At the very least, as a player I want to know what agreements affect the items I purchase from the marketplace. But it’s proving to be extremely challenging to find any EULAs. Whether it’s for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 itself, or for the individual items that are purchasable. Some items have URLs that may be of interest, but they are not clickable and have to be typed manually.
This is very important, especially for modders who want to know what what is legally permissible for the items. I would like to see a clickable link somewhere that takes me to a page that has information about how the products are licensed.
Umm, that’s nice, but I own the Steam version, and the marketplace in the game is its own thing, and if I attempt to purchase a dialog to purchase some sort of Steam points comes up. I honestly don’t know if the policies for publishing to the Microsoft Store apply or not.
Steam is only providing effective connectivity, some authorization pass through and launcher services. Beyond that, once you’re in MarketPlace, it doesn’t really matter whether you came in via MS-Store, GamePass or Steam. You’re subject to the policies of the MP first and foremost.
Well, I think that needs to be made clear, having something I can click when I’m in the store or am about to purchase an item would be a very good positive step to clarifying that. Right now, I only have your word.
In terms of legal documents, there should be a portal outside of the sim where I can see all the common agreements I might be bound by for all MSFS services (EULA’s, TOS, NDAs, etc)
Yeah, this is something that should really be in the marketplace in the game itself.
I didn’t think to look at the “terms of use” on the website, because usually that’s where the terms of use for the website are, rather than the terms of use for the product. But good to know it’s there.
I went to the “SALT,” and it’s not helpful. Basic boilerplate copyright, and if taken at face value nobody can do anything and the modding community should be forbidden (which is certainly not the case).
Terms of Use and Terms and Conditions are interchangeably used on the Internet, although to a barrister, I’m sure that’s heresy of sorts.
That being said, most sites plant overarching ToU/T&C at the bottom, hence I always start there. But since it didn’t directly address your question, the only way to figure out if there is an obligation to display a EULA (or anything else) in a Microsoft “Store,” was to pretend as if I wanted to become one. Ergo - that led me to those Policies. Barring direct inquiry with someone beyond Level 1 anywhere in the MS Machine, this is about all that can be found.
I haven’t had a chance to check yet, but I’m going to make a wild guess that the document you linked doesn’t match the “Microsoft Flight Simulator - Legal Notices” in the simulator. If someone could check that I would be grateful.
The legal notices can be found within the simulator menu, but they are not usable. What I mean by that is you cannot use Ctrl + F to search for specific lines or phrases, I’m fairly sure the links don’t work (it’s been a while since I’ve checked), and you cannot copy and paste the content of the agreement out of the simulator and into any number of applications that would let you easily look for specific content. It’s also painful to get to and involves nearly setting your computer on fire to read.
But even if I am wrong and it is the same agreement, there should be a singular portal where you can find all of your agreements, and easily navigate through them. There are several agreements in play and it isn’t good enough to expect customers to go diving through a very of sites to find them. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
Discord Rules for the community server (which ironically I can’t see because I don’t click the reaction in the #Important-info channel, to avoid ping spam)
Alpha / Beta tester NDA ← Can’t find my copy of this anymore, but this is still active
VR Beta NDA ← I’m assuming it is the same as above, but I don’t have access to it so I don’t know
And I’m sure there will be notices agreements for the marketplace, marketplace partners etc.
Unfortunately, nothing in there about the Store. It’s all disclaimers and license agreements/terms in using the various programming languages and bundled code that support the sim core.
To clarify: The SALT is one section of the larger Microsoft Services Agreement.
I did find a “LEGAL” button in the simulator (options → general → misc), but it’s only third party licenses for various bits of libraries and such used in the simulator.
. . . also . . . seriously?
. . . I’m seeing a references to the LGPL and Apache licenses. Treading thin water for a proprietary product, heh.
. . . and the GPL. Which hates to be in proprietary software. Ummm . . . .
. . . anybody want to send a notice to Microsoft that you want the source code for the simulator, as stipulated in the GPL?
Hopefully, they know what they are doing, but back on point from the tangent . . .
. . . outside of the third party agreements, which are mostly libraries, I can’t find anything in the way of legal notices. In particular, they aren’t licenses for marketplace products.
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