Keep in mind these people had the chance to review their contracts before they signed them and could have declined it at any point before signing on. They were (or at least, should have been) well aware of what they were getting into. Don't act like this whole thing is Curse being evil because they had contracts and NDAs. That's ignoring a vital half of the equation.
A contract may sound completely harmless when you sign it, but show out to be a great mistake later on. It's very easy to disguise a dangerous pharagraph as a harmless one, especially when you're dealing with people who don't have any experience with contracts.
The first rule of signing contracts is to have a lawyer review it before you sign anything. It's not a valid excuse to say you didn't know what a paragraph meant because you decided you would be fine without a lawyer. Ignorance isn't an excuse, it's a way to put the blame on everyone but yourself for something stupid you did.
Contracts ...
Way back when, contracts were a negotiated agreement between two parties who understood what they were agreeing to, and there were court rulings (aka "case law") based on that.
Today, contracts have become non-negotiated, non-negotiable, "take-it-or-leave-it" terms, between two people, only one of which understands what is being said, and somehow, those rulings are supposed to still apply?
This is a big core issue. "Always have a lawyer review things"? How many EULA's do you take to lawyers? How many "By using this site you agree to these rules" do you casually get "click-by" coerced into agreement with?
In the United Stated of America, we've got a real core issue. We've got a constitution that restricts courts to dealing with the case at hand, and that states that all laws are made by the legislature (explicitly prohibiting courts from making laws). Instead, we have courts that ignore that, and choose to uphold prior court rulings even when it is in violation of the constitution.
But that's getting way out of line from the issue here.
Contracts *can and do* contain clauses that seem to imply one thing to one person, and another thing to another person. Everything from a credit card company saying "all disagreements will be resolved by arbitration", and then "Oh, no, our view is true by default, we don't have to ask an arbitrator to agree with us first", to ... well, look at your own experience.
NDA's ... NDA's are evil. Period.
I can fully understand, and accept, NDA's of the form "Don't tell anyone about our technology or what you were working on". That's fine. That's company secrets.
But "Don't tell anyone about your own feelings/beliefs/opinions/views of working here"? In the USA, that should be regarded as unenforceable violation of free speech -- yet again, for some reason, judges uphold that.
I don't understand it.
We have a constitution that is supposed to protect us from having rights taken away by others. Instead, it is ignored.
Up until very recently, I thought Curse was an European company. Finding out that they are a USA company, and supposedly subject to the rules of the USA constitution, and instead that they are doing what they are doing?
Basically this. Nothing will come of it. ... And honestly, I doubt it would matter to the majority of people who do know who they are, since it doesn't affect them playing the game. Convenience fuels complacency.
This. The only way that ordinary players would find out about this is ... well, not. Ordinary players don't play modded. Modded minecraft was, if I recall the data correctly, about 5-10% of total minecraft play.
But what about ordinary modded minecraft players? Well, if there was a big public relations push to get people to know about it? There's a reason people in business have public strikes -- to get other people to be aware of what is happening.
There is no organized public relations system for modded minecraft. There is no place where a "minecraft news" reports on "which groups are on strike against which organizations and why". There is no "Details at 11!".
You go through a browser, to a site, and download a mod? Is there a big banner there talking about "A strike is in effect against curse! Use X instead"?
You go through a launcher, to download a modpack. Is there any place where you see "Modpack X is no longer on curse, go to Y instead, and here's why"?
For that matter, if a launcher only downloads a modpack through curse, is there any way for the user to find out about the happenings?
If it's the curse launcher, getting a modpack only through curse, then there probably is no way to tell what's happening, besides altering the modpack to be political. That's probably going to be considered over the line by a large number of international players who see this as a USA only thing.
If it's a different launcher that has the ability to display messages, and fetch a pack from different locations? Sure. What launchers do that?
I'm realizing now that all the modpack fetchers and launchers I know of are designed to fetch packs from their sites only -- curse from curse, ATLauncher from AT's stuff, etc. I don't know of a generic "My job is to read a description file, and fetch from whereever that description file says" launcher/downloader.
