IG/Take2 - Class Action

[BrobDingnag]

1 hour ago, dave1904 said:

Did anyone here read the terms of condition when they bought the game? Or any EA game? There are no false promises because anything they say or do is always subject to change.

While I very much tend toward your perspective on this matter, it should be said that EULAs are not law, cannot supersede law, and regularly get tossed in courts if they’re brought up. They can’t say whatever they want in marketing and then annul it in their EULA to claim innocence.

Quote

 If take two decided to cancel the game outright they will refund it to.

Now that they will 100% not do.

[dave1904]

1 hour ago, BrobDingnag said:

Now that they will 100% not do.

Probably not. Maybe an apology? 

 

 

[Devblaze]

8 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

After doing some research this morning, a class action lawsuit against Take Two is viable.  While both the EULA and the Terms of Service both indicate that you must use a mediator or 3rd party arbitrator to sort out differences before going to court, there is legal precedence in multiple states that allow for this clause in the Terms to be thrown out, with action moving through the legal system without mediation.

The big issue here becomes what state to file a lawsuit in.  You have 3 choices:

• The state the company is headquartered in (New York);
• The state the game was developed in (Washington);
• The state you purchased and play the game in (for me, Nevada, as an example)

Because we are talking about a potential class-action lawsuit here, the state in which an individual purchased and/or plays the game is nearly irrelevant.  And considering that a lot of gaming (in a general sense) happens over the internet, no one state where a person plays a game has jurisdiction.  So that option is out.

Filing in the state the game was developed is a viable option, provided you can prove that the majority of the work was done in that state.  Again, the internet and remote work - especially during and because of the COVID-19 pandemic - make this difficult to ascertain without getting cooperation from the company/developer you want to sue.  So this option is probably not the best one.

This leaves filing in the state that the parent company is headquartered in.  This is the best option for class-action lawsuits as you are trying to gather as many people as possible together who have a common interest and/or complaint about the product they received.  New York General Business Law section 350 allows for the protection of consumers against false, misleading, or misrepresentative advertising in products that are sold to the general public.  While it doesn't specifically call out digital media, it is considered to be included in this section.  Furthermore, New York Civil Practice Law and Rules sections 901-909 deal with class-action lawsuits, providing the framework for how and when consumers can get together and file a class-action.

I would like to point out that all of my research stems from a host of Google searches, as well as getting clarification on things from ChatGPT.  Yes, I talked to the bot this morning because that is the easiest way to get definitions and information these days.  How accurate that is remains to be seen, so take everything I stated above with several grains of salt.  But if you really want to go this route - and I'm going to be frank and say that I doubt this would lead to anything substantial in the long run - what I've stated above is probably the best information you'll get from a non-lawyer.  So talk to a legal professional before going anywhere else on this.

Heck yeah, this is extremely helpful, and I am located in Tennessee. Since I am contacting a local lawyer next week, I can run this by him and see how plausible it is.  Now, there's no official statement saying they've cancelled the game - so if that day comes that's when we would need to take action (obviously) only mentioning it because of some of the other replies on this thread. 

[bcink]

On 5/3/2024 at 11:49 AM, Oak7603 said:

I'll do a deal with you, if you manage to get people's money back, then you can have mine. If you don't however, you can pay me the money I paid for the game.

You're funny. I am not a legal expert and I have no intention on doing anything. Of course, companies are allowed to change direction and if this were the only piece of evidence brought, it would do absolutely nothing. It is one piece of information that can be used in part of any case that would be developed and cases can be developed on anything. I'll make a deal with you. Show me your bar certificate and I'll give you your money back for KSP. 

[Oak7603]

This is all fantasy and it has nothing to do with being  a member of the bar, like that has any standing on anything anyway - I could be in the criminal justice system and have no idea about corporate, or consumer law, or health and safety law and so on. As a lay person, I see it that in this type of situation you have to be able to show that you have lost out, that you were effectively tricked into handing over your money and none of you can.

Not one of you can say that you were misled - you can complain all day long that you believed the hype and the future promises, that you were impressed by the optimism of the team, and felt assured by the AAA title backing the game but that's on you. That isn't the reality of the situation. The reality is that they were legally open and honest about it being early access everywhere you bought it, the advertising all said early access and what that means, and they can show they warned you, every time you purchased it, every time you played it, with the EULA that you agreed to. You may not like this feeling. Maybe you're one of those that think that if you skip past the agreement that you will be able to argue that you didn't really read it. That's not how it works and this is why there is no consumer protection element to this. They tried to protect you. They gave you ample warnings. You accepted the risk. None of you can say that you didn't.

