Could we sue Take2?

[AstroWolfie]

Exactly what the title says. If they aren't giving us a refund for KSP2 (I don't have it, but I want justice for the players who did get it), could we sue them over it? What other reasons could we sue them over(If we can)?

[whatsEJstandfor]

I mean, you can sue anyone for anything. The question is whether you'd have standing, and I don't think you would. I don't know if there's ever been precedence for this, but I think T2 would successfully make the argument that, when you pay for a game in Early Access, you're paying for the game as it is at that moment, and there are no contractual obligations to give you updates or get the game to some 1.0 release.

[VlonaldKerman]

There’s no basis for a lawsuit.

[boolybooly]

Precedents are set by people seeking justice, which is what the law is meant to uphold. The judge has to take the letter of the law as their guide, it is the task of legal counsel to find a way to show the search for justice matches the body and intent of the law.

I dont think many would argue that it was fair to buyers to stop development of KSP2 considering the marketing accompanying it at all stages, which promised further development e.g. colonisation of distant star systems. On a trades descriptions basis this is not honouring the agreement offered so is a breach.

Regarding class action, it would be per jurisdiction e.g. US UK EU, the counsel would need to know their stuff and find a way to make the argument.

One should not be disheartened by disclaimers, which are worthless if they are not aligned with the law.

 

 

[ColdJ]

You couldn't sue them. To sue them you would have to prove that they never intended to release a working game from the start and took your money as a form of fraud. The obvious reason they released EA is because for years the forum had been screaming at them to and through poor decision making they had got off track from what they originally intended to do and it had become a money pit. Releasing to EA was a desperate attempt to keep financing a game that someone on the outside could see was almost dead, but those working on it were blinded by the hope they could keep it alive.

To win a law suit you would have to prove they released knowing that it would never get finished. That is something that we cannot prove.

[GobboKirk]

Sure you can sue, you can sue for anything, you won't win though and you'll make some lawyer get some quick cash.

[Lisias]

16 hours ago, ColdJ said:

To win a law suit you would have to prove they released knowing that it would never get finished. That is something that we cannot prove.

Not necessarily. There're three Civil Responsibilities you can get sued on a Court of Law for failing them:

1. Imprudence
2. Negligence
3. Inexperience Incompetence

And we have evidences that TT2 was responsible for Negligence by failing look out PD, and PD was responsible for Inexperience Incompetence or Imprudence while carrying on their duties.

But these faults are towards the share holders, not the customers.

From the Customer's point of view, they may be liable by the FTC if they fails to deliver something until the end of the month that could reasonably fulfill the promises they openly made about the product.

On Europe, they surely are liable for failing to deliver a reasonably working product that would match the expectations generated by the Marketing- it's the reason Steam is granting refunds to the Europeans, they think it's cheaper to refund than risking a class suit in Europe.

There're grounds for trying a lawsuit for sure.

Winning it, on USA are least, it's a completely different problem.

 

Edited June 9 by Lisias
Bad translation fixed.

[chefsbrian]

10 hours ago, Lisias said:

Not necessarily. There're three Civil Responsibilities you can get sued on a Court of Law for failing them:

1. Imprudence
2. Negligence
3. Inexperience

And we have evidences that TT2 was responsible for Negligence by failing look out PD, and PD was responsible for Inexperience or Imprudence while carrying on their duties.

As far as I'm aware, these apply to criminal charges leading to injury or loss of life, not "We couldn't finish the product". If the burden of expectation was this high on entertainment products, nobody would make anything - You could be sued for making a mediocre movie, or sued for releasing Suicide Squad. I struggle to see any situation in which an entertainment product could be held to that standard. If a publisher could get sued for not babysitting the developers of every project, you'd never see publishing houses take any chances.

When it comes to a civil case about this product, you'd effectively have to prove to a court that a reasonable customer was not aware that there was a risk of the project failing - A very difficult claim right out the gate when the storefront prominently displays the usual Early Access Warnings, when there has been a raft of high profile early access flops both past and future. Its not enough to argue that a customer could have ignored the store page entirely and never heard of early access in their life, the bar is "Reasonable Customer", which is generally considered to include "Basic Familiarity with market" and "Reads the product pages". If you pass that bar, then you need to prove (And actually prove, not assert) that the product failure was deliberate mishandling and malice beyond what might reasonably be considered in the normal failure of a product or project. IE, you'd effectively be hoping against hope that you find during discovery that Nate kept a log of every bad decision made on the project and every bad justification that was given with full awareness that they were bad. If discovery turns up that the team put a good faith effort into building the product, that Take2 put a good faith effort into funding the project, and it simply didn't work out due to market realities, then that's that, its over.

