Update of our End-user license agreement (EULA) and Communication Preferences

[Famous]

Hey everyone and happy new year!

I’m Famous (somewhat long, and unfortunately, not a funny story about the nick) and I’m one of the legal eagles at Paradox Interactive. This is my first post in the forum!

We are updating our End-User License Agreement (EULA) and have made changes to communication preferences, and I wanted to make a post about it. The EULA is an agreement you agree with whenever you purchase and install our games or use our services. The first change we are doing to the EULA is to change its name. Going forward, it will be called “Paradox Interactive User Agreement” (or simply “User Agreement”, the “UA”).

In addition to changing the name, we are also making the following changes:

• We have removed wording regarding how we process your personal data. This is because our Privacy Policy is the sole document that explains how we process your personal data and to avoid confusion, we’ve removed this wording from the User Agreement.
• We have simplified the language and thereby hopefully made it much easier for you to read and understand it. There is now also a handy “summary” which we hope you’ll appreciate.
• The User Agreement will replace our Terms of Use, Mod Policy, and Game Content Guideline. There have been no material changes to those guidelines and documents, but it will now be easier to access all relevant information in one single document instead of many separate ones.
• The User Agreement will now be available on our website. It has previously only been available in connection with when you purchase and install our games. Adding it to the legal website will make it easier for you to find the document and for us to make updates to it when necessary.

The User Agreement will go into effect on March 1, 2023, and your continued use of our games and services after this date means you agree to be legally bound by the updated User Agreement. You can find the new User Agreement here: https://legal.paradoxplaza.com/eula.

In addition to this forum post, we will have a notice on our website, and we will also in the coming weeks send an email to all verified accounts about the updated terms.

Lastly, we are also implementing new Communication Preferences settings. The new settings allow you to control how we communicate with you through emails, in our services (for example our launcher and our websites), and through select partners to personalize advertising for our games and services on partner platforms and external websites. You can change the settings whenever and however you see fit. The new Communication Preferences can be found under “Profile” when you login to your Paradox Account.

That’s the change. I’ll stick around and check on this post from time to time to answer any questions you might have.

Wishing you all the best start to 2023!

 

[YetiBandito]

Hi, I just got the mail for the updated EULA, but it was sent to my old e-mail adress (switched the adress for my pdxplaza account about half a year ago)

 

[SoftKnight]

Hello Paradox-Team,

your changes are not valid, because you did not highlight the changes or made an extra information what are the changes. Please refer to european and local laws.

Thank you.

 

[Famous]

Hi, I just got the mail for the updated EULA, but it was sent to my old e-mail adress (switched the adress for my pdxplaza account about half a year ago)

Hey YetiBandito! Thanks for letting us know. Can you please create a support ticket so that the support team can follow up?

Cheers!

 

[Famous]

Hello Paradox-Team,

your changes are not valid, because you did not highlight the changes or made an extra information what are the changes. Please refer to european and local laws.

Thank you.

View attachment 936142

Hi SoftKnight!


Thanks for reaching out! Respectfully, we make a different assessment. Our assessment is that the new User Agreement is valid and is done in accordance with the relevant laws and customs, especially since there are no material changes to the EULA, and that the changes are clearly and easily presented, both here in the OP, on our website, and in the email that will be sent to everyone with a verified account. We’ve already started sending the emails, so chances are you’ve already received it, or will receive it soon.

We also assess that the changes that have been made are sufficiently clearly presented. As mentioned in my OP, the following changes are made 1) removed wording on how we process personal data, 2) simplified the language, 3) consolidated four documents into one, and 4) made the EULA available on our website. In addition, we are providing the notice well in advance of the changes, ensuring that everyone has ample time to read the new User Agreement.

Please let me know if you, or anyone else, has any other questions or comments.

Cheers!

 

[matt_mills]

Hello Mr. Paradox Lawyer,

A few questions/comments, if you don't mind:

1. Your post mentions the User agreement replacing the Terms of Service, Mod Policy, and Game Content Guideline, however the linked page lists User Agreement, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Terms of Sale, Third Party List, Rules of Conduct, Mod Policy, and Paradox Game Content Guidelines. I'm guessing the latter two match up (Mod Policy = Mod Policy and Game content Guideline = Paradox Game Content Guidelines), but which one is the Terms of Service, or is that a different document?