I also don't believe that any judgement will imply that companies should continue working on a product that they have deemed not to be viable just because some customers felt aggrieved. It happens all the time. What if all the VHS owners could have forced companies to keep producing tapes, or mini-discs, or playstation 1 games, or car models from years ago, or old TV models - the examples are endless.

 I think that this is a complete waste of time is because at the end of the day you knowingly paid for a game that was early access and it hasn't made it to a final version which you knew might happen BUT you can still keep playing the game so you haven't lost out. They haven't taken it away from you. They haven't taken it off you. You can play it all day for as long as you want for ever. It just won't get developed any more. You have your product that you paid for, it just isn't what you hoped it to be. You wasnt misled. You havent lost out. So what is a court going to do?

Edited May 5 by Oak7603

[cocoscacao]

16 hours ago, 8umblebee said:

Any contract can get thrown out in court if you can reasonably prove you were mislead.

Reading the definition of EA on steam, I wasn't mislead... 

[Stevie_D]

I love how people who lost out on a small, insignificant gamble with their own money on a video game are still prepared to lose a lot of their own money on a gamble in a court of law, against a multi-national corporation that can stack the deck against you far more by throwing dozens of their lawyers at you to defeat you. And even then, find it as easy as shooting fish in a barrel because the law is literally on their side in this case - due to you all essentially signing a contract when you clicked the button "buy Early Access game." AND they will have dozens of precedents from other Early Access games that did the exact same thing with which to show the judge.

With sincerity, you folks need to google "the sunken cost fallacy" and read up on it. Gamblers who don't know when to quit are the ones who lose the most.

 

But hey, you wanna burn more cash? I wish you all the luck in the world.

Edited May 5 by Stevie_D

[FleshJeb]

I’m not a lawyer, but I do have professional training and experience in interpreting civil code, as well as preparing arguments to local regulators.

Whatever the state jurisdiction, it’s going to lean heavily on the Federal Trade Commission Act, Section 5.

I found these two papers enlightening and informative:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/200806/ftca.pdf

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/410531/831014deceptionstmt.pdf

I might write up a tighter argument later, but the summary is: Was it unfair? No. Was the marketing and communication deceptive? Almost certainly. Per the two documents above, what constitutes “deception” is VERY broad and consumer-friendly.

If I were T2/Intercept, I’d be carefully archiving all their internal communications. I’m sure T2 legal sent that letter to Intercept in the same package they sent the WARN notice.

[Oak7603]

I had written a response to this with the parts of the document that clearly state that this isn't going anywhere, but at this point it's also clear that the few of you that seem to think this has any merit will carry on regardless.

Have fun with this silliness but it isn't going to give you the closure you are all looking for and it isn't going to achieve anything that you all think it will other than giving you a momentary distraction from the anger you feel.

[PopinFRESH]

10 hours ago, Oak7603 said:

This is all fantasy and it has nothing to do with being  a member of the bar, like that has any standing on anything anyway - I could be in the criminal justice system and have no idea about corporate, or consumer law, or health and safety law and so on. As a lay person, I see it that in this type of situation you have to be able to show that you have lost out, that you were effectively tricked into handing over your money and none of you can.

Not one of you can say that you were misled - you can complain all day long that you believed the hype and the future promises, that you were impressed by the optimism of the team, and felt assured by the AAA title backing the game but that's on you. That isn't the reality of the situation. The reality is that they were legally open and honest about it being early access everywhere you bought it, the advertising all said early access and what that means, and they can show they warned you, every time you purchased it, every time you played it, with the EULA that you agreed to. You may not like this feeling. Maybe you're one of those that think that if you skip past the agreement that you will be able to argue that you didn't really read it. That's not how it works and this is why there is no consumer protection element to this. They tried to protect you. They gave you ample warnings. You accepted the risk. None of you can say that you didn't.

I also don't believe that any judgement will imply that companies should continue working on a product that they have deemed not to be viable just because some customers felt aggrieved. It happens all the time. What if all the VHS owners could have forced companies to keep producing tapes, or mini-discs, or playstation 1 games, or car models from years ago, or old TV models - the examples are endless.

 I think that this is a complete waste of time is because at the end of the day you knowingly paid for a game that was early access and it hasn't made it to a final version which you knew might happen BUT you can still keep playing the game so you haven't lost out. They haven't taken it away from you. They haven't taken it off you. You can play it all day for as long as you want for ever. It just won't get developed any more. You have your product that you paid for, it just isn't what you hoped it to be. You wasnt misled. You havent lost out. So what is a court going to do?

The courts can't compel a company to do something, they can only restrict them from doing something. No court would be able to compel Take Two to continue development of anything so anyone thinking that is dreaming.

