Shard Chats = cheating

"Bigbearxba;c-1579228" wrote:
In spirit, I’d love for you to be correct. But legally you are incorrect. To violate the “sell, buy or trade” clause there has to actually be transfer of the “Virtual Currency or Entitlements” between those involved. Player A isn’t transfering the crystals to player B. He is just helping player B “earn” those crystals more easily. Also, Discord in this example would not qualify as a “third party website” in terms of precedent in enforcing this kind of clause in contract. The website has to actually be transfering the “Virtual Currency...” to the players for it to fall under this clause. (As an example, websites that sell gear to players for MMOs like World of Warcraft)

I don't know. I think the language is left somewhat ambiguous for a reason. Lawyer-speak to cover as much ground as possible. Gives them room to take action or not take action, depending on different circumstances.
Every MMO with PVP that I've ever played will ban win-traders, and they have similar language in their TOS. For example, in WoW Arena, people would wait until slow hours and then team into each other in Arena, taking turns to win and lose. This let them gain rank and rewards more easily and quickly ... and they would absolutely get banned.

Battle Royale games also ban people for teaming -- i.e. people NOT on the same team actively ganging up on others.

I don't think the transfer of rewards/currencies/entitlements has to be an actual transfer from player to player... as the rewards in these games often aren't even able to be transferred from player to player. The rewards can only be earned individually or in a team.

As I said... with this game, the problem would be proving it. Those other games have extensive gameplay logs and replays that devs can investigate.

The ambiguity also serves in line items like this: "Engage in any other activity that significantly disturbs the peaceful, fair and respectful gaming environment of an EA Service." (Keyword here being "significant" -- how significant does EA consider shard chatting? Probably not very significant, considering most of their biggest spenders do it.)

And also this one:

"Use exploits, cheats, undocumented features, design errors or problems in an EA Service."

Or this one:

"Interfere with or disrupt another player's use of an EA Service. This includes disrupting the normal flow of game play, chat or dialogue within an EA Service by, for example, using vulgar or harassing language, being abusive, excessive shouting (all caps), spamming, flooding or hitting the return key repeatedly."

A EA rep could easily fit shard chats into any of those if they cared enough to crack down.