2. Minor quibble, but all of the documents show the web page title of "Privacy Policy".

2a. There is a typo in section 10 "Privacy Policya"

3. Several of your legal docs reference support@paradoxplaza.com email address, but that email address doesn't accept emails (https://support.paradoxplaza.com/hc...-support-paradoxplaza-com-and-no-one-replied-)

4. Assuming re Question #1 that the new User Agreement is NOT replacing the doc listed as "Terms of Use" also titled "Paradox Accounts Terms of Use" at the top, I'd urge you to reconsider the language in section 2(a) and strike "reverse engineer (except to the extent permitted by law), disassemble,". Disassembling software and reverse engineering it is essential to understanding why something doesn't work and (for languages compiled to machine code) disassembly produces an output that cannot be used to "recreate" the functionality or original source code like many think. Compilation is a uniquely one way operation, so much data is lost in the conversion from source code to machine code that the machine code can then be "disassembled" to assembly, or the text representation of the binary machine code. Disassembly and reverse engineering is frequently used by experienced programmers to troubleshoot what their compiled source code is doing, although usually they also do it with source code in hand, which makes it a lot more effective and quick.

I frequently use reverse engineering and disassembly within Ghidra, IDA, and gdb to help users and mod developers track down crashes, issues and perplexing behavior within Stellaris; (I believe) I have contributed to a number of bug fixes and performance fixes that have been included into the Stellaris codebase by being able to point more exactly to where an issue was occurring within the application, and I've even created fixes for bugs that will likely not ever be patched within the actual game due to their complexity and depth within the codebase (IE: https://github.com/MattMills/stella...docs/bug_notes/stellar-outliner-group-army.md). I've also built tooling that allows any user or mod developer to take their anonymized crash stack trace that is useless to them, and convert it into actual data about what portion of the application is causing the crash, often allowing them to work around the issue and keep playing (or in developers case, figure out what is causing a crash across their player base and work around it or work with the game devs to fix it if they can't).

This language also exists in your Beta program NDA, which I unfortunately had to turn down because a large portion of what I was interested in doing was tracking down performance issues and bugs and reporting them more directly in a language programmers understand and can work with more quickly, by using reverse engineering, disassembly, and even more complex tools like Linux's eBPF kernel mechanism for performance analysis (https://www.brendangregg.com/bpf-performance-tools-book.html), and various other profilers and tools in Windows and Linux. Obviously it'd entirely make sense to require non-disclosure of that material until the software was normally released, but the NDA had a $10,000 euro minimum penalty for each instance of reverse engineering and obviously that wasn't going to work if the whole point was to help find bugs and performance issues.

/soapbox

 

[Famous]

Hello Mr. Paradox Lawyer,

A few questions/comments, if you don't mind:

1. Your post mentions the User agreement replacing the Terms of Service, Mod Policy, and Game Content Guideline, however the linked page lists User Agreement, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Terms of Sale, Third Party List, Rules of Conduct, Mod Policy, and Paradox Game Content Guidelines. I'm guessing the latter two match up (Mod Policy = Mod Policy and Game content Guideline = Paradox Game Content Guidelines), but which one is the Terms of Service, or is that a different document?

2. Minor quibble, but all of the documents show the web page title of "Privacy Policy".

2a. There is a typo in section 10 "Privacy Policya"

3. Several of your legal docs reference support@paradoxplaza.com email address, but that email address doesn't accept emails (https://support.paradoxplaza.com/hc...-support-paradoxplaza-com-and-no-one-replied-)

4. Assuming re Question #1 that the new User Agreement is NOT replacing the doc listed as "Terms of Use" also titled "Paradox Accounts Terms of Use" at the top, I'd urge you to reconsider the language in section 2(a) and strike "reverse engineer (except to the extent permitted by law), disassemble,". Disassembling software and reverse engineering it is essential to understanding why something doesn't work and (for languages compiled to machine code) disassembly produces an output that cannot be used to "recreate" the functionality or original source code like many think. Compilation is a uniquely one way operation, so much data is lost in the conversion from source code to machine code that the machine code can then be "disassembled" to assembly, or the text representation of the binary machine code. Disassembly and reverse engineering is frequently used by experienced programmers to troubleshoot what their compiled source code is doing, although usually they also do it with source code in hand, which makes it a lot more effective and quick.

