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1503AD and the Rapid Erosion of End-User Rights?
Agram asks: "I bought the Sunflowers' 1503AD game practically as soon as it came out, since my wife and I loved to play the old 1602AD together via LAN. 1503AD's expanded multiplayer feature was touted all over the internet, yet when I bought the game, for a costly $52, I was very unpleasantly surprised that it had no multiplayer mode at all. Despite the continuous claims that the company is working on the MP patch, we're now over 7 months away from the initial release, the game now sells for a measly $15, and I have yet to play a single second of it, as I have no interest in the single player experience. My attempts at communication with the company led to nothing but dead-ends and unprovoked mistreatment. Unfortunately, this is not a unique occurrence in today's software entertainment industry, where atrocious lack of support is growing rampant and is increasingly coupled with ridiculous EULA's. I have therefore decided to finally exercise my end-user rights and pursue a class-action lawsuit against the company. I am now asking you, fellow Slashdot reader, for help in seeking answers to the following questions as, well assistance in assembling signatures for the class-action lawsuit."
For more details regarding this issue please visit this site."
"Here are my questions:
- How does one go about locating a reputable and internationally active law firm that could handle this case?
- What is the required number of the participants for a class-action lawsuit to be instantiated?
- Do you think that this course of action will yield any results?
For more details regarding this issue please visit this site."
And from how frequently this gets said, apparently neither is anyone else on Slashdot. That said, you may want to try asking one. I've been told they're easily located in the phone book.
/.'.
How this got to the front page I'll never know. I could understand if the story was about how common a practice this seems to be, and what our rights are despite hopelssly one-sided EULAs, and advice on what to do in the future. That would have made sense.
But a story that goes 'Wah, i didn't investigate this before buying', 'Wah, i didn't take it back 6 months ago and now it's too late.', 'Wah, i'm gonna sue. Yeah, that's it, I'll sue!', 'Uh, how do i sue? I'm too cheap/lazy to actually talk to a lawyer, so I'll ask
Since you *are* asking those of us who don't really know, here's my opinion. You don't have a case, and definately not grounds for a class action. You should hav simply returned the game 6 months ago.
Why do people insist on asking for legal advice on Slashdot?
Anyway, I'm sure you know that Class Action lawsuits rarely have a good outcome for the class...usually they get a $5 coupon for some product the company makes, while the lawyers get millions.
Lastly, I really think it's your fault for purchasing it before a given feature was actually available. Unless the box promised multiplayer, you did this to yourself. The feature that was touted appears to be reviews of the product (i.e. the beef you have is with the reviewers, in that case) and if that's all you based your purchase on, I suspect that you'll be out of luck when you begin discussing this with your lawyer.
Anyway, what does any of this have to do with EULAs? Reading through your post and links, I found nothing of relevance. Looks to me like you're trying to get Slashdotters to your cause by bringing up a hotly debated part of closed source (and even some open source) software.
What you SHOULD have done was:
I am not saying the above has a 100% chance of success, but at least you would have had some chance to succeed. Furthurmore, should more people do this, the stores will get tired of the returns and will charge back to the distributor, who will in turn go after the manufacturer.
In short - if you cannot buy what you want TODAY - DON'T. Don't accept promises that "It will do $thing later" - say "Fine - then when it does $thing I will buy it. Until then the money stays in my bank. Good day."
www.eFax.com are spammers
Try small claims court if you want your money back.
Try a bottle of Jack Daniels if you want to 'get even'. You won't but the Jack will take your mind off of it for a few hours.
Better yet, chalk it up to one of those very good life lessons we all learn, Buyer Beware.
I mean really. You end up spending $50+ on a game that sucks and may cost $15 a year later. I look at the year+ old games. Games that are over a year old and still cost over $30 due to demand are probably worth buying.
As to your original question, did the game box say anywhere that it was a multi-player version or that one was "soon to be available?"
Was there ever anything but the company saying "We're working on it"? That's not a committment, legal or otherwise.
No? Forget it. Pay your Stupid Tax and move on. (Stupid Tax = $ spent that you regret spending on something that wasn't worth it. I've done it, you've done it, we all have. It's part of life.)
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
The original poster obviously doesn't know much about class-action lawsuits. IANAL, but I do know a thing or two.
No law firm will pursue such a thing unless the following criteria are met:
* There has to be a very large class, at least when consumer products issues are concerned, so that any remedy has substantial monetary value. How many people bought this product? Like, 50? I've never even heard of it.
