It’s already known that Origin will be required to play Battlefield 3 on the PC, and at first, it seemed like just another digital download service, however, some might find it disturbing that, according to the Origin EULA, EA collects information about your computer, the software installed on it, its hardware, not only to “improve the service”, but they can also pass on this data to third parties, as the document states:
EA may also use this information combined with personal information for marketing purposes and to improve our products and services. We may also share that data with our third party service providers in a form that does not personally identify you.
The last part, “in a form that does not personally identify you”, is a relief, but it’s scary to know that Origin will be collecting all sorts of information from your system, including your IP address and other, non-EA software that you have installed on your PC. You can read the full Origin EULA here.
It gets scarier. Another EA EULA, which covers EA Online and EA account privacy (which is requited to play Battlefield 3), has even more concerning legal speak. The scary part of the EULA, as pointed out by a user on The Escapist Forums:
When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or console, we may collect certain non-personal demographic information including gender, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, media, mobile device, mobile device ID, console ID, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as feature usage, game play statistics and scores, user rankings and click paths.
Since Battlefield 3 and all other EA Online games fall under this category, it gives EA the right to collect vast amounts of data on players, and to make matters worse, the beginning of the document states that you waive all your rights to be protected by law. Worse, EA reserves the right to share all of this information with any third party, including law enforcement agencies.
We’re not sure if this is common among other publishers in their license agreements (like Valve’s Steam service), but it definitely seems like EA is taking it too far, if not breaking the law. If you wish to read the EA Online EULA, you can find it here.
What the fuck world?
Source: bf3blog.com
PS here’s a real difference between PC and PS3 version (I had a chance to play both):
If I’ll ever hear some jackass from Sony saying that PS3 is still a powerful piece of hardware I will fucking punch my screen.
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