OOTP 10 Mac/Linux Sales Terms Changed

[pisdpaul]

Hi Guys,

We have read your comments and understood your concerns. We have had internal meetings to address the points you have raised and come up with the following changes which we believe address your issues:

* A License can only be terminated if both PISD and OOTP Developments agree there has been good cause. This means it has to be serious enough for both parties to agree the action. I am sure a lot of you trust Markus, Andreas and Steve to make sure this is only used, if ever, in the most severe situations such as being caught poisoning Markus' fish pond

Examples of good cause include, but are not limited to: breach of the Conduct clause ie hacking or attempted hacking of the Webstore, PISD servers, or OOTP Developments' servers.

* We have come up with a design to allow offline registration of your license which means OOTP 10 will not require a direct Internet connection, though it will be easier for you if you have.

You will still need the Internet to activate OOTP 10 but this can be done via a separate computer and will probably involve going to a predefined website. More details on exactly how you do this will available nearer release.

* If you have already bought OOTP 10 you will be presented with the new terms next time you log in to your Webstore account.

I have appended the current terms and conditions to this post. I hope this meets with your expectations.

Paul

Terms and Conditions

This P.I.S.D. Webstore ("Webstore") Subscriber Agreement ("Agreement") explains your rights and obligations as a Subscriber. This agreement is between the Subscriber and P.I.S.D. Ltd ("PISD"), registered company 3789229 in England and Wales. You should read it carefully.

Subscriber

For the purpose of this Agreement a Subscriber is anyone accessing the Webstore website or using the Webstore system in any way.

Software

For the purpose of this Agreement the Software refers to any game or application available for distribution on the Webstore.

Supplier

For the purpose of this Agreement the Supplier refers to a person or people or company that create or make available the Software for distribution on the Webstore.

Conduct

The Subscriber will not attempt to gain unauthorized entry to the Webstore or the PISD servers. Any attempt to do so will be deemed a breach of this Agreement and the Subscribers account will disabled including any purchased licences. Any unauthorised entry attempt will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Privacy

The Subscriber hereby permits PISD to store their email address, host-name and IP address along with a chosen password for means of identification, security and processing any disputes. PISD will keep this information private and will not provide it to any third parties without the Subscriber's permission. Choosing to receive email updates from PISD will be deemed as permission for PISD to pass any or all of the Subscribers information to Software Suppliers that the Subscriber has purchased from.

The Subscriber understands that Software using the Webstore system may require ongoing periodic contact with the Webstore server. The Subscriber accepts that if the Internet connection to the Webstore servers is disrupted for a prolonged period of time the Software could cease to function. In which case PISD will not be held liable the loss of functionality. The Subscriber will make an Internet connection available to any Software using the Webstore if and when required. The Subscriber hereby permits the Webstore system to generate a "virtual fingerprint" of their system and securely upload and store it on the Webstore servers. This information will be kept confidential. For the purpose of this Agreement "virtual fingerprint" means a block of data gathered to uniquely identify the Subscribers system based on installed hardware and its settings without accessing any personal information held on the system.

Licences

PISD reserves the right to suspend or delete a licence providing both PISD and the Software Supplier agree there is good cause. If the licence was purchased over a month before it was suspended or removed there will be no refund either full or in part. If the licence was purchased under a month before it was suspended or removed PISD may refund in part at PISD's sole discretion.

Returns and Refunds

In accordance with English law refunds on Software are only offered if the Software is faulty or at the discretion of the Software Supplier in accordance with their Terms and Conditions. Software is deemed to be faulty only after all available patches have been applied and the fault still exists and the Software Supplier recognises the fault as a bug. The Subscriber should use any available "demo" version of the Software before purchasing a licence.

Payment

PISD does not store any personal payment details. All personal payments details are handled by a third party payment provider such as PayPal. PISD only stores a payment reference generated by the payment provider alongside internal tracking information. Any errors in payment should be addressed to the payment provider before contacting PISD.
All payments are made directly into the Software Suppliers account. PISD does not receive any money directly from the Subscriber.

Liability

PISD shall not be liable to the Subscriber for any loss or damage however caused by any of the Software distributed by the Webstore. Any liability is a matter for the Supplier of the Software and not PISD.

