As long as there’s sufficiently few regulations to stop it being profitable for companies to market and sell vapourware then people will keep assuming they’re not buying into a scam
I was actually wondering if anything like this had happened before when I bought starfield. Starfield and a lot of games will have a deluxe version that you can buy that includes the dlc when it comes out, for cheaper than buying the base game and dlc separately. I was curious if any game that pre sold dlc like that failed to release the expansions and if so, what the outcome was.
Still, there are a few things getting in the way of the plaintiffs being successful here. For starters, games and in-game content are often cancelled - an unfortunate reality of the industry. Furthermore, even if refunds weren't granted, Aspyr did offer affected fans a copy of KOTOR 2 on Steam - where the mod can be played for free - or another Star Wars game altogether.
How is this relevant in any way?
I don't think they're legally entitled to a refund for buying a game with content that didn't exist, but neither of those are even sort of substitutes for the content or a refund.
I don’t see how it being software makes it different than any other good.
If I advertised a car with GPS and promised next year it will be updated with live traffic data. Then I just sold a bunch of cars and decided, nah thats expensive, I am just going to leave it as is. You better believe lawsuits would be headed my way, I don’t see how this is much different. In both examples you can still use the product, it’s just not the product that was ultimately promised. Maybe I would have bought a different brand of car that already offers live traffic on their GPS, maybe I was willing to spend more on the game/car because the feature that was promised, never came.
Because they knew it didn't exist when they bought it.
You would win your example lawsuit, too, unless you had a contract explicitly promising future services. Talking about future plans when they're clearly future plans isn't legally false advertising or any kind of legal obligation.
Yeah, the first and only time I did a pre-order, the company went bankrupt. I was thinking of pre-ordering something from EA in case there was a curse on me and they would go bankrupt as well.
Everyone will call me naive again but how about we actually hold people to their word?
Why is it not illegal for say politicians to say one thing and do the opposite?
If a game studio says „we‘re gonna make the greatest game ever!“ I would like to make them prove it or refund everyone.
You can’t say „contains no nuts“ and put nuts in it, why is there a caveat for other stuff? Just keep to the truth. Why is it so hard to normalize advertising without tons of hyperbole?
(I‘m autistic and I see telling the truth as a good thing. I don’t understand why someone would like to be lied to. Omit something to not hurt them, ok. But outright lying is wrong on a binary level imo. As in not ok ever.)
I agree 100%. In business, you have to prove your innocence when subject to a lawsuit. Same goes for lying imo.
If you ran out of money to keep your promise, you will be able to prove that. Same goes for having to compromise to get some other benefit.
The initial point I was trying to make is that we are so accustomed (imo) to being lied to that we don’t make people prove that they didn’t plan that from the beginning.
For example: where I live, it is common practice to make food pictures for ads or menus that a) dont resemble the final product and b) are made with completely different, often inedible substances to look like a better version of the real deal. Something that an hones picture can never achieve. This needs to be illegal. This is not someone running out of money or compromising but premeditated lying.
You're right, they should be held accountable. Unfortunately, the easiest and most effective way to hold them accountable for the average person is to not blindly trust them. There just isn't good forms of recourse for us to challenge things like this when it happens, so the best bet is to not preorder things so that they have to prove it is what they say it will be.
I agree. But I also believe that we give up to easily because „thats the way it is“. My point is we should push more in the other direction and try to go binary (right/wrong) as much as possible. If something is morally wrong, it needs to be put into law asap nearly no matter the cost.
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