe "they just don't have the resources to do any better". This is a company with large revenues, owned by a larger parent company with very big pockets. So in this scenario, it would be like Hilton launching a spin-off company that opens a free-to-stay hotel but the rooms are unfurnished and you have to provide your own water and power. For a fee you can get some furnishings, maybe some power/water for a pre-paid time. And after you pre-pay for 28 days of power/water and a bed, they deny you access to your room for 7 of those 28 because they've let someone else have your room. That fits the situation, and again my end-results still apply. I'm not bending the scenario in any way except to make it applicable to the reality of the situation.

And regarding the loophole, the very beginning states, and I quote:



The only "Agree" button resides on the website (http://www.silkroadonline.net), and the only reference to (http://www.silkroadonline.co.kr) exists at the bottom as a dropdown to go to the "family site". I even checked the source of the page. The Agree is not through the website stated in the Terms of Use. Yes, I know it is a technicality, but it is sloppy legal work on their part, and that type of thing would count against them in court. It all depends on the way the case is stacked, the court the case is hear in, the judge that oversees it, etc. But again, if enough grievances are filed with a given state's Attorney General the state could file action against Joymax and their parent company Yahoo! for fraud, or whatever it may be in that state.

Now, I am done discussing this because we are just going back and forth over details. The whole point of me even posting in this thread was to clarify that those with grievances should go study their own state and federal consumer protection laws and talk to a lawyer, instead of being berated by several (not directed at you, eukanuba) people for even discussing such a thing.

I will even, at this point, state that I really don't even care about lawsuits against them, it is a long-shot anyway, and would require a willing lawyer. And a willing lawyer is difficult to find, from past experience even when a company is openly breaking a state law and you have proof of it many lawyers will just not bother.

Now I just hope JM doesn't go to the admins of SRF and order them to hand over my IP so they can ban me in the game. I should have just kept my mouth shut...

Sorry, for those that will read and don't understand.

A EULA is a end user license agreement.

A person who agrees to these terms is allowed to use the software only within the tems as nominated.

It is also a double edged sword.
The supplier must also abide by the same terms. This is a contract, which is enforecable in any court of law.

Just because JM is in Korea does not prevent them from being, accountable in another country.

Similarities are, microsoft. US based, but supplies to the rest of the world. You know what they do to pirating.

You can not make a judgement saying, it is/is no,t possible, when the opposite is possibly true.

You downloaded software under a EULA, if either party is in breach, then no problem.

I have to agree with JaJa that the analogy of a hotel is the more valid one. Joymax is a company and a business. It is not run but some lonely guy from his basement somewhere freely and purely for the pleasure (or perhaps the torture ) of people worldwide. It is meant to make money for either the Joymax owners or shareholders.

But Eukanuba does bring up some other interesting points ...



So is the reverse of that also true? I have to ask because of a series of globals I saw a few months ago encouraging credit card fraud (ccf) based on the ideas that 1. SRO is supposed to be "free" and that by doing this you were just "helping" SRO to actually be free and make things more "fair" for everyone ... and 2. Joymax can't legally do anything to you unless they can prove, using the above example, that "PotMan420 and Samuel Harrison" are indeed the same person. I was extremely upset by those globals because ccf is a type of stealing. Stealing is morally wrong of course ... but is it legally in this case? Either way, Joymax has taken action against ccf so the legal issues probably aren't important.

After reading through the posts again, it seems to me that the focus should not be on any contract implied or otherwise with Joymax ... but rather consumer protection laws.

+9 LMAO

No, the house analogy works fine. All I did was apply Ockham's Razor to scale what is happening down to bite sized chunks. Quit adding stuff to bend it to suit your goals (basement? Where the hell did you come up with that?)



Playing SRO is supposed to be free, Item Mall merchandise is not. You are correct to believe that CCF is wrong. Not to mention that CCF is a crime (albeit hard to prosecute), no matter whom it is committed against.

If JoyMax wanted to prosecute for CCF, this would fall into the realm of a criminal case and would not be a civil dispute. Different rules would apply, and a link between a person and a user ID could possibly be established by credible witnesses, IP records, etc, although I doubt it'd be easy (or worth it - as you said, the big J has already taken measures against CCF).

I think there service is better the last mmorpg I PAID to play, it was called DARKAGES.com It was 10 bucks a month but they blocked accounts if you said the word **** or nazi or whatever the young kids spam these days. Granted logining into the servers sucks, but once I figured out you just have to type in the information super fast and be the first person applying for the slot once it's opened, even during peek cram time sessions it takes no longer than 5 minutes to get on. And you should be thanking them silly they updated that to stop all of the auto-login bot utilities, you think it's hard now, think of what it would have been.