And unfortunately, the evidence is exactly that. Take2 via Private Division funded the game for years, to a fairly significant sum of developers, and only started pushing to see a return years later with the EA push - after providing additional resources and time to deliver on a scope expansion pitched by the team (Important detail as this indicates faith in the project, a malicious project wouldn't have bothered) to try and meet market expectations. They then gave it a good period of time to prove its wings, before a combination of evidently poor sales, poor reception, and poor progress joined with current market realities of expensive capital and declining revenues across entertainment, causing the company to pursue a wide ranging and market-reasonable reduction project. It'll be extremely hard to argue that KSP2 specifically was a malicious, mishandled project when they axed multiple projects and studios that all appeared to be underperforming, and now look to be axing an entire label that fit under the same problem space. The project simply lacks that single critical obvious malice failure moment that makes it irrefutable that they intended a bad or scammy outcome. Its absolutely possible to argue some widespread connection or conspiracy element, but you need evidence, not conjecture.

Believe me, I wouldn't mind if the opportunities were better, but the reality is that no sane court is going to hold a videogame to Criminal Trial standards based off "The games unfinished, and they stopped developing it when they told us that was a thing that could happen".

[Bej Kerman]

16 hours ago, AstroWolfie said:

Exactly what the title says. If they aren't giving us a refund for KSP2 (I don't have it, but I want justice for the players who did get it), could we sue them over it? What other reasons could we sue them over(If we can)?

Are you for real?

[The Aziz]

 

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, chefsbrian said:

As far as I'm aware, these apply to criminal charges leading to injury or loss of life, not "We couldn't finish the product".

No. They are "torts" (civil wrongs). They are the things you are accused when you crash your car into another, for example.

If you prove that you wasn't negligent, incompetent or imprudent on the crash (for example, someone else hit you, made you lose the control, and then you crashed into another car), you will walk.

  

6 hours ago, chefsbrian said:

As far as I'm aware, these apply to criminal charges leading to injury or loss of life, not "We couldn't finish the product". If the burden of expectation was this high on entertainment products, nobody would make anything - You could be sued for making a mediocre movie, or sued for releasing Suicide Squad. I struggle to see any situation in which an entertainment product could be held to that standard. If a publisher could get sued for not babysitting the developers of every project, you'd never see publishing houses take any chances.

Except that it's not a product, it's a service. Check the EULA.

You can't have it both ways.

They advertised a Service, not a Product (again, check the EULA).

In a way or another, I explicitly mentioned FTC for the Customers as I already had stated that the share holders would be the ones with a (somewhat) solid case in a lawsuit, not the customers.

FTC is the way to go by the customers. The FTC's mission is to protect "the public from deceptive or unfair business practices and from unfair methods of competition through law enforcement, advocacy, research, and education." . Launching a terrible, unfinished service (remember the EULA) to earn some extra bucks besides knowing the service is unfit to use may be a good cause for a lawsuit by the FTC.

Again, winning it it's another history.

Edited June 9 by Lisias
Hit "Save" too soon

[steveman0]

I'd also point out that barring the discovery process revealing some substantial evidence of fraud, you would be at most entitled to compensation reflecting your loss, i.e. the cost of purchase. Even as a class action, after lawyers fees you shouldn't expect more than a small fraction of what you paid for the game. Even if they lumped un a sizable penalty, I'd be shocked if it made up for the cost of raising the suit in the first place for you to see more than the $50 you might have paid to buy the game.

In short, the only value in a suit would be to set a precedent for future publishers.

Edited June 10 by steveman0

[Devblaze]

 

I've actually already consulted a legal team about a class action against Take2 Interactive. Please refer to this post.

On 5/8/2024 at 10:02 PM, Devblaze said:

15,000 signatures and 10,000 $ retainer - would be to be brought to a larger law firm before they considered taking action. Lawyer said there's a case, but my local law office completely refused to do anything, take 2 apparently has a legal team around the size of 2 law firms. Ofcourse if KSP2 gets canceled then we could go ahead with the lawsuit, but it's not gonna happen.

Edited June 10 by Devblaze

[AVaughan]

11 hours ago, Devblaze said:

I've actually already consulted a legal team about a class action against Take2 Interactive. Please refer to this post.

That sounds like a lawyer who is prepared to take $10,000 to look at the case, and then they will probably tell you how many more $$$ you need to pay to get it to court.  If they are honest they will probably tell that prospects of winning at court are slim, but they will keep taking your money just as long as you are prepared to keep paying.

[K^2]

On 6/8/2024 at 1:42 PM, ColdJ said:

You couldn't sue them. To sue them you would have to prove

The way you prove these things is in court. Saying you can't sue somebody until you prove the facts of the case is silly. You absolutely could sue. You don't even need a lawyer. Fill out the paperwork, pay the filing fee, which isn't even that much in the grand scheme of things, and then expect a 50 page motion to dismiss from T2 lawyers within 2-4 weeks. If the motion to dismiss is shorter, don't even bother, it means your filing was crap. But if you want to prove that there's a case, that's when you'd start. And good luck to you if you don't have an amazing legal team on your side at that point.

