Discord has issued an update to its terms of service that will affect any future lawsuits brought about by users, including class-action lawsuits.
The added sections to the terms of service, entitled "Dispute Resolution" and "Class Waiver" require that any disputes with Discord be resolved through binding arbitration rather than a court complaint. In addition, the terms now prohibit class action lawsuits. Both sections take effect with the new terms of service on October 23, 2018.
The new terms include an opt-out right for the Dispute Resolution segment, allowing users to opt out of the section of the terms requiring arbitration by emailing "[email protected]" within 30 days of the terms of service taking effect or the creation of the user's account. The opt-out does not seem to apply to the section on class action lawsuits.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...dates-terms-of-service-to-revoke-right-to-sue
We've received a lot of feedback about our recent Terms of Service update. As always, community feedback is incredibly important to us, so thank you for voicing your opinions. We do appreciate it.
First, we want to provide some context around these changes. Then, we'll share how we've changed some things based on your feedback.
The Context
What changed?
On October 16th, 2018, we added an arbitration and class action waiver clause. To summarize, this clause states that when there's a disagreement between Discord and you, we'll use an alternative dispute resolution process known as arbitration.
Why did we change it?
The current legal landscape in the United States is such that class action lawsuits can be abused. This clause was added because we are now operating a game store and subscription service for profit. Like many other companies, we are now a target for entities who wish to abuse the class action lawsuit.
If you'd like to learn more about the legal landscape, arbitration, and the potential abuse of class action lawsuits, we've included a handful of links in the Resources section at the bottom of this post.
What does that mean for you?
We think that people can disagree on whether or not arbitration is good in general or whether or not the class action system is one that is beneficial; we don't think it's completely black and white. In fact, we're very interested in how Europe is approaching implementing class action lawsuits, as their approach may mitigate the issues that the United States faces with them.
Because we don't think it's black and white, one of the things that we've implemented (which some of our competitors do not), is to allow you to opt out of this clause completely. We encourage you to opt out if you wish. You won't be penalized in any way if you do so. At no point will we ever gate any features or take any action on users because they've opted out of arbitration.
More at the link
https://blog.discordapp.com/terms-of-service-feedback-and-changes-c58a530c7693
