There's a provision in german law that EULAs may not contain clauses deemed "surprising" or "unexpected". There are multiple paragraphs in the Origin EULA that violate this principle (such as reserving the right to scan all data on your computer).
There's another rule that customers may not be placed at a significant disadvantage if you're dealing with private customers. This rule is violated for example when EA reserves the right to terminate support for the game (rendering it effectively unusable) at any time at their sole discretion.
There's other minor points such as attempting to move eventual lawsuits out of country or reserving the right to unilaterally change the EULA at any time but that's more or less the icing on the cake.
The obvious consensus is that the EULA is invalid in pretty much any given point. Which means that the game is defective and may be returned to the store at any point after buying - a tempting idea actually :)
I'm not surprised. But why not use this to your advantage as a campaign? On a given day, everyone buys the game, then goes back and asks for a refund. Get everyone knowledgeable about the law, given them leaflets explaining the law to quote to the store clerks, forms to fill in with details if the clerks don't give the refund. Do this a few times.
There's a provision in german law that EULAs may not contain clauses deemed "surprising" or "unexpected". There are multiple paragraphs in the Origin EULA that violate this principle (such as reserving the right to scan all data on your computer).
There's another rule that customers may not be placed at a significant disadvantage if you're dealing with private customers. This rule is violated for example when EA reserves the right to terminate support for the game (rendering it effectively unusable) at any time at their sole discretion.
There's other minor points such as attempting to move eventual lawsuits out of country or reserving the right to unilaterally change the EULA at any time but that's more or less the icing on the cake.
The obvious consensus is that the EULA is invalid in pretty much any given point. Which means that the game is defective and may be returned to the store at any point after buying - a tempting idea actually :)
In other news: EA seems to back off a little http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Electronic-Arts-reagi... (german as well)