Hi,
I was just looking through the EULA for XNA 2.0 and noticed the following statement:
"You may not implement any text chat functionality in any programs. "

I'm no lawyer and I can't really understand if this is only for XBox games or for both (due to the horrible layout of the .txt file), and was just wondering why it's the case at all?

I personally hate it when games leave out text chat on PC (like gears of war), as it's what I've become used to since day 1 of online gaming. Sure, voice chat is nice, but shouldn't we have the option? A lot of my international friends can't really speak english (or at least I can't understand them), but they can type it.

NOTE: I'm not a lawyer, so don't interpret my comments as legal fact/advice. 

That's a very interesting find.  To be honest, I didn't believe you at first that something like that would be included in the EULA, but I checked it out and sure enough, it's there.  I had to copy it into Wordpad and manually indent everything to make it readable, but it's pretty clear:

2. Additional Licensing Requirement and/or Use Rights.
  d.    Communication Features.  Any voice-chat features implemented in any programs created with the software must utilize the voice-chat channel provided in the software.  You may not implement any text chat functionality in any programs.


From what I can tell, that applies to all code written against the XNA assemblies.  There is no mention in any of the parent headings about being specific to XNA programs using Live, or XNA programs on Xbox.  All of the platform-specific restrictions are in 2.a (Windows) and 2.b (Xbox).  To me, this implies that you cannot use System.Net or anything besides Live to implement voice chat, and you cannot use anything to implement text chat.  So... if you implement a non-Live networking solution on Windows, players can only communicate by talking on the telephone, through external instant messaging, or spelling out words with bullet holes in walls (in-game, of course)?

This has really sparked my curiosity, I really want to see some sort of official answer on this.

What?  Why on earth?  Maybe they don't want you to create an IM system?  How about MMOs?  Without text chat you are going to be VERY limited.

I'd like a response from MS on this...

This sounds pretty horrific! That is such a ball and chain, handcuffs, or something else that is really painful and annoying and utterly useless. By the way, if this limits you to no text chat support at all, people with no headsets cannot communicate at all with other players. What about those that are hearing impaired? You are limiting them from communicating with other players entirely as well.

 

I don't get this, does MS want us to use XNA/LIVE? Something doesn't make sense here...

This is just me, but if I had to guess, I think its because they want you to use MSN messenger that you can use on Xbox.

Twanks:

This is just me, but if I had to guess, I think its because they want you to use MSN messenger that you can use on Xbox.

The way I'm interpreting that EULA section, I think it applies to all programs written that reference any XNA Game Studio assemblies.  It's understandable if you're using Live, but what if you have a custom solution using System.Net or a wrapper around a native library?  Not being able to implement in-game chat of any kind is a real killer!

I'm hoping this is either a mis-interpretation or an oversight that will be corrected with the next release.  Otherwise, it's kind of like the torture scene in Casino Royale.  You know what I'm talking about!

For a current project of mine, we're implementing a non-Live version of the entire networking layer to allow us to actually distribute the thing, but this would effectively kill that option.

The text chat limitation stems from laws around encrypted network communications and export of encryption technology between different countries. Live network traffic is encrypted, so if you used this to send text communications, you'd come under all sorts of funky laws (USA has the Patriot Act, other countries have similar legislation). Regardless of what you might personally think of these laws, Microsoft obviously has no choice but to obey them!

In some future version we'd like to add something along the lines of a SendDataOptions.Unencrypted flag, which could be used to legally send text chat data, but we didn't have time to get that in this first release.

The primary question I had was: does this apply to non-Live networking?  I understand the implications with Live, but the EULA does not seem to limit this restriction to Live.

Does that imply that voice chat goes unencrypted then?

I'm pretty sure of the answer to this question, but the EULA is very vague on this point. My company is in the middle (almost literally, half-done) of making a persistent online commercial PC game using XNA on the client, and we, obviously, have encrypted text chat capabilities implemented. We're using XNA 1.1 (whose EULA does not include this clause) and will not be upgrading to the new version until possibly after our own release. My question is wether the XNA 2.0 EULA applies to us with this blanket no-text-comms restriction or are we still bound by the 1.1 EULA, which does not include this restriction?

I know it's potentially a dumb question, since the common-sense answer is that we're still bound by the 1.1 EULA, however I don't know anything about the laws governing this stuff, and I need to know.

The ZMan [MVP/Moderator]:

Does that imply that voice chat goes unencrypted then?

Voice data is unencrypted on LIVE. You'll notice that the EULA also requires that you use the supplied voice channel and no other.

EvanWeeks:

I know it's potentially a dumb question, since the common-sense answer is that we're still bound by the 1.1 EULA, however I don't know anything about the laws governing this stuff, and I need to know.

You won't find a definite answer here... you need to consult a lawyer...

But the 2.0 EULA starts with

MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS
MICROSOFT XNA GAME STUDIO 2.0

and the 1.0 EULA starts with

MICROSOFT SOFTWARE LICENSE TERMS
MICROSOFT XNA GAME STUDIO EXPRESS

I agree with you that it seems like common sense... remember which one you clicked 'I agree' to when you downloaded. Seems kind of hard to hold you to the 2.0 EULA when you never clicked I agree to run 1.0 eh?

 

Any company doing any commercial work has many reasons to retain and pay for legal advice from contracts to items like this. Its just how business is done.