The only case here that I can see is for dishonest advertising, which does hold regardless of anything that EULA says, but you have to prove intent, which is extremely hard if you don't have the whistleblower. There might be additional regulations T2 didn't adhere to, however, especially if you look globally, which might give you a stronger case based on the known facts. You'll still need a good law firm to take it, though. And the thing is that if you do find a good law firm to take a class action, and it looks like they have the case, T2 will settle for the fraction of the sales, which any sensible law firm will take, and you'll get maybe $5 in the mail.

Is it worth the hassle just to serve as a warning to publishers? Maybe? But it's a double-edged sword, which would result in them being even more risk averse. Not that it's a reason to let publishers get away with crap, obviously, but I'm not sure KSP2 is the right target. First of all, it's not a huge amount of money for T2. It'll cost them a few mil at worst, and they've just recently posted a few billion in losses. They won't notice. But smaller publishers genuinely working with indy titles will, and they're the ones relying on EA to keep some of these titles afloat.

 

tl;dr If your goal is to get your money back, class action won't do it. Your best bet is to try and get a refund. Some people had success in that. If your goal is to punish T2, I would recommend going after them on something larger than a failed low-budget title, because your odds aren't good here, and the impact will be minimal.

[ColdJ]

7 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Saying you can't sue somebody until you prove the facts of the case is silly.

Sorry, I shall rephrase.

Trying to sue them under the current circumstances would most likely be a futile gesture that would just give money to lawyers. You would be unlikely to get any money back and you would definitely not encourage them to finish the game or give you the I.P

I do not live in a country where the answer to everything is to sue so I look at it from a practical stand point.

What you have written above suggest you actually share my view point even if you didn't like the way I phrased it.

If you believe you could prove anything against them that would get a practical outcome for anyone then please explain in detail how that would be possible.

[K^2]

9 hours ago, ColdJ said:

What you have written above suggest you actually share my view point even if you didn't like the way I phrased it.

Yup. We're aligned on facts.

[Devblaze]

On 6/11/2024 at 2:46 AM, AVaughan said:

That sounds like a lawyer who is prepared to take $10,000 to look at the case, and then they will probably tell you how many more $$$ you need to pay to get it to court.  If they are honest they will probably tell that prospects of winning at court are slim, but they will keep taking your money just as long as you are prepared to keep paying.

The lawyer was very helpful - referred me to an entire legal department that specializing in class action lawsuits, and yes. They would require money to be paid, because 20+ lawyers don't work for free.
For them to even consider the case, a substantial number of signatures is necessary. It seems a bit naive to think that experienced legal professionals would operate without thorough consideration of the case's viability.

Do you really believe they would risk their reputation by taking on a case they didn't think had merit? All for a tad bit of money; probably pennies on the dollar compared to what they make in the long class action suits they handle regularly.

[kerbiloid]

Only Mary Sue.

[AstroWolfie]

On 6/9/2024 at 3:56 AM, Bej Kerman said:

Are you for real?

Still coping.

[jwenting]

On 6/8/2024 at 10:46 PM, GobboKirk said:

Sure you can sue, you can sue for anything, you won't win though and you'll make some lawyer get some quick cash.

Correct. No court would take the case as it's frivolous. Which might well be a good basis for Take2 to countersue for defamation, a case they certainly would have.

[Devblaze]

19 hours ago, jwenting said:

Correct. No court would take the case as it's frivolous. Which might well be a good basis for Take2 to countersue for defamation, a case they certainly would have.

This isn't true.

[Observe]

Those who bought into early access, volunteered to pay for being unpaid alpha testers. Things didn't work out. Unless the person is a gluten for punishment, it would be best to forget about law suits, realize that they aren't cut out for unpaid work and move on with their lives. No one owes you anything.

Edited June 16 by Observe

[Lisias]

10 minutes ago, Observe said:

Those who bought into early access, volunteered to pay for being unpaid alpha testers. Things didn't work out. Unless the person is a gluten for punishment, it would be best to forget about law suits, realize that they aren't cut out for unpaid work and move on with their lives. No one owes you anything.

Nope. Misleading marketing is ground for a lawsuit by the FTC. Things are not that simple.

Besides, KSP2 is a service, not a product. Check the EULA. You can't have it both ways.

That said, I'm not telling that anyone suing TTI will win. I think they will probably lose on USA - but they have grounds to try.

Edited June 16 by Lisias
Danm! Tyops erevytime!!

[Observe]

21 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Nope. Misleading marketing is ground got a lawsuit by the FTC. Things are not that simple.

Be that as it may. I don't know about you, but when I read "early access", I understand that IF the game ever releases, it may not resemble the full extent of early plans or visions. KSP2 was arguably still in the Alpha stage of development. As such, it was reasonably subject to cancellation. The whole business of unpaid testers (early access) should probably be a violation of employment laws. Now that's something I might get behind.

Edited June 16 by Observe