The game is free to play and there customer service is not the greatest but certainly not the worst. I did submit a ticket recently which wan't replyed to or successfully fullfilled but it's okay, not gonna whine about it. And since i've started playing they've opened up a bunch of servers. I join alps server when it still said (NEW) next to it, how many have been opened since then? They may not be up to YOUR standards, but they are making an effort. Remember it's the people that are Farking up the game not them, they are making an effort, maybe minimal to your standards but they are trying to relieve the stress on the servers.

Furthermore not buying silk is the WORST idea i've ever heard. Imagine you were trying to run that company and you had bills coming in every month for tens of thousands of dollars to be able to host 16 servers 5000 players per server minimum. That's rougly the bandwidth of a T3, maybe more? That's 80,000 players roughly. Can you imagine if each one of those players submit just 1 ticket per month, and that's not even the total number of users that's just the number of users that can be logged on at once. Obviously if you can't log in on any of the servers for certain portions of the day their are way more than that.

The game is free but they still need money like any legit company. The only reason there doing this is for money, same as I would or you. There not doing it for the nerds gaming charity. So go ahead and stop supporting them, the only action they can take as of then is to start shutting down servers, and wouldn't that be great? This is not even to mention that they are an international company and international rules and laws apply that are completely sperate from that of the United States laws.

I guess in conclusion they are not the BEST company in the world but they are okay. The reasons to stop supporting them will get nothing accomplished along with filing a lawsuit. Do you realize how easy it would be for them to just claim bankruptcy and just reopen under another name? They don't have to follow our business laws and rules. If you don't like it don't play.

I could go on but I need to get back to being awesome. <3

bump

hmmmm yea JM needs a kick in the arse to get them moving. id like to see some improvments on ISRO. this could be what we need.

id like them to get us the new cap and europe updates..

but who says they will get us that quicker when they be in a court?
can be the case lasts for a year ~that is IF it goes to court at all
so that will probably mean a loooooooooong time delay of the things we are trying to get em to do asap.

The company does not stop working on things while a case is in court. The developers what would be the ones working on our iSRO updates would not be involved in the court case at all. In fact, NO ONE except for their lawyer would be affected by a court case. Look at how many times IBM has been sued or sued others, their business keeps chugging the whole time.

pressure would be put on the developers.

Well, yes. The point was, it wasn't going to slow down updates. It's not like they get tied up in court cases. They may get pressure from higher up to work FASTER, but that would be a good thing from the players perspective. It appears all of the developers are being put on creating new content for kSRO and not at all for iSRO. When WAS the last update to iSRO, in terms of new content?

At the same time I don't understand how developers would be involved at all with iSRO getting updates. They shouldn't have to do anything but have someone translate the strings. From all multi-lingual open source projects I've seen the code for, they just isolate the string data as an external file and have translators just put in the localized strings there, which get picked up by the application automatically. Technically they should just need some linguists working at changing words in a file, and push out the updated code with that file as the string data. I don't get what the hold up is.

Why do consoles and their games have different regional release dates? The answer: just because.

Granted, JoyMax has taken this to an extreme, but I think that just boils down to them knowing that the customer base won't get any smaller. All hail the mighty dollar (or the won, in this situation).

wait somebody explain to me exactly how Joymax is breaking there contract...Because i can't find anywhere in there contract something as explicit as to get them sued. there is nothing concrete said about anything.

Well, in those cases the program is static most of the time (due to media) and doing multi-lingual is a problem, not to mention the region thing is to adjust the price of the items based on local inflation and economy. I don't think I've EVER seen a piece of PC software with regional limitations or whatnot. Computer software is incredibly flexible, which is why I prefer to game on a PC rather than a console.

Well, I'm not going to go through and read 4 pages of posts, but I just came across this...

California Fines Time Warner

Its an article telling how some California residents are suing Time Warner for lack of service.

Granted, the EULA and other agreements used by Time Warner might be a tad more complicated than JM's. But if some hotshot lawyer took the time to review other cases along with the specifics of this one...hey, you never know what might happen.

This analogy is definitely closer related to the issue.


I wish you'd continue.

What about accounts getting hacked?
What about lag causing you to drain your Silk pots?

dont sue sro i love sor i would live in it if i could and im getting a sosun after all that harwork dont ruin it for all of us

On the 1st page, the second BOLDED policy indicates behaviour (someone mentioned globals). Exactly.

Since racists comments are non-stop posted within game without any action taken the company fails to uphold their policy.

Please forgive my unprofestional nature in this reply.

