About ProSiebenSat.1 and European Everquest players.

[Nubo]

Well, you read the FAQ that Piestro posted that contains millions of lines explaining ProSiebenSat.1 and Sony will work closely together... and that's about it. So I bring you a FAQ based upon my own analysis... as it was mysteriously deleted from Sonys Forums.

Q: Who is ProSiebenSat.1?

A: It's a German holding company for media (mainly Television) companies. They are in the business of buying TV/Radio and Production companies and get their main revenue from selling ads.


Q: Why is ProSiebenSat.1 buying EQ and other Sony Games?

A: They are not buying the games, they are buying the customers.


Q: Why is ProSiebenSat.1 buying EQ customers?

A: TV is suspected to be on the way out and video-on-demand and other online services seen as the future. ProSiebenSat.1 is building an infrastructure through their "Digital & Adjacent" division. Buying customers is far quicker than recruiting from scratch. When you have one customer playing EQ in your portal, you can also try sell him other services, or get him to explain to friends/family about the portal and how to use it.


Q: So ProSiebenSat.1 isn't interested in EQ?

A: Not at all. Just like Sony in Japan isn't the least interested in EQ. Sony Online Entertainment, the tiny division within Sony is very much interested in EQ, but not Sony executives in the Ivory Tower.


Q: So what will happen with EQ after ProSiebenSat.1 buys it?

A: Several things will happen but it wont happen overnight...

1. They will make EQ players "beta testers" of their digital portal for consumer-products online. I.e. get accounts to work, and incorporate buying other things (like TV/Radio/Music) via that account. Somewhere in here there might be (as Microsoft calls it) "Premium Content" meaning that the user is locked out from parts of his computer (via new login/patcher) to control how he access mediastreams and other things he may have bought.

2. European players who not really keen on ProSiebenSat.1 and doesn't enjoy "premium content" ideas, will leave for other games. There many free games out there today. What Sony doesn't realize is that EQ is alive for the same reasons most other upstarts fail.

* EQ got a community (old friends, new enemies, acquaintances and people you vaguely think you remember... and 12 years of Internet webpages. It all makes for a community). New games don't have that.

* EQ got content. With each level increase, and old quests being made obsolete, or impossible to do as you can't get 3-6 people of suitable level for task, a lot of content also "vanish" but EQ been around so long it's still King when it comes to content.

This is why EQ is alive, but it doesn't matter though if the service provider tries to feed you "dog food". A lot of European players will leave and it will never recover. ProSiebenSat.1 doesn't care if 50-75% of all the players leave, they buying customers, and if they end up with just 25% using and betatesting their portal, it's all fine and dandy. Sony doesn't care either if customers leave it's too small for them.
Sony Online Entertainment cares if customers leave and they will be in meetings with ProSiebenSat.1 on a monthly/quarterly basis discussing how to stop the trend. ProSiebenSat.1 will ensure SoE they doing everything they can and they have great plans, but in reality they don't give a sh*t... because it's all about the portal for future services. EQ is already dead in their eyes.

3. In the far future... maybe SoE will launch future games under their own umbrella? Maybe this is the end for Sony as a big player in the European market (just as the Asian market had it's own MMORPG niche since the days of Ultima and early EQ with far more subscribers than EQ ever had). SoE will *not* buy it back because ProSiebenSat.1 wont sell. They aren't interested in the game, they want customers... and that means they want to keep having the exclusive right to sign subscriptions, be it 100 or 100.000, it's all subscriptions and services they offer in their annual report to shareholders and how they build a future on the Internet.


Q: They talking about content developed for European players?

A: ProSiebenSat.1 is probably going to try find ways to sell their other services to European players. If "content" is being able to loot an advertisement for Video-on-demand and ability to watch the first 30 min of some movie for free... then yes, they gonna add content. If you mean classic content as we used to see it, no! There will be no content. ProSiebenSat.1 and the "Digital & Adjacent" division is *not*, and let me repeat this.. they *not* interested in developing a game, they just want you to subscribe through their portal for online services so they can learn how to sell things online.


Q: Is ProSiebenSat.1 support going to be better/worse than current?

A: Their support is going to be merged with support for other online services like video-on-demand. This is great if you not only have a question about EQ billing but also need to know what version of "Premium content Manager" you need installed to use their services. If you want in-game support who actually knows what EQ is, you probably out of luck.


Q: Is there anyway around this?

A: No, Sony saw a golden deal to sell off customers, while still having them as customers. This means that if you live in one of the countries affected, there is no way you can go around this, except by changing nationality to American (or Japanese I suspect will work fine too).


Q: So, I'm just sold off like a slave after being a loyal customer since 1999?

A: Yes! Neither Japanese or Americans care about Europeans, so live and learn, and stop sulking. When the time comes, just exit gracefully.


Q: Where can I learn more?

