EA Shuts Down Social Media Games Without Refunding Money
from the lessons-about-always-online dept
Fresh off their victorious repeat of "Worst Company In America" Consumerist award, which the company brass explained away by reminding us how killer-awesome they are, Electronic Arts is now taking steps to mend the wounds with their customers. And by mending the wounds I mean taking down more games on social media sites in which those customers have spent real-world money for in-game currency, without any promise for refunds. So it's less mending wounds and a little more tossing salt on them, I suppose. Per EA's blog:
Today we are informing players of the difficult decision to retire some of our Facebook games: The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society. For players who have enjoyed our games, we will be making a special offer to introduce you to a PopCap game. You’re a valued fan and we want to make sure you get a smooth transition to PopCap. More details about that offer will appear in-game soon.Yup, those of you who bought currency for game X can either enjoy an offer for game Y, or else you can always have fun by pounding a bunch of sand. Now, it is true that game shutdowns were always a possibility, and perhaps even an inevitability, when it came to social media gaming, but there's a better response to be had from EA than offering store credit on games that the customer may not want at all, especially for a company in such dire need of even a dash of good PR. Still, there's a larger lesson to be learned here, and that lesson is you should run screaming from always-online requirements with every opportunity to do so. Per the original PC World article:
If you have no interest in Facebook gaming, these closures may not seem so tragic. But keep in mind that the push toward online-only games doesn't stop with Facebook or with massive multiplayer games that have always been susceptible to shutdowns. EA's SimCity requires a server connection, which has caused all sorts of problems with the game's launch. The same was true for Activision's Diablo III. What happens when the publishers of these games don't feel like keeping them up and running anymore?What happens? Let me refer you to the aforementioned pounding of sand. There are some types of games where this is more understandable than others. Games that rely primarily on social constructs and multiplayer come with an understanding that they can't go on in perpetuity. But when the primary game mechanic is not social and the company still requires a connection? Well, that's just holding you and your money hostage, friends. And with the rumors of always-online console requirements, gamers need to be aware that it might not be a game their purchasing with their hard-earned money. They may only be buying borrowed time.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: customer harm, drm
Companies: ea
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I hope a big company like Sony would have the grace that if they eventually cancel PS+ that the games we have unlocked would just become permanently unlocked, but really, even if they don't, I will have had them and played them into the ground already, so I, personally, would be okay with that, but I can see others having issues with that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Here it is.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130317/16534822353/drm-strikes-again-digital-comics-distribu tor-jmanga-closing-down-deleting-everyones-purchases.shtml
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
If Sony decided to give mere hours or days notice before shutdown, they'd be in violation of contract and would hopefully be subjected to a class action suit for said violation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I can understand paying for a premium membership to anything (doesn't have to be video-games) and then being told that these extras I'm getting are "free", and then that's it, I can keep them...but it is not free when you then tell me that according to the system you have designed, I have to keep paying for the membership from now until the end of time in order to play the "free" games. At that point, it's outright extortion.
After all, there's plenty of people, myself included, who love playing games we bought ten or twenty years ago. Imagine firing up the PS3 twenty years from now, you find that Fun Great Game X is still on the hard drive, but once it connects to your Wi-fi network, it basically bitch slaps you because your PS3 online subscription has lapsed.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
This is so people don't just get a month of PS+, get a lot of free games, and then not renew thinking they can just keep all the freebies. Even if they cancel the service later on (which is doubtful since its a key service for the PS4) if I REALLY want the titles I've downloaded I will just pay for it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Maybe things have changed, but that was last August.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
In this case, EA have gladly accepted payment for virtual material, right up to the moment of the game's cancellation being announced, and they were accepting both payment and new sign ups without notifying the customers that their paid-for virtual property would soon be unavailable.
Whatever you think of the nature of such a service, they are not even remotely comparable situations.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There are also good PC games that don't require any server (or you can build your own server for your friends to play with you) and don't have any DRM. They are becoming more and more common as people screwed by the bigger names decide to stick to these alternative solutions. And there's always the competition from older games that will require at most a key. It's an incredibly fun experience to go through the plethora of abandonware out there.
