If you have access to legal docments like a community college or jail cell , you could drown Funcom in paper work. Its how I beat medicade , when I had my stroke , the US government has endless money but you put enough of fight people back down.
You dont need a legal degree to file the papers , you can file in small claims and federal court through a free legal aid. Though Funcom as much they did "wrong" dont deserve that , you as a customer had access to information about the beta , and state of the game through internet.
While Funcom did a poor job , there is no legal grounds for filing anything , you could flood them with discovery , make them talk , even hassle them legally but in the end you ll lose , probly end up paying for it. Or going to jail.
I think the best bet is to let it go and move on. You gonna find most of these games are gonna cut features by release due to demands of publishers , you either gonna have to live with it or find new genre or use f2p games.
Only Americans sue people when they cant get their way any other way...
Not true. There are greedy idiots in pretty much every Country.
Not true in the UK you will get laughed at if you tried to sue people for anything like America For Funcom no they can't be sued but it probaly won't stop an american trying.
If McDonald's can be sued (and lose) because some woman spills hot coffee on her crotch from a cup that says "HOT STUFF IN THIS CUP, BE CAREFUL AND STUFF!!11" then anyone can be sued for any reason.
It would be nice if something could be done to discourage game developers and publishers from releasing games that don't work and/or make false promises.
It is a big problem, it is rampant, and it is doing a lot of harm to the integrity of the gaming industry.
If I had been foolish enough to buy AoC, I would definitely join in on a class action lawsuit if one were to present itself. But I wasn't, so I can't.
(I have gotten class action settlement money from PayPal and Sony in the past -- in amounts even smaller than the purchase price of AoC -- so I can tell you it does happen.)
It would be nice if something could be done to discourage game developers and publishers from releasing games that don't work and/or make false promises. It is a big problem, it is rampant, and it is doing a lot of harm to the integrity of the gaming industry. If I had been foolish enough to buy AoC, I would definitely join in on a class action lawsuit if one were to present itself. But I wasn't, so I can't. (I have gotten class action settlement money from PayPal and Sony in the past -- in amounts even smaller than the purchase price of AoC -- so I can tell you it does happen.)
Some developers run into a choice, release unfinished, or not at all. I think MMO players have spoken, they would prefer not at all.
Developers will start to get the message MMO players are sending out. And they will stop developing MMOs. Plenty of money to be made in non-mmo console games.
Only Americans sue people when they cant get their way any other way...
Maybe that's because America's the only place with a legal system that protects its citizens against greedy, lying foreign corporations.
Correction "Maybe that's because America's the only place with a legal system that permits its greedy citizens to take action against wealthy corporations.
Ok I admit,America isnt the only one that has alot of law suits jumping around,but it does have the most.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Ok ive seen a couple of refrences that law-suits have been brought against Funcom for what was promised and what came out and was stated on there boxes. Any lawyers out there wanna give there opion.
Can you give us links to those references? And do those links contain any substance beyond "I heard someone is suing Funcom" or "I'm gonna sue them because I'm so uber-pwnsorz and like to talk tough"?
If any lawsuit was actually filed against any MMOG developer, I think we'd hear about it pretty much immediately. It's not the kind of news that goes unnoticed in this business. ;-)
yes they can be sued. you can sue anyone or any company you want to. just list out your damages, get a lawyer and file a compliant. will you win? who knows, but if you have the time and $ to pur"sue" it then go for it
If you have access to legal docments like a community college or jail cell , you could drown Funcom in paper work. Its how I beat medicade , when I had my stroke , the US government has endless money but you put enough of fight people back down. You dont need a legal degree to file the papers , you can file in small claims and federal court through a free legal aid. Though Funcom as much they did "wrong" dont deserve that , you as a customer had access to information about the beta , and state of the game through internet. While Funcom did a poor job , there is no legal grounds for filing anything , you could flood them with discovery , make them talk , even hassle them legally but in the end you ll lose , probly end up paying for it. Or going to jail. I think the best bet is to let it go and move on. You gonna find most of these games are gonna cut features by release due to demands of publishers , you either gonna have to live with it or find new genre or use f2p games.
Assuming nothing particularly bad came out of discovery of course.
In my country (not USA thank you, and USA is not America, that's a continent) any advertisement is legally a contract. So you can sue a company just by presenting and advertisement if they didn't give you all that was promised.