A: You can learn *a lot* about ProSiebenSat.1 by going to their website and download the information for shareholders and traders. It contains their plans, hopes, and a lot of fancy talk to make shareholders think their stock is the best thing since sliced bread. (All companies do that in case you not used to analyse these types of reports.)

[Blimp]

Thanks for clarafying the situation nubs

[conalan]

this sound a bit frigthning for me, i ll be very sad if it go this way.

[Saulessiar]

this sound a bit frigthning for me, i ll be very sad if it go this way.

Sadly, there is no "if" in this. As far as I understand it, the deal is done. If you really want to worry, read PSS EULA (it has been discussed on the forums, but really, their EULA is really, really, really draconic). Piestro claims there are "discussions" about stuff that you have to agree to let PSS have remote access to your computer, etc. But remember, the same EULA is what was forced on EQ2, so I can't see how SoE will "renegotiate" that part. But, there are also other stuff which made my raise my eyebrow.

Personally, I will not contend with it. If this means I will have to leave EQ, so be it.

[Deillusional]

Its not that big of a deal. After all you can refuse to let them remote access your computer.

[conalan]

you can refuse them to access computer and still play?

[Deillusional]

Ya.

[Blood Brothers]

There is a way around this........................................Quit EQ


Cheers BN

[Nubo]

Recent years we seen more and more weird EULA's in Europe by European companies. My guess is since all American Software products come with a draconic one for the last 20 years, people/lawyers/politician become so used to it, they think they are valid. Problem is when enough people and officials think they are valid that courts too might think it's a valid agreement, even if only for the "new" software industry. Reasoning that since it has "always been like that" for "software licensing" it should stay that way.

In Europe it's otherwise praxis that all special demands must be known to customer before he buys the product and finalize the purchase. Hence the more odd parts of an EULA isn't valid, since you often don't learn about them until after get the disc out of the box you bought. I guess you can always get a refund if you refuse to accept it but it may be a pain since no company I heard of gladly refunds anything just because you didn't like the EULA, and refer you to the store, who refer you to the software company.

In the US this is all solved solved in courts and possibly class-action lawsuits as unhappy customers gang up. But the right to get your case tested in court doesn't exist as such in Europe. In most countries you can't sue anyone without a valid reason (compensation for damage you can prove), and the case would be dismissed before the ones you sue have to wake up any lawyer. Instead there are consumer laws that control how trade is supposed to be done, and to protect customers. In the US it's the other way around with laws like DMCA, (and soon to be reincarnated again PIPA/SOPA), to protect companies from customers (lawsuits).

It would be nice a lot of those EULA's that is now invented get tested in EU court. So we could get an update on how it should be interpreted.

So most EULA's are horrible. I don't accept Flash since Macromedia is also originally a copyprotection company and the Flash-EULA states I should happily allow them to silently install software to help regulate piracy whenever they like to. Needless to say, I don't need any rootkits in my comp from any external company, but it seems not many people read the Flash EULA or cares about what DMCA protected software they allow Adobe to install when your machine connected to the Internet.

There really should be some consumer protection laws, so the companies that decide to make changes to a computer that violates good programming practice for the specific OS (for example SecuROM) should also be held responsible for potential damages and no EULA should be able to free them. Currently all such things are regulated by consumer lawsuits only (See "Sony Rootkit" for example.)

10 years ago I should have told you to just ignore any silly EULA that a company like PSS1 gave you, but it would be nice if we could get politicians/courts nowdays to make some statements about any potential exceptions to consumer laws when you "license" instead of "buy" or whatever they prefer to call it to get away from responsibility.

[Deillusional]

Got the following form someone on eqlive:

Hey,
Please share this on your FaceBook: www.facebook.com/EuroGamers - post there too, I want it to go viral to shake up Sony, and I want a forum where we can talk about our worries about this whole deal without things being moderated out.
Spread it far and wide please!
Jaella

[Nubo]

Booh! Can't read anything from Facebook because I don't got an account and I will never (probably) get one.

Anyone care to recap? Heard Piestro and other muppets in charge of dealing with the public been there given the Sony view on it.

[Deillusional]

Here are the tweets from Smed:

"I wanted to thank our players for continuing feedback. We've been listening along with our European partners at Prosieben. We've found a way to let existing players of our current games that are migrating over to Prosieben (EQ, EQ II, Planetside 2) keep their SOE accounts and stay with SOE. Down the road we may offer an option to move over to Prosieben. Just to be clear after these games launch on Prosieben's service new accounts will be created on their sites. However all US and EU players can still play together no matter which service they are on.

I want to be clear that Prosieben will have better European CS and payment options IMO. That's why we went with them in the first place. Also Prosieben has done a great job of listening and is working on changing some of their CS policies. More to come on that soon. Just going back and forth with our partners at Prosieben. I can confirm that we WILL offer the ability to migrate to Prosieben. No word on timeframe just yet, but shouldn't take too long."

Both SOE and ProSiebenSat.1 Games remain committed to making this transition as easy and beneficial as possible for players; more news will come in coming weeks, especially after we return from SOE Live.