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Reitanna's avatar
Reitanna
New Veteran
8 years ago
Solved

inquiry about EA service agreement

I wasn't sure where to ask this; I wanted to contact EA directly, but I couldn't figure out how. so this is about section 5, which reads:

"You are responsible for your UGC. You may not upload UGC that infringes a third party's intellectual property rights or that violates the law, this Agreement or a third party's right of privacy or right of publicity.

EA may, in its sole discretion, remove, edit or disable UGC for any reason, including if EA reasonably determines that UGC violates this Agreement. EA does not assume any responsibility or liability for UGC, for removing it, or not removing it or other Content. EA does not pre-screen all UGC and does not endorse or approve any UGC available on EA Services.

When you contribute UGC, you grant to EA, its licensors and licensees a non-exclusive, perpetual, transferable, worldwide, sublicensable license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, publicly perform, publicly display or otherwise transmit and communicate the UGC, or any portion thereof, in any manner or form and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without notice, payment or attribution of any kind to you or any third party. You also grant all other users who can access and use your UGC on an EA Service the right to use, copy, modify, display, perform, create derivative works from, and otherwise communicate and distribute your UGC on or through the relevant EA Service without further notice, attribution or compensation to you."

UGC is user-generated content, which the sims community calls CC, or custom content. so what I'm getting from this is that EA basically owns all CC, and no one else can claim copyright of it. then to my understanding, it says you may not make money off of CC. finally, when it says, "You also grant all other users who can access and use your UGC on an EA Service the right to use, copy, modify, display, perform, create derivative works from, and otherwise communicate and distribute your UGC on or through the relevant EA Service without further notice, attribution or compensation to you," my understanding is that, if you recolor or modify someone's CC, you're not required to credit them, and you are indeed allowed to upload their content to websites as long as it's free.

if my understanding is correct, it makes sense to me, but I've recently had a problem where an admin on a forum threatened to ban me for spreading "misinformation" and "trolling." it concerns me greatly, because I want to know if I actually AM misunderstanding this. if someone from EA could clarify this for me, I would be very grateful.

  • EA_Mai's avatar
    EA_Mai
    8 years ago

    Hi @Reitanna,

    Let me try to answer then 🙂


    @Reitanna wrote:

    when you say creators cannot accept payment unless it is also available for free, does this include patreon exclusive content?


    I'll quote SimGuruDrake's post on this one:


    @SimGuruDrake wrote:

    As long as the content is still made available FOR FREE we do not mind these types of pages. Folks who have a Patreon page are welcome to provide folks with "early access" incentives for their content but it should be made available to the general public within 2-3 weeks of it being given to folks early.


    Every content released early exclusively for patrons should be available for free for everyone withing 2-3 weeks. 


    @Reitanna wrote:

    are link shorteners in violation of this rule, like adf.ly?


    As long as a payment from users is not required, link shorteners are not a violation of the rule.

    However, as some link shorteners are more trustworthy than others, and again as common courtesy, you may want to consider to which point you want to put your users at risk when choosing where to link them.

    -Mai

19 Replies

  • Reitanna's avatar
    Reitanna
    New Veteran
    8 years ago
    how can I go about reporting websites that require payment?
  • Reitanna's avatar
    Reitanna
    New Veteran
    8 years ago
    yeah, actually, I had forgotton I wrote that, so you mentioning it made me go, "oh s***!" and change it. -_-
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    8 years ago
    Hi sorry to hickjack but for clarification does mean that player are not allowed to make horses in the sims 3 then charge real money to give to someone else. Like PayPal and deviart points?
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    8 years ago
    Mai you said:

    As per the User Agreement, all user generated content (UGC) cannot be restricted by the creator if they use EA game assets.

    Does this mean that if a person created a piece of UGC from scratch or from building blocks ( meshes textures ect) not associated with EA that the creators can do as they like with the content including putting it behind a "paywall" indefinitely?

    The EA TOS states:

    You may not upload UGC that infringes a third party's intellectual property rights or that violates the law, this Agreement or a third party's right of privacy or right of publicity.

    Does this mean that UGC created from scratch is the intellectual property of the creators and not EA?


    I have read:

    Once the work is lawfully sold or even transferred gratuitously, the copyright owner's interest in the material object in which the copyrighted work is embodied is exhausted.

    Does this mean that once I buy a copy of your game (or any copyrighted material for that matter) that I can freely upload and distribute it at will?

    Finally I have seen that EA and Microsoft Visual Studio (among others) use . package files, is this file extension and "EA asset" or would it be considered "freeware" as a computer language?

    Thanks for your prompt response
    Trisimian
  • yavannah79's avatar
    yavannah79
    New Traveler
    6 years ago

    Hi

    I like to report [Removed by CM] because their stuff is still behind the paywall and they use Patreon too. You should check that place. In my opinion, they don't follow EA's TOU at all, but violate it. Especially when download prices are quite high. Also, some other cc creators have unauthorized meshes. There is a time there for their own, but also for others. I thought it would be good to bring this up.
    By the way, the site is owned by [Removed by CM]

    I also apologize for my possibly poor English skills. English is not my native language.

  • EA_Darko's avatar
    EA_Darko
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    6 years ago

    Hey @yavannah79 I edited your post to remove mention of other users as naming another user and imply that they are in breach of the rules is considered naming and shaming and is something which is against the AHQ User Rules and Guidelines which you can find here: https://answers.ea.com/t5/help/faqpage

    Darko

  • Reitanna's avatar
    Reitanna
    New Veteran
    6 years ago
    @EA_Darko instead, you should look into it like you're supposed to. they are most likely breaking the rules.