I frequently use reverse engineering and disassembly within Ghidra, IDA, and gdb to help users and mod developers track down crashes, issues and perplexing behavior within Stellaris; (I believe) I have contributed to a number of bug fixes and performance fixes that have been included into the Stellaris codebase by being able to point more exactly to where an issue was occurring within the application, and I've even created fixes for bugs that will likely not ever be patched within the actual game due to their complexity and depth within the codebase (IE: https://github.com/MattMills/stella...docs/bug_notes/stellar-outliner-group-army.md). I've also built tooling that allows any user or mod developer to take their anonymized crash stack trace that is useless to them, and convert it into actual data about what portion of the application is causing the crash, often allowing them to work around the issue and keep playing (or in developers case, figure out what is causing a crash across their player base and work around it or work with the game devs to fix it if they can't).

This language also exists in your Beta program NDA, which I unfortunately had to turn down because a large portion of what I was interested in doing was tracking down performance issues and bugs and reporting them more directly in a language programmers understand and can work with more quickly, by using reverse engineering, disassembly, and even more complex tools like Linux's eBPF kernel mechanism for performance analysis (https://www.brendangregg.com/bpf-performance-tools-book.html), and various other profilers and tools in Windows and Linux. Obviously it'd entirely make sense to require non-disclosure of that material until the software was normally released, but the NDA had a $10,000 euro minimum penalty for each instance of reverse engineering and obviously that wasn't going to work if the whole point was to help find bugs and performance issues.

/soapbox

Hi Matt!

Thanks for reaching out!

1. I apologize, “Terms of Service” should be “Terms of Use”, i.e. the document that specifically regulated how a Paradox Account could be used. I’ll edit my post and make the necessary changes to rectify this. On March 1, the “Mod Policy”, “Paradox Game Content Guidelines” and “Terms of Use” will all be removed.

2. I’ll have my tech colleagues take a look at this!

2a. Nasty bug! Thanks for highlighting this one, I’ll take care of it as soon as I can.

3. Good catch and yeah, our customer support team has briefed me and it’s on my to-do list!

4. This one is off-topic so I’ll send you a DM!

Thanks again for reaching out!

 

[redrumsti]

cant get into the war robots game just water splash

can you make it easier for me what do i have to click to play already accept terms

i see no steps to continue no date is ready to play
so i see something says wait go play

you make huge post but where the steps to play what date etc

tried few things still cant play few hrs l8tr

i try back in couple days then week then i just quit?????

 

[AndrewT]

cant get into the war robots game just water splash

can you make it easier for me what do i have to click to play already accept terms

i see no steps to continue no date is ready to play
so i see something says wait go play

you make huge post but where the steps to play what date etc

tried few things still cant play few hrs l8tr

i try back in couple days then week then i just quit?????

Whatever Paradox game you are having this problem with, post in its tech support forum. Thanks.

 

[wasme]

Hey everyone and happy new year!

I’m Famous (somewhat long, and unfortunately, not a funny story about the nick) and I’m one of the legal eagles at Paradox Interactive. This is my first post in the forum!

We are updating our End-User License Agreement (EULA) and have made changes to communication preferences, and I wanted to make a post about it. The EULA is an agreement you agree with whenever you purchase and install our games or use our services. The first change we are doing to the EULA is to change its name. Going forward, it will be called “Paradox Interactive User Agreement” (or simply “User Agreement”, the “UA”).

In addition to changing the name, we are also making the following changes:

• We have removed wording regarding how we process your personal data. This is because our Privacy Policy is the sole document that explains how we process your personal data and to avoid confusion, we’ve removed this wording from the User Agreement.
• We have simplified the language and thereby hopefully made it much easier for you to read and understand it. There is now also a handy “summary” which we hope you’ll appreciate.
• The User Agreement will replace our Terms of Use, Mod Policy, and Game Content Guideline. There have been no material changes to those guidelines and documents, but it will now be easier to access all relevant information in one single document instead of many separate ones.
• The User Agreement will now be available on our website. It has previously only been available in connection with when you purchase and install our games. Adding it to the legal website will make it easier for you to find the document and for us to make updates to it when necessary.