The entire aggregate liability of PISD arising under or in connection with this Agreement shall be limited to a sum equal to the monies actually paid by the Subscriber on the date which PISD's liability accrued.

Agreement

This agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law and the Subscriber submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts. No term of this Agreement is enforceable pursuant to the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 by any person who is not party to it.

[chanman]

I don't think anyone will find this unfair. Good work! Hopefully this will really add to Mac/Linux sales.

[Raidergoo]

It doesn't suck, so that is a postive step.

[Speck]

The Subscriber understands that Software using the Webstore system may require ongoing periodic contact with the Webstore server. The Subscriber accepts that if the Internet connection to the Webstore servers is disrupted for a prolonged period of time the Software could cease to function. In which case PISD will not be held liable the loss of functionality. The Subscriber will make an Internet connection available to any Software using the Webstore if and when required.

I think the need to periodically "check in" was a main concern for many users. Has this policy been modified since the initial T&C (I may not be reading the new T&C correctly)?

The Subscriber hereby permits the Webstore system to generate a "virtual fingerprint" of their system and securely upload and store it on the Webstore servers. This information will be kept confidential. For the purpose of this Agreement "virtual fingerprint" means a block of data gathered to uniquely identify the Subscribers system based on installed hardware and its settings without accessing any personal information held on the system.

Would it be possible for you to give more details regarding the data collected for the virtual fingerprint? Are you just gathering system information from /proc (on Linux) or are you traversing other directories as well ($HOME, /etc, ...)? During the actual installation, it should be simple enough to figure out which directories/files are being accessed (using lsof, etc), but getting the answer from the developer is even simpler.

[pisdpaul]

Originally Posted by Speck

I think the need to periodically "check in" was a main concern for many users. Has this policy been modified since the initial T&C (I may not be reading the new T&C correctly)?

The need to check in on a regular basis has been removed with the new design. The exact details are still pending until the work is actually done and tested. One thing we will make sure is that you can run OOTP 10 on a PC that does not have a direct internet connection* and as part of that these periodic "are you there" style server connections will be disabled.

*you will need access to the internet on a second PC to enable the licence to start with

Originally Posted by Speck

Would it be possible for you to give more details regarding the data collected for the virtual fingerprint? Are you just gathering system information from /proc (on Linux) or are you traversing other directories as well ($HOME, /etc, ...)? During the actual installation, it should be simple enough to figure out which directories/files are being accessed (using lsof, etc), but getting the answer from the developer is even simpler.

I am sure you understand this is not something I am going to discuss in detail for security reasons. However I understand that you want to know the kind of data in case there is something of concern to you. First I do not gather data from /home as that would be personal information and wildly different from user to user or distro to dristo. As the game runs inside your user space that means I would be unbale to get sensitive data as that would be read only to root. The fingerprint is simply to uniquly identify your PC so hardware and drivers are what I use to create the fingerprint. As I say in the T&C, no user data is touched.

lsof would only give you a snapshot of whats open at the time so it would be difficult to use. However using a tool to see what the game is doing, or in this case the copy protection is called "reverse engineering" which is a form of hacking. So please dont do it thanks...

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by pisdpaul

I am sure you understand this is not something I am going to discuss in detail for security reasons. However I understand that you want to know the kind of data in case there is something of concern to you. First I do not gather data from /home as that would be personal information and wildly different from user to user or distro to dristo. As the game runs inside your user space that means I would be unbale to get sensitive data as that would be read only to root. The fingerprint is simply to uniquly identify your PC so hardware and drivers are what I use to create the fingerprint. As I say in the T&C, no user data is touched.

lsof would only give you a snapshot of whats open at the time so it would be difficult to use. However using a tool to see what the game is doing, or in this case the copy protection is called "reverse engineering" which is a form of hacking. So please dont do it thanks...

This just does sound like the Activation system that Microsoft uses. Basically if your hardware is fairly similar to what it was the time before you'll be fine (eg, adding memory to my laptop didn't cause me to need to reactivate Office, but if I'd changed the motherboard, graphics card and memory it might have thought hang on is this the same machine).

