DUST Search - UK/EU consumer protection regulations

Monkey MAC wrote:

Ryme Intrinseca wrote:

Michael Arck wrote:

Nothing was misleading about you spending 20 bucks for AUR.

I'm going to bed now, but I'll leave a challenge for anyone who wants to come into this thread and dispute the basis for a claim under UK consumer protection regulations. Tell me which step of the following is false in your judgment:

1. Over the last several months CCP provided misleading information/deceptively presented information (e.g. 'laser-focused on PS3', 'fully committed to developing Dust').
2. This resulted in consumers making different decisions than they otherwise would (e.g. to buy AUR).
3. Therefore, a misleading action has occurred and consumer protection regulations have been breached.

At the moment you guys are just swinging wildly, for instance conflating steps 1 and 2 like Michael Arck here, and not even starting to engage with the legal argument. Hopefully the above structure will help you to arrange your thoughts more coherently.

Statement 2 is false, unless the majority of the playerbase believed DUST to be near out of commision, which most of us did not, you might have a valid case, except for the fact that CCP stopped saying DUST and started saying 'Games within the new eden universe' like they did here!


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Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5409	Posted - 2014.05.06 21:03:00 - [1] - Quote There are similar laws in New Zealand, Australia and a few other countries around the place. They form part of the grounds on which many people have been requesting their refunds from Sony, and I know of a few people who have gotten said refunds. I've helped one of my friends get a refund himself. If you have a phone number you can call for Sony Support, that's more likely to get you a prompt resolution than an email, so I'd suggest trying that if you're given a "this could take a while" email response.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5412	Posted - 2014.05.06 21:53:00 - [2] - Quote MINA Longstrike wrote: Pretty sure that informing people of their legal rights doesn't violate EULA / TOS. Also in many places you CANNOT LEGALLY SIGN YOUR RIGHTS AWAY EVER, So the EULA could outright state 'you have no rights when it comes to this game' and then violate your rights and many people would think that you'd be without recourse, which is completely wrong, because you cannot sign your rights away And those laws are the reason most contracts with a "you have no rights" clause also have an "if any part of this contract would be illegal, only that portion is void, and the rest of the contract will remain valid and binding to whatever extent is permitted by law", because if they don't include a clause like that, someone in a region where you can't sign away your legal rights could just point to that line then effectively ignore the entire remainder of the contract because it's no longer legally binding and they're free to do whatever.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5412	Posted - 2014.05.06 22:01:00 - [3] - Quote Argent Mordred wrote: Ryme Intrinseca wrote: The EULA does not stop UK law from applying. Any -ú purchase by a UK consumer is covered by consumer protection regulations. You buy AUR with -ú, hence those transactions are covered. The law does not care about things people made up in their heads (thanks for that clarification, Perry Mason ) but it does care about misleading information/deceptive presentation of information that affects purchasing decisions. No but writing a EULA for a software product from a company like CCP or Sony entails a herd of lawyers specializing in the consumer laws for each country that the product is to be sold in. So I guarantee that the laws will have been dealt with to the letter. Maybe you will get lucky, but I doubt it. Just to focus down and clarify on this part: Ryme Intrinseca wrote: The EULA does not stop UK law from applying. Any -ú purchase by a UK consumer is covered by consumer protection regulations. You buy AUR with -ú, hence those transactions are covered. The consumer protection laws are applicable as soon as a purchase is made. The company making the sale is, by making the product available for purchase in the country, and by agreeing to the sale with a customer, agreeing to be bound to protect the rights of that customer as laid out in the law. Until you've not only bought the game, but installed it, read the license agreement (or skipped it) and clicked "Accept", you aren't bound by the EULA. Because it takes effect after the consumer protection laws, they apply first and foremost, and can negate anything (or everything) in any EULA.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5423	Posted - 2014.05.07 00:21:00 - [4] - Quote Monkey MAC wrote: Once again you are assuming CCP are misleading you, which once again as far as the sale of Aurum goes, they did not do. By saying they were laser focuse on PS3 they did not trick you into buying aurum based on the assumption that the product was helping DUST, which is effectively what you are arguing. If they had however put on the poster "Support Dust Development by Buying Aurum" then you would have every right to say they were misleading you. But you bought a product/service that was exactly as advertised, you are effectively construding 2 intangible points together, I would very much enjoy seeing you try to actually take action agaibst CCP with this, but you and I both know you won't because you would be laughed out of the court. CCP telling me they were 'laser-focused' did not encourage me to buy Aurum, which is in exact contradiction with your statement, because both statements are infact opinions. If however this is because you want money back that you spent on DUST there is a SONY hotline you can call if someone would be kind enough to post it here. Otherwise don't forget to invite me along to the hearing (Ill bring lots of popcorn) P.S Read my intial reactions, I was just as unhappy as you are. So you're saying that public statements made directly to their customers by representatives of CCP in their capacity as representatives for the company aren't valid grounds on which to consider yourself to have been "misled"? Yeah, good luck winning a case with that argument. I wouldn't hire you as my lawyer.