copyright terms-of-service legal-terms
Is a company allowed to break their own Terms of Service (TOS)?
<p>I have spotted multiple counts of a gamecompany breaking their own TOS for their own or &quot;associates/friends&quot; gains, including real world trading (selling items for money) while stated in their TOS it's not allowed, allowing the use and game assets from a dozen games that were directly copied and having them featured in their game or promoted on their social media and more counts. Is this worthy to look into or is this too &quot;grey area&quot;? I'm having a hard time finding anything regarding this, but would love to get some pre-advice before presenting it to a lawyer. Thanks in advance!</p>

<h2 id="a-company-cant-break-its-contract-with-you-f81e">A company can’t break its contract with you</h2>
<p>If their terms of service say they won’t do X, then they can’t do X. However, if it says <em>you</em> won’t do X, it doesn’t restrict what they can do at all.</p>
<p>So, for example, if a game includes tradables and the ToS prohibit users from selling them for real world consideration, then users are prohibited. The company isn’t and can sell as many as they want.</p>
<p>Further, there is nothing stopping them from having one contract with general users and another contract with different terms with premium users and a third contract with even more different terms with the founder’s brother-in-law Jim. Or, they can tell Jim that they won’t take action if he ignores this part of the contract.</p>
<p>This is called <em>discrimination</em> and, unless there is a law against it (which there is for protected classes like race, gender etc.) it’s perfectly legal. “Being married to my sister” is not a protected class so I can discriminate in favour (or against) people who are.</p>