The User Agreement will go into effect on March 1, 2023, and your continued use of our games and services after this date means you agree to be legally bound by the updated User Agreement. You can find the new User Agreement here: https://legal.paradoxplaza.com/eula.

In addition to this forum post, we will have a notice on our website, and we will also in the coming weeks send an email to all verified accounts about the updated terms. The User Agreement will also pop up in the launcher after March 1, 2023, to ensure that everyone has seen it.

Lastly, we are also implementing new Communication Preferences settings. The new settings allow you to control how we communicate with you through emails, in our services (for example our launcher and our websites), and through select partners to personalize advertising for our games and services on partner platforms and external websites. You can change the settings whenever and however you see fit. The new Communication Preferences can be found under “Profile” when you login to your Paradox Account.

That’s the change. I’ll stick around and check on this post from time to time to answer any questions you might have.

Wishing you all the best start to 2023!

"your continued use of our games"

You can't arbitrarily change the EULA for a game after it's purchase. You can for services (like a website, or multi-player matching services), but not for a game that runs on one's own computer.

This is especially true for games I have purchased a decade or more ago.

You must give the player a chance to reject the new contract, which should mean that Paradox has to offer to refund the full price of the game if it's refused. No matter how old the game is. Most game EULA's offer a full refund if you refuse them after purchase. As both sides of the contract need to have the option of rejecting the contract. And simply saying, "Well, you can't use what you've purchased because we don't like you," is not properly legal consideration.

I know you think these changes are minor, but I see giving any company the "right" to unilaterally change contracts a step in the wrong direction. And it's a right that doesn't exist anyway. At least not in common-law nations like the UK, Canada, Australia, and the USA.

You could, of course, say that use of newly purchased games fall under the new EULA, since you will be - presumably - presenting the new, not the old, EULA on installation. But you can't change the terms of previously purchased and installed games.

 

[wasme]

So you've actually gone and done it. I can no longer play a number of games I have already paid for. Where's my option to disagree to the new ELUA? Where's my refund for games I can no longer play?

 

[wasme]

Can I take Paradox to small claims court for taking away my purchases?

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

Where's my refund for games I can no longer play?

It is in the EULA:

Using our services means you’ve accepted this agreement. Contact your retailer if you want to refund a Service.

I guess for most of the more or less current games this means Steam. In case of physical copies it might be a bit more complicated...

Besides of that, I don't see that the update is preventing you from playing the games. The forum post above indeed says "continued use of games and services", but that post is, according to my understanding, NOT part of the updated EULA. The EULA makes a difference between "Games" and "Services" in that regard. See the quote above and this quote:

This User Agreement (“Agreement”) governs your access and use of products, content, and services offered by Paradox Interactive AB (“Paradox”), such as games published by Paradox (“Games”) and thereto related content, mod tools, upgrades, patches, features, launchers, websites, forums, events hosted by Paradox and any other service offered by Paradox (collectively “Services”).

Note that my first quote only mentions "Services" but not "Games".

In other words: You may continue playing the games without problems unless you are also using the services (which for newer games may be a problem, as they may force you to use the launcher). But I think this at least sorts out the dilemma with physical copies of older games.

Note: I'm explicitely NOT posting as a moderator here. Consider this a hint from one community member to another. This is NO official statement from Paradox. I'm only trying to help.

 

[wasme]

Oh, hey, I can run games without the launcher. Of course Famous claims that merely playing the game represents accepting the new EULA, so that still doesn't fix the problem.

And both GOG and Steam won't accept refund applications for games purchased more than 30 days ago. Let alone games purchased a decade or more ago. Or, say, copies of EU2 from when Strategy First was distributing them.

And I'm mostly upset by how Paradox decided to force this on people who have already purchased these games. If they had asked nicely - optionally - I probably would have agreed to the new EULA, but this 'DO THIS OR LOSE YOUR RIGHT TO PLAY GAMES YOU'VE ALREADY PAID FOR!' is something I will not agree to.