Secondly, they could also take it away regardless as afaik it was only available on Steam and you must agree to the Steam Subscriber Agreement every time you make a transaction; which clearly outlines you are paying for a license which does not confer ownership. Obviously Valve does as much as possible to dissuade that but that is the contractual agreement you've agreed to when completing the transaction on Steam.

Concurred with the rest of your post. No different as to why Double Fine wasn't sued for Spacebase DF-9, or any of the plethora of failed early access games that were never delivered as hoped.

[boolybooly]

Well I am just sitting here watching the astroturf grow.

Personally I think its about time that game companies were held accountable for promises made. I am particularly thinking about Star Citizen which is a debacle of grand proportions with an online PR campaign presence to rival Wagner and I think that deserves a class action and or investigation by the FTC.

The reason it hasn't had one is the law has not caught up with the market place, but it is only a matter of time and through innovative practice and legislation this will happen. It is inevitable consumer rights extend into this territory. So for that reason I would encourage the OP to take a look at it and ignore any naysaying.

The only comment I have on this is it may be a bit premature, as KSP2 is still on sale and while Intercept has been dismantled by the sound of it that does not mean the game cannot continue to be developed. We have already seen one such procedure. In fact I am hopeful KSP2 will continue and would comment 70 personnel is just way too many people for this project which would be wasting a lot of money, as KSP2 at this stage should be all techies and a few admins.

Early access should proceed with a skeleton crew. That is how an indy would do it and PD is supposed to be modelled on indy development because it is lower risk as it is more cost effective. You can't really have indy development if you are going to throw corporate HR structures at it. If you want to bring in marketing & community, wait until you have a product.

It looks like Intercept was ramped up far too early which I am sorry to say was unrealistic for this stage of development. My guess is different aspects of PD have been working across purposes and this had to be rationalised and the legal situation regarding employment is why Intercept has been wound up, at the beginning of the new financial year for some reason but I dont presume this means KSP2 is toast unless I am missing something.

I can understand wanting to wave the pitchfork of a consumer law confrontation to encourage prompt communications from PD but it sounds like an almighty screw up is taking place and all the people who would have been communicating and know anything about the situation have just lost their job title and noone has given any of them a new one yet. 

That is my guess, that unscrewing the screwing up has been screwed up but I will wait for further announcements before catastrophising. However if it turns out that KSP2 development has stopped then I will be grabbing my pitchfork and cheering on the OP.

Edited May 5 by boolybooly

[Uuky]

14 hours ago, boolybooly said:

Personally I think its about time that game companies were held accountable for promises made.

I would point more at sellers like Steam. 

 

 

[Fizzlebop Smith]

https://www.change.org/p/steam-early-access-reform-advocating-more-oversight-accountability

I do not know if this will pick up traction or not.. I have started a petition in will submit to Valve once there are enough signature present.

It is requesting that they reevaluate their EA policies and implement some type of oversight / review community. This is not intended as a way to voice grievances about price or current state of KSP2.

It is instead me attempting to feel productive regarding the situation. I am Advocating More transparency & avenue open to the consumer to report violation of EA agreement / spirit.

Please pass the link along and help me get some signatures

Edited May 6 by Fizzlebop Smith
Link Fixed

[Fizzlebop Smith]

If there are other EA titles that have glacial pace / zero communication to their community.. please pass this link among those circles.

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

On 5/5/2024 at 11:14 AM, cocoscacao said:

Reading the definition of EA on steam, I wasn't mislead... 

that’s the thing, I think Steam’s EA rules need to stepped up a notch to separate developers who put in the effort from… well… the ones we have here.

That’s the whole point of an EA: constant and honest 2 way communication with the users and actually incorporating that user feedback into future updates.

It doesn’t work if you have an agenda and just slowly crawl your way through, regardless of user feedback , that instead  means you are crowdfunding instead of doing an EA.

we today have a game that borderline respects the  Steam EA rules,  (technically it’s being updated) and delivers no game with real content and still can be sold and hasn’t been taken down. 

10 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

If there are other EA titles that have glacial pace / zero communication to their community.. please pass this link among those circles.

…Especially if they happen to cost upwards of 50$

[AtomicTech]

On 5/3/2024 at 12:25 PM, bcink said:

Steam can say whatever they want. The representatives for this game literally stated "this game is fully funded through 1.0." We have EVERY cause to pursue legal action. 

I HIGHLY doubt there will be a problem getting enough signatures.

Have you seen all of the outraged people here, on Reddit, and on Discord?

[herbal space program]

22 hours ago, boolybooly said:

In fact I am hopeful KSP2 will continue and would comment 70 personnel is just way too many people for this project which would be wasting a lot of money, as KSP2 at this stage should be all techies and a few admins.