Forget about compensation, forget about "getting back at JoyMax", forgett about giving them a reminder that they should be doing something. I warn you now, the most likely thing that would happen if any of your are stupid enough to go through with this would be. JoyMax shutting down iSRO. Not kSRO, not cSRO, jSRO, vSRO or tSRO just iSRO.

Them just saying, you know what screw this. We tried to give a game, a free game, a great free game. We know we have problems, we are working on them. for what? So that we can get screamed at day in and day out by people with no patience, who want everything to work perfectly right then and there. Who dont understand how to treat people, yes although u guys might not think so the GMs ARE people too.

U want to know why iSRO is so far behind? ITS BECAUSE OF US! Yes thats right, the same people who complain and complain are the ones who cause the problems.

Boting, CCfing, bug exploiting, cheating, multiclients, hacking, gold duping, scamming, racism, and general piss antness!

kSRO, ive hardly heard ANYONE complain about ANYTHING from the iSRO players who have moved there!

We simply give the iSRO team way to many problems! I mean damnz! If they werent so busy trying to improve security, we might get an update once in a while. But no, im sure that whenever they release a big patch, some of the JM team probably bring a sleeping bag to the office, knowing that one of us is going to look for a bug to exploit, and they are going to have to spend the night doing some kind of emergency security update!

O, and when they do something, is that enough for all those who complain? NO its not! We simply move from one problem to the other, and keep complaining! It's never enough is it?

If some of yall spend time reading MD's post in the sro.net forums, yo would get an idea of the kind of work and hours that those guys are put through!

So yeah, go ahed do this, try to get your "compensation". You will only end up most likely ruining iSRO.

This is my finall say on the matter, any and all replies wont be aknowledged with a response from me. Im not here to debate

Worst come to Worst, because you guys are suing Joymax is gonna go bankrupt, then all server shut down, no more silkroad T_T


LOL

Ok, I've tried to follow the points and stipulations and scenarios inconsistent innuendos and determined that any possible outcome of trying to successfully sue on basis of EULA is null and void. Certain key points were made:

1. You agreed to the EULA
2. By playing you continue to agree to the EULA
3. Their responsibility is to maintain the quality of the server for the enjoyment of others
4. If you purchase silk but still use illegal programs that detract from the enjoyment of others (IE Botting) you fully submit to punishments implied within EULA

This is actually the equivalent of buying a car, driving and getting three DUI's and having your vehicle impounded. You cannot sue for loss of the vehicle since you forfeited your right to legally operate said machinery. Any attempt to sue a state or federal government or business would fail.

HOWEVER--

The real key is in #3 maintain the quality of the server for the enjoyment of others

In essence if they fail, and since they are failing, to maintain a fully enjoyable server by not preventing botting they can be sued on this account.

In other words a class action lawsuit would be feasible if this point was argued. What you would actually get though is a change in policy practices more GM's would have to be hired as well as coders and the sort. The idea is to change the fact that bots are allowed on at all.

Ok, I've tried to follow the points and stipulations and scenarios inconsistent innuendos and determined that any possible outcome of trying to successfully sue on basis of EULA is null and void. Certain key points were made:

1. You agreed to the EULA
2. By playing you continue to agree to the EULA
3. Their responsibility is to maintain the quality of the server for the enjoyment of others
4. If you purchase silk but still use illegal programs that detract from the enjoyment of others (IE Botting) you fully submit to punishments implied within EULA

This is actually the equivalent of buying a car, driving and getting three DUI's and having your vehicle impounded. You cannot sue for loss of the vehicle since you forfeited your right to legally operate said machinery. Any attempt to sue a state or federal government or business would fail.

HOWEVER--

The real key is in #3 maintain the quality of the server for the enjoyment of others

In essence if they fail, and since they are failing, to maintain a fully enjoyable server by not preventing botting they can be sued on this account.

In other words a class action lawsuit would be feasible if this point was argued. What you would actually get though is a change in policy practices more GM's would have to be hired as well as coders and the sort. The idea is to change the fact that bots are allowed on at all.

Just write a letter to George Bush to threaten to nuke all of Korean (not just the north) if they dont get off their a$$e$ and fix their s**t.
Maybe then they will think about it

This thread needs to die.

There is no lawsuit on basis of EULA violation. Period. There has not been one single case where a EULA was the focus of the case, that was not settled out of court, that I could find in a search. To try to use that as any kind of starting point is fruitless, and highly doubtful you would ever find a lawyer to take action based on it.

The only place anyone has any potential case is if you bought Item Mall items and were unable to make use of them.

NO! This is by far the most entertaining thread on here. It's so funny when kids threaten to sue. Even more so in this case, as it's an overseas company they want to sue. To top it all off Joymax hasn't done anything wrong, like them or not, even by US standards which doesn't apply to them anyways.