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5425	Posted - 2014.05.07 00:30:00 - [5] - Quote Monkey MAC wrote: Ryme Intrinseca wrote: Michael Arck wrote: Nothing was misleading about you spending 20 bucks for AUR. I'm going to bed now, but I'll leave a challenge for anyone who wants to come into this thread and dispute the basis for a claim under UK consumer protection regulations. Tell me which step of the following is false in your judgment: 1. Over the last several months CCP provided misleading information/deceptively presented information (e.g. 'laser-focused on PS3', 'fully committed to developing Dust'). 2. This resulted in consumers making different decisions than they otherwise would (e.g. to buy AUR). 3. Therefore, a misleading action has occurred and consumer protection regulations have been breached. At the moment you guys are just swinging wildly, for instance conflating steps 1 and 2 like Michael Arck here, and not even starting to engage with the legal argument. Hopefully the above structure will help you to arrange your thoughts more coherently. Statement 2 is false, unless the majority of the playerbase believed DUST to be near out of commision, which most of us did not, you might have a valid case, except for the fact that CCP stopped saying DUST and started saying 'Games within the new eden universe' like they did here! You mean like they did here? Where they explicitly stated that they were FULLY COMMITED TO DEVELOPING DUST not only in the same thread you linked, but in a later post than the one you linked to? Statement 2 is true, because the statements made by the devs IN THE THREAD YOU LINKED, along with their statements elsewhere, and comments made by Sony representatives at E3, had led the playerbase to believe that the game would: 1. Not be getting shut down or have full support discontinued any time soon, 2. Be on PS3 with continuing updates and new content on that console for the foreseeable future, and 3. Be coming to PS4 within a reasonable timeframe. As soon as the plan was made to move the majority of the team from developing DUST on PS3 to developing Legion on PC, any Aurum sales where the purchaser had bought Aurum in the expectation of moving to PS4 in future were based on misleading information beceause CCP actively AVOIDED correcting us on that point. From the moment Legion was underway, anyone buying Aurum with the expectation of a reasonable amount of new content on the PS3 was misled, because CCP didn't advise us they were cutting off all plans for future expansions for DUST.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5431	Posted - 2014.05.07 01:19:00 - [6] - Quote Kinky Burrito wrote: There is no legal case. They are not shutting down the game. You can't sue them just because the game isn't going to be as good as you thought it would be. A car that's been driven over 300,000km doesn't have to break down for the buyer to have been misled when they were told it had only traveled 10,000km. When you buy a sealed package labeled "red paint" then open it up to find that it's blue, the store won't say "there's still paint in the can" and refuse to take it back. Misleading a customer is still misleading a customer. And outright lying to a customer is still outright lying to them, even if the lies and deception don't involve the product being broken or ceasing to exist.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5441	Posted - 2014.05.07 01:33:00 - [7] - Quote Mobius Wyvern wrote: Chunky Munkey wrote: Ryme Intrinseca wrote: Mobius Wyvern wrote: Self-entitled man-child post. Learn2Law Don't forget these guys are probably American. They aren't used to having actual consumer protection laws. Wow, that's really mature. The moment someone calls you out on your whining you just offhandedly dismiss them because of their country? Actually, I think he's pointing out that their apparently-irrational disregard for a topic based on solid legal concepts is based on the lack of similar laws in their country. It's not a "dismissal" of those people. They're the ones trying to dismiss the argument in the first place. It's pointing out a valid reason for their ignorance of the topic. Really mature of you to imply immaturity from someone who's actually trying to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5487	Posted - 2014.05.07 11:47:00 - [8] - Quote Kincate wrote: Yeah except CCP did not release any misleading information, they did not release any information. Besides you payed for items in a game. CCP said the game will continue on. What CCP does with the money you paid afterwards is not relavent. If they took all the money people paid and bought strippers and beer video tapped it and put it on the internet you as the consumer have not been mislead. So if they want to take the money they earned and use it to take half the development team away from one game and put them on another they can. How exactly have you been mislead? They never released any misleading information. They never released any misleading information. They never released any misleading information. The game was directly stated to be continuing on PS3 and when that changed, they misled us with a lie of omission by witholding that information. The game was directly stated to be receiving ongoing support AFTER they had stopped supporting it and moved most of the development team to Legion. The game was directly advertised as coming to PS4 as the primary next-gen platform for development, and again, there was a lie of omission when that change wasn't communicated to us until AFTER pushing Aurum with multiple sales. If none of that is misleading, neither is this.
Garrett Blacknova Codex Troopers 5574	Posted - 2014.05.27 10:44:00 - [9] - Quote Beld Errmon wrote: So weeks later did the big bad internet lawyer crowd do a single thing? I'll go ahead and answer that one, nope, full of ****. I talked half a dozen friends in New Zealand, Australia and the UK through getting refunds over the issue, so I'd say most of us probably did all we needed to.