In my country (not USA thank you, and USA is not America, that's a continent) any advertisement is legally a contract. So you can sue a company just by presenting and advertisement if they didn't give you all that was promised.
somewhat the same in USA, but if you file a compliant about false advertisment here they just order the company (FUNCOM) to redo their box/web/static advertisments to match the game promised. if they do so then no fines are made, if they don't then they can fine them.
Does the box actually say the stuff is in game, or imply it is or will be. I've seen a lot of advertisements on other MMO boxes where the wording is phrased to imply the the material will be in the game at some point, but not necessarily at release. Usually there is a disclaimer that things are subject to change too to cover any possible removal of said promised features.
You can't sue a company for a product that you bought. Several products come short on their advertising promises.
It's the consumers responsibility to research and what not, and besides.... Funcom is going to add the stuff in eventually with time.
Not true in reality you can sue a company for something you bought if false advertising has been used. They did false advertise. If they said DX10 to come, or something along those lines then ya you would be right but they didn t.
You can't sue a company for a product that you bought. Several products come short on their advertising promises.
It's the consumers responsibility to research and what not, and besides.... Funcom is going to add the stuff in eventually with time.
you can sue a company for a product you bought. it depends what you want to sue for, but if they say you bought a pen and it is a pencil then you can sue. research or not...
plus these laws were put in place way before the internet, so researching in your mind is probably a lot different from researching back 20 years ago.
50 bucks. Thats what we're talking about in terms of maximum total monetary loss from buying the game and not finding all the features in it. And you wish to sue over it? Chalk it up to failing to perform due diligence (let the buyer beware) before purchasing the shoddy product.
Ding...Ding....Ding....We have a winner!
Absolutely correct. You would sue for damages to recover the amount the false advertising cost you, which would be about $50.
Attorney fees, if not awarded/settled upon, would cost you much, much more. The only way around that would be to show that you represent a class of consumer, and have a law firm pursue a class action suit. Then you would get...ding, ding, ding, about $50.
Let me know how well that works for you.....
Edit: Did you ever hear the joke about the two farmers fighting over the cow? One farmer is pulling on the head of the cow. The other farmer is pulling on the tail of the cow. And the attorney is in the middle, milking the cow.
Of course if a class action lawsuit was ever to be filled and the parties agreed on an out of court settlement the most anyone would get would most likely be a coupon for another Funcom product or some crap. You would never recover any of your loses from buying or subscribing. There were no guarantees made about anything. As much as that makes some mad whether regarding SOE or no-Funcom there isn't a thing anyone can do about it.
god just shut up OP and those supporting this. you paid 50 friggen dollars and a monthly fee maybe at total 100 bucks for 2 months of game. 100 bucks isnt that much money get a real job if you think it is.
you paid for a game you didnt like it ... quit the game and put it somewhere sucks to be you but life is crap that way i guess.
i bought AOC too didnt like it and uninstalled it 2 weeks later it sucked i agree but i never thought "OMG I SHOULD SUE!!!" because well thats just stupid.
While I don't think there is a chance in hell of a class action lawsuit winning in court. In a way I do wish it did. At what point is enough enough?
To quote this clown:
god just shut up OP and those supporting this. you paid 50 friggen dollars and a monthly fee maybe at total 100 bucks for 2 months of game. 100 bucks isnt that much money get a real job if you think it is.
you paid for a game you didnt like it ... quit the game and put it somewhere sucks to be you but life is crap that way i guess.
i bought AOC too didnt like it and uninstalled it 2 weeks later it sucked i agree but i never thought "OMG I SHOULD SUE!!!" because well thats just stupid.
Times that by say 300K people or whatever the retention rate vs box sales ended up being. That is a piss pot full of money Funcom realized on box sales alone. So at what point does this sort of thing need to come to light and the fire held to the feat of game developers and publishers that knowingly release a game that is not as adverstised on the marketing hype and retail box?
Sure most if not all games release less than polished or complete. But in the case of AOC, Funcom hid this fact with a very small closed beta test team, NO open beta and no lifting of the NDA until release date. That tells me they knew things were FUBAR and deliberatly decided to hide the fact from the public pre release.
If I buy a DVD player from Best Buy based on the features on the box, and find out that it didn't really have those features, well I take it back and get back my money. Sure now a days, a DVD player is only $75-100 bucks, it is still worth my time to drive back and return it. There needs to be some recourse for un satisfied customers for games as well. Why should we as consumers just drop our pants and accept it for our games when we would not for any other consumer product?
