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Judge Says EA Battlefield 4 Execs Engaged In "Puffery," Not Fraud
DemonOnIce writes with a story, as reported by Ars Technica, that a federal judge in San Francisco has dismissed a proposed securities fraud class action lawsuit connected to Battlefield 4's bungled rollout. From the report:
EA and several top executives were sued in December and were accused of duping investors with their public statements and concealing issues with the first-person shooter game. The suit claimed executives were painting too rosy of a picture surrounding what ultimately would be Battlefield 4's disastrous debut on various gaming consoles beginning last October, including the next-generation Xbox One. But US District Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco said their comments about EA and the first-person shooter game were essentially protected corporate speak. "The Court agrees with defendants that all of the purported misstatements are inactionable statements of opinion, corporate optimism, or puffery," Illston ruled Monday.
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defined puffery as a "term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined."
The FTC stated in 1984 that puffery does not warrant enforcement action by the Commission. In its FTC Policy Statement on Deception, the Commission stated: "The Commission generally will not pursue cases involving obviously exaggerated or puffing representations, i.e., those that the ordinary consumers do not take seriously." e.g., "The Finest Fried Chicken in the World."
Source
In other words, caveat emptor.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Well, to be fair, that story was immediately below the one they presumably intended to link.
Although now we have a definitive answer to "do the editors bother checking the stories being linked to when they post stories."
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
from ars technica...
Puffery is a well-defined term by the FTC, but still ends up as a "know it when you see it" thing sometimes. Here's an FTC handout discussing it with consumers. The basic point is that if a company says that something is generically awesome, that's probably just puffery and not actionable. If they use measurable numbers, talk about specifics, or directly compare it to one or more competitors, that can require proof and be actionable. Note that comparatives "our product A is better than B" are more likely to be actionable than superlatives "our product A is the best."