So, yes, Paradox, I want a refund for all 19 games plus seemingly endless DLC I have. Actually, more then that because I own multiple copies of EU2, EU3, and HoI2.

 

[TinyWiking]

Oh, hey, I can run games without the launcher. Of course Famous claims that merely playing the game represents accepting the new EULA, so that still doesn't fix the problem.

And both GOG and Steam won't accept refund applications for games purchased more than 30 days ago. Let alone games purchased a decade or more ago. Or, say, copies of EU2 from when Strategy First was distributing them.

And I'm mostly upset by how Paradox decided to force this on people who have already purchased these games. If they had asked nicely - optionally - I probably would have agreed to the new EULA, but this 'DO THIS OR LOSE YOUR RIGHT TO PLAY GAMES YOU'VE ALREADY PAID FOR!' is something I will not agree to.

So, yes, Paradox, I want a refund for all 19 games plus seemingly endless DLC I have. Actually, more then that because I own multiple copies of EU2, EU3, and HoI2.

As stated before you accepted the Eula before we actually showed it to you, it was part of the terms of sale and terms of use. We changed this to make users aware of what this means and that they had to accept it before playing instead of assuming users would go look it up themselves at legal.paradoxplaza.com at a later time. We've also simplified it to make it easier to read, that's basically the biggest change!

Refunds are definitely possible if:

- Game/DLC is bought from us
- Game/DLC was bought within 14 days

Purchases made elsewhere needs to be refunded by that vendor since you didn't pay us and they make the rules for refunds on their store.

 

[AndrewT]

So you've actually gone and done it. I can no longer play a number of games I have already paid for. Where's my option to disagree to the new ELUA? Where's my refund for games I can no longer play?

Why exactly can you not play them now? This new EULA is not materially different from the one you already agreed to before.

 

[wasme]

Because a company should not be able to change a contract after I've already agreed to an earlier one. Not if their not providing an ongoing service.

EULAs are ridiculous to begin with, but they've been recognised as valid by the courts (in Canada and most other countries), and everyone uses them, so there's no getting around them unless one simply doesn't use any commercial software. But you shouldn't be allowed to change them - at *all* - after they've already been agreed to. I don't care what your reasoning is. And to take something I had agreed to - the EULA so I can play the game - and then change it and say I can't use the product I *already paid for* unless I agree to the new contract is something I won't stand for.

So if you're taking away my ability to play the games I've paid for then I need to be reimbursed for that loss. It's not the retailer that's done this. It's Paradox. And it should be Paradox's responsibility to reimburse those that don't agree to the new EULA.

 

[wasme]

Let me put it this way:

I agreed to an EULA, I got a product.

Now your saying the old EULA is invalid - the contract is void - and I need to agree to this new EULA to continue to use the product.

That's insane.

It's like buying a car from Bob for $25k, and then the next day Bob knocks on my door and says he's there for my first born child. "What?" Well, he changed the contract and I can't use the car without agreeing to the new contract. No, the old contract is the valid one. Bob has no right to my first born.

You can't simply invalidate the old contract without compensating people.

Now, if famous and the others at Paradox's legal department hadn't been undertaking such an overreach, and simply said 'using Paradox services requires the new EULA, and we consider the game laurcher a service because it does X, Y, Z. But you can continue to use the games by bypassing the launcher' then I would have found that reasonable. But instead they claim that simply *Playing Games* requires accepting the new contract (and in fact, playing the game is in itself agreeing to the new contract). And that's a step too far.

 

[AndrewT]

What condition is there in the new EULA that was not in the previous one, that you won't agree to?

 

[elektrizikekswerk]

What condition is there in the new EULA that was not in the previous one, that you won't agree to?

As far as I understand it the problem @wasme is having is that the EULA has been changed retroactively on already purchased games and especially that @Famous said (or at least strongly implied) that playing these games means automatically accepting the new EULA - or rather the other way around: Not accepting the new EULA means not being allowed to play games already purchased (a decade ago).

It's not about the content but the procedure.