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Activision Blizzard Account Lock and Forced Arbitration
On March 21, 2024 Activision/Blizzard published an updated EULA and blocked login to Blizzard services asking them to review the Blizzard End User License Agreement and Blizzard Entertainment Online Privacy Policy. Declining the prompt would log the users out disallowing them from accessing any part of their account and disallowing them from playing the games that they paid for. The EULA constitutes an example of a EULA Roofie.
Incident
Upon login to the Battle.net game client or blizzard.com users were presented with a popup asking them to accept or reject the EULA[1] and Online Privacy Policy.
The EULA includes at the beginning of it's statement a bolded text segment indicating that the EULA constitutes an agreement to forced arbitration.
THIS AGREEMENT CONTAINS A BINDING ARBITRATION AGREEMENT AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER IN THE SECTION TITLED “DISPUTE RESOLUTION.” THIS AGREEMENT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS WITH RESPECT TO ANY “DISPUTE” BETWEEN YOU AND BLIZZARD AND MAY REQUIRE YOU TO RESOLVE DISPUTES IN BINDING, INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION, AND NOT IN COURT.
Also included in the EULA is a clause stating the following
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO INSTALL, COPY, OR USE THE BLIZZARD PLATFORM OR GAMES. IF YOU REJECT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WITHIN FOURTEEN (14) DAYS AFTER YOUR PURCHASE OF A GAME FROM BLIZZARD, YOU MAY CONTACT BLIZZARD THROUGH https://us.battle.net/support/en/ TO INQUIRE ABOUT A FULL REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE OF THAT GAME.
This clause would apply to any online services for games such as Warcraft 3 which could be purchased as early as 2002[2] putting it far outside the 14 day refund window. Clicking "Cancel" on this prompt would force the user to log out and they would be unable to access any services including support.[3]
These clauses and the legal actions they represent are not new to the agreement as similar verbiage can be seen in the previous version of the EULA.[4]
