Battle.net Terms of Use

Steam doesn’t even allow you to let a friend play a steam game on your computer, with your account. No “check this cool game out, play it for 2 mins. (How stupid can it get?)

Anyway, what about Blizzards Battle.net? After all, there was much controversy about their plans on Facebook integration and forcing real names everywhere, not allowing nicknames.

You may only use Battle.net for your personal, non-commercial entertainment.

You may not use the Battle.net service (or thus games) on any sponsored or promoted lands or events. That means, you have to get permission/license for any Lan you run, if you want to play a Battle.net game on it.

Battle.net is only to be accessed with webbrowser and authorized game clients. (I wonder what their policy on public APIs is and if they do give perms out to programmatically parse data.)

No selling or anything. Game and account is bound to you and you only. Selling items, game-accounts or services is not allowed.

(Very strange:) You may not “buy or sell for real money or in exchange for in-game currency, items or resources that may be used in a Game outside the Game without Blizzard’s authorization”. So no give item in WoW, get in-game money in other game. oO (Why does Blizzard care?)

Do NOT allow anyone else use your account. (Same fail as Steam. Really, I don’t get how you can do such a policy. If you enforce that it’s counter-promotion. Spending millions on promotion … really, that’s just stupid.)

No reading of RAM or monitoring data (Mumbles positional audio does read RAM on WoW if active.) Blizzard does say it will allow specific/individual user interfaces though.

“emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard in any way”. This may be too general of a statement. They also use internet protocols, TCP, UDP, IP. They should not be able to deny routing those though. What they’re getting at is mainly the emulation of their service and matchmaking. But the redirection may also be applied to any routing, VPN, tunneling, Proxying … the question here is what is the not redirected way? When is it redirection? (They’ll probably not enforce this if you’re using VPN or sth though …)

No connecting/using emulating servers. Ofc.

Why do the Terms explicitly point to the WoW terms? I have to agree to those as well when using Battle.net with another game?

“you are required to provide Blizzard with certain personal information such as your name, address, email address and, in some cases, payment information”

“YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU SHALL HAVE NO OWNERSHIP OR OTHER PROPERTY INTEREST IN THE ACCOUNT, AND YOU FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT ALL RIGHTS IN AND TO THE ACCOUNT ARE AND SHALL FOREVER BE OWNED BY AND INURE TO THE BENEFIT OF BLIZZARD”. I especially like the “benefit of Blizzard”.

“Blizzard owns, has licensed, or otherwise has rights to all of the content that appears in the Service or the Games.” In fact you bought nothing. A permission to use Blizzards stuff without any ownership where you can be sure it stays.

The terms explicitly point to game EULAs, that they may allow transferring of games (while accounts stay intact). Support to be contacted, processing fee may apply.

You can opt in to the “Real Life Friends” feature. Voicechats are exclusive to this feature. Real Life friends can see each others real names, as well as their real life friends. (This means I’ll have 2 friends lists, right? The normal nickname one and the RL one!?)

Facebook integration is in as well. Optional ofc.