See, we are doing great without you. You should fear that =)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm not so sure about that. A few of the text-based online MUDs I played 17 years ago are still alive and running.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I hosted a MOO for a while, just for fun. We were going to create a graphical overlay client for it, but I never quite finished it. I keep thinking about going back and doing that...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
True, although I'm not sure why you mention compensation since nobody paid money to play MUDs.
These shutdowns should serve as a warning to people. Online gaming is risky, and if you're going to actually pay money to do it, you should do so knowing that you may end up with nothing in return for it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
True, you might be starting at square one again, but the game itself will never go away (at least until every person who has a copy of it finally loses their copies.)
It's a pity that more MMO platforms don't have some sort of EOL plan that allows the platform to be opened up to the public after the game is no longer profitable. After all, if it's no longer profitable, then what's the point in not releasing it to the public?
In fact, I've seen companies like Id and Apogee do just that: open source their game engines after a few years. It has allowed people to do some pretty cool things with those older games, stuff that would have been impossible under the traditional closed-source model.
I think the difference here is that games like Doom were created by gamers, where games like Sims Social are created by business people.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Was there an expectation from the contract or TOS that a refund be given? If so, why aren't people suing?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
also many people already were ready for this and is not surprised (the same people already is guessing the closure of the new simcity from 2 to 5 years from now)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Common MMO problem...
Players have reverse engineered Ultima Online, for example, and even when UO is finally shuttered, you'll still be able to play it. The same goes for the non-game Second Life; there are free servers that can interact with the official SL client, or you can go a step further and use one of the open-source third party SL clients.
When a company un-publishes a game in this manner, I wonder if they shouldn't have some obligation to make the server available for users to set up player-run shards.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Common MMO problem...
Not just MMO's. In a sane world, companies would be legally obliged to develop cracks for their DRM-laden software. Therefore, when their software falls out of copyright, people don't need to go to the effort of searching for the cracks all over the place to use the software. However that's sadly not true. EA and others don't care about people a hundred and fifty years from now who will be unable to play their games freely without having to write cracks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Common MMO problem...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Common MMO problem...
"EA and others don't care about people a hundred and fifty y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ seconds from now"
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Common MMO problem...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Common MMO problem...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Common MMO problem...
Plus that ignores a major issue with persistant MMO's, it's all about time/effort invested. Starting afresh and losing what can be many years worth of investment is not most people's cup of tea, might as well get a new game instead
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Addding unnecessary online connections is silly
But I detest the idea of adding an online requirement to a single player game. I wanted to buy the new Sim City for my son, but then I found out about the online only component. My son is 7, has one of my previous computers that I fixed for him, and does not have internet access on his computer. So, I bought him Sim City 2000 from GOG instead.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Addding unnecessary online connections is silly
I heard about Sim City Social and got excited, thinking finally there'd be one of those stupid facebook games I might actually like. Then it turned out to be a joke. Then Sim City 5 was announced and I thought 'Ooh! I wonder what they'll add to this one!' only to learn the game has been dialed back, shrunken, broken and run through the blender so people can sort of but not really play together online... with no single player capability.
Still, I have a stable internet connection. Surely the game can't be all bad... followed by the launch debacle, stupid monkey ignorance from EA, and then the reviews started coming out. Smaller cities required to specialize and synergize with surrounding cities inability to custom start terrain, and stories of cities almost needing to integrate to really be effective, things like highway connections being static and pre-set, and of course most of the city interaction is a relative joke too, since for all that 'Server Side Calculation', the cities don't actually do anything unless someone is in them...