Ok ive seen a couple of refrences that law-suits have been brought against Funcom for what was promised and what came out and was stated on there boxes. Any lawyers out there wanna give there opion.
no. You cannot sue a MMORPG. Right in their EULA it states they are not held liable for changes in their game and development.
You cannot sue a game for coming out broking or sucking. Any lawyer will laugh you right out of the door. Especially for $50 or $80.
This is a bad response.
The EULA is not printed on the box, and most stores don't take returns of PC games. And if there was actually a viable false advertising claim, even for $50 or $80, some lawyers might salivate over the idea of bringing a class action. Assuming they settle for 20 cents on the dollar, $10 times 500,000 copies times 40% = $2 million for the lawyer.
Now everybody quit playing MMOs and study up to become a class action litigator.
lol, no its not a bad response. Its a common sense response. And about your black coffee...research it some more. McDonald's appealed that lawsuit until the only thing they paid for was a cup of coffee, a pair of pants and her doctors bill.
Go ahead, sue, AoC. You'll get your ass laughed right out of those doors. Its called a frivilous lawsuit and the judge just may force you to pay funcom's legal costs for having to go to court that day. Try it.
How is it common sense that a person could be bound by the terms of a EULA that they cannot even read before they make an irrevocable purchase? And I wasn't talking about McDonalds. I said "Rockstar" as in GTAIII Rockstar. On top of paying the class action lawyers $1million, Rockstar still had to pay its own lawyers, and a more or less open ended sum to anyone who bought the game. THAT was a frivilous lawsuit, and look how it turned out.
As for McDonalds, the judge reduced the verdict to about $500K, and the parties settled for a confidential amount that is probably somewhat less than that (but almost certainly more than the cost of a pair of pants and a doctor bill).
Anyway, I never said that people should sue Funcom. I just said they could, and might actually have a chance of winning something. Personally, I think people whining about AoC ought to go jump off a bridge. MMO enthusiasts know damn well that 90% of MMOs release with less than what is "promised." The rest of the buyers probably don't give a crap. A lot of people who don't play 20 hours a day are actually enjoying the game.
Im sure that the EULA is listed somewhere for people to read before they buy the game. Taking this to court would just cost those people money and they might even have to pay for funcoms legal fees.
Hold on Snow Leopard, imma let you finish, but Windows had one of the best operating systems of all time.
If the Powerball lottery was like Lotro, nobody would win for 2 years, and then everyone in Nebraska would win on the same day. And then Nebraska would get nerfed.-pinkwood lotro fourms
AMD 4800 2.4ghz-3GB RAM 533mhz-EVGA 9500GT 512mb-320gb HD
Suing a game company is way too much work for what its worth.
Best thing you can do is send the game back to the company and request a full refund of the purchase price within the first 30 days of purchase. Doing it that way gets you your money back and allows them to disable the account associated with the key.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Comments
Sure you could sue them, but only if you live in California!
If you have access to legal docments like a community college or jail cell , you could drown Funcom in paper work. Its how I beat medicade , when I had my stroke , the US government has endless money but you put enough of fight people back down.
You dont need a legal degree to file the papers , you can file in small claims and federal court through a free legal aid. Though Funcom as much they did "wrong" dont deserve that , you as a customer had access to information about the beta , and state of the game through internet.
While Funcom did a poor job , there is no legal grounds for filing anything , you could flood them with discovery , make them talk , even hassle them legally but in the end you ll lose , probly end up paying for it. Or going to jail.
I think the best bet is to let it go and move on. You gonna find most of these games are gonna cut features by release due to demands of publishers , you either gonna have to live with it or find new genre or use f2p games.
Not true. There are greedy idiots in pretty much every Country.
Not true in the UK you will get laughed at if you tried to sue people for anything like America For Funcom no they can't be sued but it probaly won't stop an american trying.
If McDonald's can be sued (and lose) because some woman spills hot coffee on her crotch from a cup that says "HOT STUFF IN THIS CUP, BE CAREFUL AND STUFF!!11" then anyone can be sued for any reason.
It would be nice if something could be done to discourage game developers and publishers from releasing games that don't work and/or make false promises.
