Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-29746749-20180810171303/@comment-32545704-20180814143947

Dr Perriwinkle wrote: The problem is that this is contract law, not criminal law, and the key part of any contract is whether the parties involved in the contract agreed to the terms of the contract. You agreed to these terms when you first played the game (or re-downloaded it). It is difficult to argue that there are unreasonable clauses in a contract that you have agreed to in advance. I don't think that is strictly true, at least here in the UK and I believe throught the EEA, standard (non-negotiated) contract terms must be reasonable to be enforcable. Essentially they cannot tilt the balance of rights or liabilities unfairly in favour of one party. Contesting it might not be easy though. For what it's worth my experience is with a medium-sized family business.

For example, you could have an employment contract which stated if the employee leaves without giving proper notice they owe you one million pounds. The employee could read, agree and sign it in full knowledge of the clause. But you would have no chance to enforce such a term, unless you could prove your company reasonably incurred such losses as a result. The fact they agreed and signed the contract would be irrelevant.

Whether or not EA's terms contain any unreasonable clauses is of course another matter, I don't really know about that. But if you felt they did, the fact you agreed to the terms would not necessarily stop you challenging them if they tried to enforce them. At least if you live in Europe, I don't know about elsewhere.