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_med6veIenp1rqt0kqo1_500.jpg
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Avoiding refunds
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anyone giving EA their money...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Anyone giving EA their money...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
the only people to blame for the on line gaming fiasco are the players themselves. if, when this all started to rear it's ugly head, the players had said 'we're not doing it', how long do you think it would have carried on for? without people buying and playing the games, the companies can do whatever they like, they will fail! but that didn't happen. people fell over themselves to do what the console and game makers told them to do and now they are suffering. no sympathy from me! had people turned round and told Sony 'if you dont reinstate 'the other O/S option' we're not using you or your stuff any more, do you think they would have done what they were told? of course they would, unless they wanted to sign their own 'death warrant' as a game console maker and game supplier. Sony got away with it and now they're all doing it! add in the 'you cant sue us' clause as well and these companies have gotten you all well and truly by the bollocks and serves you all right!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
One of the biggest problems with a truely 'democratic' system, is it requires either everyone to want the same things, or for those who want something different to go without.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That is one of the risks of a F2P social game on Facebook, it can shut down when the company no longer considers it profitable. These games are predelicted on having massive amounts of friends, sharing updates and getting free stuff for it.
They were not intended for single player unless you wanted to drop lots of money on it.
So the idea of it closing down doesn't surprise me, if you paid lots of money, that's a risk you took for your own enjoyment, and with the knowledge it wouldn't last forever.
There was no contract saying they would offer returns, there was no acknowledgement of how long the game would go for, or anything else.
Now offering refunds to people who continued to buy *after this announcement* or even within X months of the game, or offering store credit, those are all legitimate solutions. It's up to the user to stay informed and decide whether or not to spend money on it. The credit could perhaps be offered in better ways than other popcap games of course.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Diablo III
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Diablo III
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Diablo III
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Diablo III
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In the case of MMO's I agree with your point that servers should be made freely accessable for individuals to host after the games lifespan has ended... Social games like this differ.
Because the game utilizes micro-transactions, to rehost the game, you would have to Set up a micro-transaction store Reinvent the games micro-transaction system to work on a free platform or Abandon entirely the concept of the online store and run a gimped social game. Why should any random person be able to profit from the social game developers abandoned product by re-opening a micro-transaction store?
....
Actually.. if the parent company is no longer interested in the work, why SHOULDN'T anybody be able to capitalize on the vacant market....
Okay so that is a reasonable solution, opening the game up for people to host freely now that the parent company has abandoned it... but I still disagree that individuals should receive a refund for micro-transaction purchases just because the game shut down. To me, that sounds akin to a player expecting their subscription fee to be reimbursed because a game shut down.
At BEST, I could see a reasonable argument to be made for refunding unspent premium currency... but those players gained the value they paid for. Whatever benefit that currency allowed them at the time they used it was what they were paying for. In the case of premium items, they had the premium item for the lifespan of the game, which is no more or less than they were promised.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In the case of gift cards, the only way you would completely lose all value is if the company/store in question filed for bankruptcy.
EA has, and should continue to have, the ability to shutdown any of their services they choose, but, they should also have to cover the purchased (unused) currency either as a refund, allowing it to be transferred to another of their products, or even as credit to purchasing another game.
I guarantee if a retailer like Target suddenly decided to stop accepting their store gift cards and they were not in process of bankruptcy or closing their business, that they would have to come up with away for customers to receive an equivalent amount of the cards value. Failure to do that would likely have every single state Attorney General's office filing a case against them.
This is a primary example of where the physical and digital worlds can, and should be handled in the exact same manor.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Darkspore
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Movies
What? Your disc player isn't hooked up to the internet? Oh, well, here's some sand...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Movies
It failed miserably.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX
To put it simply, DIVX was a DVD rental system were you got to keep the disc: you bought a movie for a low price, took it home and watched it, and the once the rental period expired, the disc was useless.
You could, if you wanted, pay to watch the disc again later, you could unlock it for permanent use, or you could throw it away.
The catch was that DIVX movies required a special DIVX DVD player, and people weren't interested in buying new DVD players just to rent videos. It also didn't help that DIVX discs were still more expensive than what Blockbuster and Hollywood were charging for rentals.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Only over tacit resignation to the unfortunate fact that the companies involved would rather toss the server software and source code in a chipper-shredder than release it to the community.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The game is no longer making money. The primary reason to keep source code private is to make the company money.
So how can it hurt anyone to simply open-source the platform and let people host their own servers?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Yes Butt Piracy....
Ok, I got nothing....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Worst company in America?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
my pet
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
EA true the title!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]