It is a big problem, it is rampant, and it is doing a lot of harm to the integrity of the gaming industry.
If I had been foolish enough to buy AoC, I would definitely join in on a class action lawsuit if one were to present itself. But I wasn't, so I can't.
(I have gotten class action settlement money from PayPal and Sony in the past -- in amounts even smaller than the purchase price of AoC -- so I can tell you it does happen.)
Some developers run into a choice, release unfinished, or not at all. I think MMO players have spoken, they would prefer not at all.
Developers will start to get the message MMO players are sending out. And they will stop developing MMOs. Plenty of money to be made in non-mmo console games.
Maybe that's because America's the only place with a legal system that protects its citizens against greedy, lying foreign corporations.
Correction "Maybe that's because America's the only place with a legal system that permits its greedy citizens to take action against wealthy corporations.
Ok I admit,America isnt the only one that has alot of law suits jumping around,but it does have the most.
50 bucks. Thats what we're talking about in terms of maximum total monetary loss from buying the game and not finding all the features in it.
And you wish to sue over it?
Chalk it up to failing to perform due diligence (let the buyer beware) before purchasing the shoddy product.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Can you give us links to those references? And do those links contain any substance beyond "I heard someone is suing Funcom" or "I'm gonna sue them because I'm so uber-pwnsorz and like to talk tough"?
If any lawsuit was actually filed against any MMOG developer, I think we'd hear about it pretty much immediately. It's not the kind of news that goes unnoticed in this business. ;-)
yes they can be sued. you can sue anyone or any company you want to. just list out your damages, get a lawyer and file a compliant. will you win? who knows, but if you have the time and $ to pur"sue" it then go for it
Maybe that's because America's the only place with a legal system that protects its citizens against greedy, lying foreign corporations.
lmao
Assuming nothing particularly bad came out of discovery of course.
In my country (not USA thank you, and USA is not America, that's a continent) any advertisement is legally a contract. So you can sue a company just by presenting and advertisement if they didn't give you all that was promised.
somewhat the same in USA, but if you file a compliant about false advertisment here they just order the company (FUNCOM) to redo their box/web/static advertisments to match the game promised. if they do so then no fines are made, if they don't then they can fine them.
Does the box actually say the stuff is in game, or imply it is or will be. I've seen a lot of advertisements on other MMO boxes where the wording is phrased to imply the the material will be in the game at some point, but not necessarily at release. Usually there is a disclaimer that things are subject to change too to cover any possible removal of said promised features.
Is this a joke?
You can't sue a company for a product that you bought. Several products come short on their advertising promises.
It's the consumers responsibility to research and what not, and besides.... Funcom is going to add the stuff in eventually with time.
Not true in reality you can sue a company for something you bought if false advertising has been used. They did false advertise. If they said DX10 to come, or something along those lines then ya you would be right but they didn t.
you can sue a company for a product you bought. it depends what you want to sue for, but if they say you bought a pen and it is a pencil then you can sue. research or not...
plus these laws were put in place way before the internet, so researching in your mind is probably a lot different from researching back 20 years ago.
Ding...Ding....Ding....We have a winner!
Absolutely correct. You would sue for damages to recover the amount the false advertising cost you, which would be about $50.
Attorney fees, if not awarded/settled upon, would cost you much, much more. The only way around that would be to show that you represent a class of consumer, and have a law firm pursue a class action suit. Then you would get...ding, ding, ding, about $50.
Let me know how well that works for you.....
Edit: Did you ever hear the joke about the two farmers fighting over the cow? One farmer is pulling on the head of the cow. The other farmer is pulling on the tail of the cow. And the attorney is in the middle, milking the cow.
Of course if a class action lawsuit was ever to be filled and the parties agreed on an out of court settlement the most anyone would get would most likely be a coupon for another Funcom product or some crap. You would never recover any of your loses from buying or subscribing. There were no guarantees made about anything. As much as that makes some mad whether regarding SOE or no-Funcom there isn't a thing anyone can do about it.
god just shut up OP and those supporting this. you paid 50 friggen dollars and a monthly fee maybe at total 100 bucks for 2 months of game. 100 bucks isnt that much money get a real job if you think it is.
you paid for a game you didnt like it ... quit the game and put it somewhere sucks to be you but life is crap that way i guess.
i bought AOC too didnt like it and uninstalled it 2 weeks later it sucked i agree but i never thought "OMG I SHOULD SUE!!!" because well thats just stupid.
