EA Denies Origin Spies and Breaks German Law

The big flap in Europe (besides Greece’s impending economic apocalypse) is that EA has come under fire in Germany for possibly breaking German privacy laws. German newspaper Spiegel reviewed the EA Terms of Service and noted several parts that could bring EA into hot water with German law.

Eurogamer.net notes that, “[The items noted by Spiegel] included the right for EA to access other EA products without notifying the user, plus the right for EA and unnamed ‘partners’ to ‘gather, use, store and transmit technical and related information’ on ‘IP addresses, usage data, software, equipment, software usage and existing hardware peripherals’ according to the terms of use and for ‘marketing purposes.’”

Naturally EA is denying these charges. EA Germany issued a standard boiler-plate denial, as well as changed the Terms of Service to remove the offending language. I guess customers returning the game to stores in droves and murdering the games rating on Amazon.de turned a few heads at EA. Now, if only we could get EA to listen to American consumers…