* There has to be a remedy that easy translates into dollars that makes sense in the case. How do you put a value on providing missing functionality? The only remedy is for a refund... which is problematic, because...
* There has to be an affirmative representation that justifies the remedy. In this case, it is arguable that there was no such affirmative representation. The packaging of the box DOES NOT mention multi-player, right? And you'd better believe that any judge will agree that it is fair for the specs of a product to change right up until shipping time.
Class-action lawyers typically do not get paid by a client(and it is possible that they CANNOT get paid by a client - again, IANAL). They make all of their money on a percentage of the value of the remedy, and on recovering their costs.
The iPod suits that were recently filed fit the bill - millions of members of a potential class, obvious remedy (provide a battery that has the advertised life), and obvious return - millions of users X the cost of the hypothetical battery.
Bottom line: unless millions of people, literally, bought this game, there isn't a chance in hell of a normal class-action lawsuit. Even if that many people did buy it, it still doesn't look too good.
Why do people insist on asking for legal advice on Slashdot?
It seems you misunderstood the article. OP wrote:
How else is one supposed to ask the question "how do I find such a lawyer?"
Saying you should read the reviews is bullshit. Game reviews are not worth the paper they are written on wich for online versions is very bad news indeed. Remember Hidden & Dangerous? Reviewed as the second coming of gameplay. They never got the bugs out.
The game industry like the computer industry in general is very childish. Would you accept it if you bought a car and one of the cylinders doesn't work? No? Then why are we supposed to accept missing pixels on lcd's? Would accept a book with 30% of the words mispelled but they are gonna fix it anyday now? Then why do you accept buggy software?
Sueing is considered an evil but sadly it seems to be the only way to get companies to behave. Cars didn't become safe until people sued. Tobacco wasn't labelled as dangerous until people sued. Computer companies will keep selling crap at high prices with no support until we sue.
Will it happen? I doubt it. Have you ever seen a consumer affairs program touch software?
About the only real advise I can give this person is put up a site advising everyone against ever buying a product from that company again. Invest time and money in a review site that really reviews games by playing them from start to finish and noting down every bug and crash. That is the way real stuff is tested. You know the stuff someone once sued about.
My warning. Gathering of Developers, the publishers of Mafia and vietcong, have intresting games but their support is total crap. Buy their software only if you are 100% sure it will run for you. If the demo is buggy then so will the final game be in their case. Note that I had problems only with force feedback but the rest was smooth sailing. Others never even got the game to load. Play the demo. If it sucks then so will the game. THEY WILL NOT FIX ANY BUGS between demo and release time. Patches afterwards are only done by a couple of companies. On a positive note Papyrus of Grand Prix Legends released patches that didn't fix games. They upgraded the game to take advantage of new hardware. Then again the demo played perfectly on my pc also. Mmmm, good demo, good manual, good box, good game, good support. Spotting a trend here.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> I don't know the specifics of this case but there are some key points that we, as consumers, should consider.
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Termites are consumers, we are customers
Unless you start making this distinctions, there is no reason for the companies to treat you this way.
Often, a particular town's Yellow Pages will have many general practice or personal injury law firms but few to no firms who specialize in a particular kind of case. In addition, not everybody knows how to tell a good attorney from a poor attorney just from a Yellow Pages ad.
In capitolism, it is never "too late". If the public is really outraged enough, these companies will start hemmoraging money, and either they will give in to what they public wants, or they will die. The problem is not being "too late", rather, the problem is that most of the public are sheep, and completely willing to continue to accept the abuse.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why did you buy the game in the first place if you KNEW that you would not be able to play multi-player at the time of purchase? Where you unable to wait for the patch to come out? You stated in the blurb that the only reason you want the game is for MP and aren't at all interested in the single player mode. You knew before you bought it that, at the time of purchase, you would have no interest in even using it. If I'm buying a car for driving on the road but the tires aren't available for it yet, I'm not going to buy it now versus when the tires are ready. Stupid analogy? You bet. Is it also stupid to buy a game before you can even play it? I think so. It's like buying Sims Online when you don't have internet access... or buying any computer game when you don't own a computer. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to keep the money in the bank and wait until you can actually play the game.
Did the game company illegally market this game and therefore this is a viable lawsuit? I have no idea. Are there too many lawsuits in the U.S. because people don't want to take any responsibility for their own stupid/impatient actions? I have an inkling there are.
IANAL, but I play one on