While I don't think there is a chance in hell of a class action lawsuit winning in court. In a way I do wish it did. At what point is enough enough?
To quote this clown:
god just shut up OP and those supporting this. you paid 50 friggen dollars and a monthly fee maybe at total 100 bucks for 2 months of game. 100 bucks isnt that much money get a real job if you think it is.
you paid for a game you didnt like it ... quit the game and put it somewhere sucks to be you but life is crap that way i guess.
i bought AOC too didnt like it and uninstalled it 2 weeks later it sucked i agree but i never thought "OMG I SHOULD SUE!!!" because well thats just stupid.
Times that by say 300K people or whatever the retention rate vs box sales ended up being. That is a piss pot full of money Funcom realized on box sales alone. So at what point does this sort of thing need to come to light and the fire held to the feat of game developers and publishers that knowingly release a game that is not as adverstised on the marketing hype and retail box?
Sure most if not all games release less than polished or complete. But in the case of AOC, Funcom hid this fact with a very small closed beta test team, NO open beta and no lifting of the NDA until release date. That tells me they knew things were FUBAR and deliberatly decided to hide the fact from the public pre release.
If I buy a DVD player from Best Buy based on the features on the box, and find out that it didn't really have those features, well I take it back and get back my money. Sure now a days, a DVD player is only $75-100 bucks, it is still worth my time to drive back and return it. There needs to be some recourse for un satisfied customers for games as well. Why should we as consumers just drop our pants and accept it for our games when we would not for any other consumer product?
Anyone can be sued, it's whether or not the court will throw the case out, or let it be heard.
no. You cannot sue a MMORPG. Right in their EULA it states they are not held liable for changes in their game and development.
You cannot sue a game for coming out broking or sucking. Any lawyer will laugh you right out of the door. Especially for $50 or $80.
This is a bad response.
The EULA is not printed on the box, and most stores don't take returns of PC games. And if there was actually a viable false advertising claim, even for $50 or $80, some lawyers might salivate over the idea of bringing a class action. Assuming they settle for 20 cents on the dollar, $10 times 500,000 copies times 40% = $2 million for the lawyer.
Now everybody quit playing MMOs and study up to become a class action litigator.
lol, no its not a bad response. Its a common sense response. And about your black coffee...research it some more. McDonald's appealed that lawsuit until the only thing they paid for was a cup of coffee, a pair of pants and her doctors bill.
Go ahead, sue, AoC. You'll get your ass laughed right out of those doors. Its called a frivilous lawsuit and the judge just may force you to pay funcom's legal costs for having to go to court that day. Try it.
How is it common sense that a person could be bound by the terms of a EULA that they cannot even read before they make an irrevocable purchase? And I wasn't talking about McDonalds. I said "Rockstar" as in GTAIII Rockstar. On top of paying the class action lawyers $1million, Rockstar still had to pay its own lawyers, and a more or less open ended sum to anyone who bought the game. THAT was a frivilous lawsuit, and look how it turned out.
As for McDonalds, the judge reduced the verdict to about $500K, and the parties settled for a confidential amount that is probably somewhat less than that (but almost certainly more than the cost of a pair of pants and a doctor bill).
Anyway, I never said that people should sue Funcom. I just said they could, and might actually have a chance of winning something. Personally, I think people whining about AoC ought to go jump off a bridge. MMO enthusiasts know damn well that 90% of MMOs release with less than what is "promised." The rest of the buyers probably don't give a crap. A lot of people who don't play 20 hours a day are actually enjoying the game.
Im sure that the EULA is listed somewhere for people to read before they buy the game. Taking this to court would just cost those people money and they might even have to pay for funcoms legal fees.
Hold on Snow Leopard, imma let you finish, but Windows had one of the best operating systems of all time.
If the Powerball lottery was like Lotro, nobody would win for 2 years, and then everyone in Nebraska would win on the same day.
And then Nebraska would get nerfed.-pinkwood lotro fourms
AMD 4800 2.4ghz-3GB RAM 533mhz-EVGA 9500GT 512mb-320gb HD
Suing a game company is way too much work for what its worth.
Best thing you can do is send the game back to the company and request a full refund of the purchase price within the first 30 days of purchase. Doing it that way gets you your money back and allows them to disable the account associated with the key.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"