Early access should proceed with a skeleton crew. That is how an indy would do it and PD is supposed to be modelled on indy development because it is lower risk as it is more cost effective. You can't really have indy development if you are going to throw corporate HR structures at it. If you want to bring in marketing & community, wait until you have a product.

It looks like Intercept was ramped up far too early which I am sorry to say was unrealistic for this stage of development. My guess is different aspects of PD have been working across purposes and this had to be rationalised and the legal situation regarding employment is why Intercept has been wound up, at the beginning of the new financial year for some reason but I dont presume this means KSP2 is toast unless I am missing something.

This is my  last best hope as well, that they might back-burner the game (again) while a small crew of serious tech nerds tries to sort out the core issues with the physics engine, and only then bring back a larger team to flesh out the content. Of course, given the very long time between now and when development was first announced, you could argue that they tried that already and failed, but we don't really know what all happened during that time. Could be also that implementing this complexity of physics modeling with state-of-the-art visual rendering  is just plain impossible using typical consumer-level gaming hardware, in which case we may end up waiting a long time indeed before anybody takes up the challenge again. If that's not the case however, then it's just a question of finding the right person to do the job, and TT must have quite a stable of them right now after all these acquisitions.

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, AtomicTech said:

Have you seen all of the outraged people here, on Reddit, and on Discord?

Being outraged is easy.  How many would be prepared to pay (probably more than they paid for the game) for some legal action that has next to no chance of success?

[AtomicTech]

1 hour ago, pandaman said:

Being outraged is easy.  How many would be prepared to pay (probably more than they paid for the game) for some legal action that has next to no chance of success?

It's easy to sign a petition?

I'm not in support of this; I'm pointing out that there's enough angry people to sign a petition and join in someone's legal challenge if they didn't have to do much of anything.

Edited May 6 by AtomicTech

[Bej Kerman]

25 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

I'm not in support of this; I'm pointing out that there's enough angry people to sign a petition and join in someone's legal challenge if they didn't have to do much of anything.

Change.org mean nothing and has never achieved anything. Who'd pay for actual  legal action? 

Edited May 6 by Bej Kerman
typo

[jost]

An Petition is even more pointless than a class action. With some luck class Action might lead to something although it's not very likely.

An online Petition however is guaranteed to have ( like every Petition before) no impact at all. It's main goal is to make the signing people feeling better before it's getting ignored

[Ryaja]

We will have to wait till official word comes out to do anything.

[Spicat]

4 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

If there are other EA titles that have glacial pace / zero communication to their community.. please pass this link among those circles.

Not exactly the most relevant here because it wasn't on Steam but still relevant to why reglementation will be hard: Cube World

The game remained in alpha for 7 years with no updates nor communication. However this is justified because the creator was suffering from depression because of the pressure of the community.

And that's why making communication a rule would be practically impossible. (Same thing for limiting the EA to indies, where do you draw the line?)

[Fizzlebop Smith]

The idea is to get a company to adhere to the promises they make on their store page when they enter into EA. 

The community is an important part of EA.. right there on the Steamworx page. It is up to the developer to determine the level communication and what method that takes.

Once they have put their proposed commitment to EA.. they should be upheld to thay standard.

I promise my client / customer / boss a report each week.. I'm quite certain they would wonder why I had failed to deliver something that was promised. 

I am not Advocating that we require each and every developer to start an in depth q&a process.

However, they should be held accountable when they fail to deliver things that were promised during EA. I am not referring to content / feature we failed to receive, but those commitments regarding EA itself that were violated.

 

Steam does not put the writing in stone but instead provide guidelines. I am suggesting steam hold those accountable if they do not honor their own commitments.

And as insensitive as it may sound.. as a type 2 bipolar I understand all to well shutting down when I am unable to cope. However, my customers expect me to honor the letter of our agreements regardless of the fragility of my current state.

We already have a method and manner for registering complaints regarding the title in question.. I am proposing a way to register complaints against the developing party.

Corrective action is requested in various fields all the time. A report is logged.. steam requests internal review. No resolution steam conducts review.

"I have been so depressed over excrements posting I cannot bear to continue the title" still goes a long way to repairing trust.

Regardless, 7 years of zero developement if coinciding without any communication at all absolutely should be grounds for a refund.

[DeadJohn]

On 5/5/2024 at 12:09 PM, PopinFRESH said:

The courts can't compel a company to do something, they can only restrict them from doing something. No court would be able to compel Take Two to continue development of anything so anyone thinking that is dreaming.

Courts can compel some actions like refunding money.

Regardless, a class action seems unwarranted here. The EA terms IMO were clear that buyers get the present state of the software plus updates (if any). Roadmaps and developer blogs provide their current ideas but are not contractual obligations. Private Division seems to have started EA in good faith and "wasted" more money on the next 14 months of development than they collected from EA.