After Valve’s recent change of their EULA in August, one that made class action lawsuits against them breaking your user agreement with them  and thus forfeiture of your account, the gaming community was upset but really only for a weekend. When a similar thing happened with Blizzard over their Diablo III “always on” fiasco, people were up in arms and protested the MMO giant, but why not Valve? We’ll get back to that later.

The German advocacy group VZBZ, the same one who brought Blizzard into European Union supreme court, is now on Valves case. Back in July they passed legislation that all software should be allowed to be resold by their owners. This includes digital sales (To read that ruling check it out HERE).

VZBZ have just announced they are giving Valve and Steam until September 26 to remove rescind their current EULA agreement with users or face the consequences, and litigation. We will see as that is only a few days away, I will keep you up to date as info is released.

Now back to the first part, why wasn’t Valve protested? My personal feelings are that the armchair protesters, the mountain dew activists that flipped out over Blizzard doing this, EA. The same people who blacked out their sites over SOPA and PIPA, are in too much love with Valve and Gabe Newell that they let this slide. This was the prime example of hypocrisy in our community. Valve has been a good guy Greg to every customer, doing refunds, exchanges etc. etc. Lets hope they do the right thing again, without the law interfering, and  they will do the same over here.

Announced today on their Wikimedia blog the entire collected work of all of mankind’s knowledge, have changed their Domain registrar. Moving from the once proud and respected GoDaddy to the new to me MarkMonitor.

This really bold and unusually public change comes on the heels of a global “black out” in protest of SOPA and PIPA where Wikipedia and other sites went “dark” to show what the internet might be like if the proposed legislation passed.

One of the companies that was FOR SOPA was GoDaddy. When asked numerous times if they would change their decision, GoDaddy stood by their guns and said they would continue to support SOPA in the guise it would protect the internet. What followed could best be described as Mass Exodus as thousands of domains transferred out in protest.

My personal opinion on Wikipedia changing? Best business decision on the planet. The Wikipedia blackout on SOPA was a GIANT money grab, right in the middle of their donation season they black out. When the site came back online donations SURGED from all the armchair activists who get on a cause for a week and then stop caring when it stops being trendy. I would NOT be surprised if Jimmy Wales wasn’t on the board of directors for MarkMonitor, with all this free advertising the relatively UNKOWN registrar is getting you bet their market share as well as their wallets will explode like a 14-year old boys pants did at the Suicide Girls booth at Comic Con.

Still, this is a powerful statement by Wikipedia, be it a thinly veiled grab for money or if they ACTUALLY care about the SOPA/PIPA legislation.