[zarhime]

Well with this decision I have decided to buy the game and have now preordered it. I was on the fence because I am in the military and do not always have internet access.

thanks for making a good decision

zarhime

[RebelFan]

This thread raises a lot of questions and concerns for me. Such as why the "Software using the Webstore system may require ongoing periodic contact with the Webstore server" What is the purpose of the contact, when will it occur, what information will the contact involve, will I know when it takes place, etc.? Why do you need to "generate a "virtual fingerprint" of their (my) system and securely upload and store it on the Webstore servers", how do I know if it will be stored securely? I'm sure your intentions are good, but I know nothing about your company which is located in a different country from where I live. It seems like it should be a simple transaction, I give you some money, you sell me some software, instead we seem to setting-up some type of long term relationship between you and my computer.

Also, it seems that unless something changes, I will have to set-up an account with a company in another country, Germany (PayPal), in order to buy the software. Thus spreading my personal information all over the world. Just to buy a game.


How different is this purchase system from last year and why the changes and why do they only seem to apply to a Mac. Unless I see some "comforting" explanations about all of this, I'm sorry to say, I won't be buying version X.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by RebelFan

Also, it seems that unless something changes, I will have to set-up an account with a company in another country, Germany (PayPal), in order to buy the software. Thus spreading my personal information all over the world. Just to buy a game.


How different is this purchase system from last year and why the changes and why do they only seem to apply to a Mac. Unless I see some "comforting" explanations about all of this, I'm sorry to say, I won't be buying version X.

What am I missing? PayPal is an American company. The system does not apply to PC systems, only to Mac and Linux. I couldn't tell you how this differs from last year's system, but it sounds much the same to me. I'm on a Mac.

[RebelFan]

Marcus posted in the "Mac/Linux and Paypal" thread that Paypal in Germany requires you to set-up an account in order to use Paypal to purchase through them which seems to be the only way to buy the game. I assumed this was an account with Paypal in Germany but maybe I am wrong. He said he was looking for another way to buy the the game with a credit card but there have been no updates for 3 weeks so who knows. This is not something I had to do last year to buy the game.

Also, it appears you have to set-up an account with PISD, an English company. I don't recall having to do that last year. If I did, I didn't write down the user name and password I need to get into their system to order the game now, something which I usually do.

Then there's the issue of the sales terms agreement involving PISD accessing your computer, etc. Maybe that was there last year and I overlooked it. I admit I don't pay as much attention to those things as I should. This thread called my attention to the issue.

[pisdpaul]

Originally Posted by RebelFan

Marcus posted in the "Mac/Linux and Paypal" thread that Paypal in Germany requires you to set-up an account in order to use Paypal to purchase through them which seems to be the only way to buy the game. I assumed this was an account with Paypal in Germany but maybe I am wrong. He said he was looking for another way to buy the the game with a credit card but there have been no updates for 3 weeks so who knows. This is not something I had to do last year to buy the game.

We are looking for an alternative payment system but it is taking us longer to get responses to our inquiries than we first hoped. We have not forgotten about this and ask you bare with us while we fix this issue.

Originally Posted by RebelFan

Then there's the issue of the sales terms agreement involving PISD accessing your computer, etc. Maybe that was there last year and I overlooked it. I admit I don't pay as much attention to those things as I should. This thread called my attention to the issue.

Just to reassure you no-one accesses your computer. The game will lookup things like hardware serial numbers and driver versions. Nothing even remotely personal. It will not access your user account area. I am sure malware or spyware would pose a far bigger risk to your security.

If may be wrong but I understand the previous mac liensing system also locked the game to your hardware. I dont beleive this is a new concept. Though I do defer to "those in the know" so to speak

[Curtis]

All right, Paul, as long as we have your attention —

Last year any account with PayPal was good enough. Do we really need an account with the branch in Germany this year?

[GEP]

Originally Posted by Curtis

Last year any account with PayPal was good enough. Do we really need an account with the branch in Germany this year?

As I understand it -- and it's possible I have this wrong -- the payment issue (and, like many of you, I'm waiting on my pre-order in the hopes that Markus will find an alternative) is a change that PayPal made, so it hard seems fair yell at Markus and Paul about it. I guarantee PayPal didn't consult them on their service changes. And I doubt PayPal's very interested in their opinion on it, either.

[Malleus Dei]

I will be buying a Linux license despite all of the points raised against doing so, and I am hopeful that by next year and OOTP XI that all of these issues will have been worked out and something that everyone is comfortable with will be in place.