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Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

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Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#151

Post by michpoch »

fidgewidge wrote: post #137
xahrepap wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if CC companies have a way of punishing companies for this. At least in my circles, the sense of security from having charge-backs is a huge reason a lot of people even use CCs. If Visa told Uber/Epic/etc "you can't use our network if you're going to undermine our features". Though it would smell a bit like a giant squashing ants... anti-trust and all that. :/ So maybe government getting a handle on Dark Pat…

Note that chargebacks are mostly a US thing. In Europe you basically can't charge back and last time I enquired about even blocking a company from making new charges I was told that doing this required me to block the entire card and get a new one issued. It'd really very odd to see Americans insist that they should have the right to take a service, get the money back for it from the business i.e. get the service for…

There's no problem with making chargebacks in Europe. Maybe you should move to another bank?

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#152

Post by everforward »

jdquey wrote: post #42
xahrepap wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if CC companies have a way of punishing companies for this. At least in my circles, the sense of security from having charge-backs is a huge reason a lot of people even use CCs. If Visa told Uber/Epic/etc "you can't use our network if you're going to undermine our features". Though it would smell a bit like a giant squashing ants... anti-trust and all that. :/ So maybe government getting a handle on Dark Pat…

> I wonder if CC companies have a way of punishing companies for this. Yes, if they get enough people doing chargebacks. The challenge is most of these big co's seem to be in the "too big to punish" camp. This is both you need a large amount of chargebacks and perhaps they may not want to fire the companies (though this is speculative). > At least in my circles, the sense of security from having charge-backs is a hug…

I wouldn't expect them to drop the company as a client; I don't think that really serves anyone.

My suggestion would be to levy higher transaction fees on the business, and provide refunds to customers out of that. If a company is going to ban users for filing chargebacks, raise their transaction fees by 0.5% or 1% and have the CC company issue refunds themselves out of that pool.

At the end of the day, it's really a problem for the government to solve, though. Companies being able to get away with such blatantly anti-consumer policies is indicative of a substantial distortion in the market. I don't think this is something that would happen if there were robust competition in the market.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#153

Post by ryandrake »

afterburner wrote: post #43
bluetidepro wrote: post #5

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can actually have authority to get your m…

This is just common in general. Nobody that you chargeback is going to want your business again. It's just that tech companies usually hold something you want (your account) effectively hostage, whereas a restaurant or whatever you can just stop going to. This does make it worse.

> This is just common in general. Nobody that you chargeback is going to want your business again.

Similarly, no company that I chargeback against do I want to do business with anymore. A chargeback is a "burn the bridges" moment. You have tried everything reasonable, and the company is now defrauding you. Why on earth do you want to continue doing business with them?

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#154

Post by matheusmoreira »

bluetidepro wrote: post #5

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can actually have authority to get your m…

Banning users who charge back is standard practice on all video game stores. They equate it to fraud in their terms of service. Imagine having an account worth thousands of dollars and losing everything because you decided to exercise your rights.

I'm so happy to see authorities are finally doing something about this abuse.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#155

Post by smugma »

bluetidepro wrote: post #5

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can actually have authority to get your m…

Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft/XBox and Google do this.

It's not relevant to Netflix.

Does Apple also do this?

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#156

Post by smugma »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #154
bluetidepro wrote: post #5

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can actually have authority to get your m…

Banning users who charge back is standard practice on all video game stores. They equate it to fraud in their terms of service. Imagine having an account worth thousands of dollars and losing everything because you decided to exercise your rights. I'm so happy to see authorities are finally doing something about this abuse.

Does Apple App Store do this?

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#157

Post by bioemerl »

capableweb wrote: post #33
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And despite Epic having great games, this is why I have not installed it or paid for any of their product so far. Also why steam is still the leader despite having a terrible UI: they have been very good to their customers.

> Also why steam is still the leader despite having a terrible UI: they have been very good to their customers. Steams core customer is the game developers/publishers, who they take a ~30% (last time I checked) cut from the profits from. The people who buy games are simply users of Steam, and Steam has to treat them well, otherwise their actual customers (developers/publishers) won't get as much profits, and indirect…

Developers don't pay that 30 percent, users do.

You could even say that steam is a customer of the developers (I buy your game at x to sell for y), and the average person is a customer of steam and the devs.

I don't really see the customers or the developers as the core. Both groups tie into each other in a big network effect.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#158

Post by JohnFen »

nitwit005 wrote: post #107
tagyro wrote: post #84

My comment is going to get downvoted (or worse, ignored), but here I go again: We, as software engineers (or working in the field), have the power to not implement these features when our employer asks us to do it. Everyday we read about organisations using dark patterns in their (software) products and then we come to HN to complain about it. How did these features get built? By whom? Yes, I realise not everyone has…

You seem to have started with the premise that getting management to behave ethically is hopeless, but that maybe engineers could refuse. Management can always find someone willing to behave un-ethically if they look. Regulation and criminal liability tends to be the only way to eliminate shady business practices.

> Management can always find someone willing to behave un-ethically if they look.

True, but that doesn't mean you should participate.

I think there are two things here -- refusing to participate in bad behavior is about maintaining your own humanity and holding true to your own ethical code. That it may not correct the company's behavior is irrelevant to this. The point is to not let the company corrupt you.

The other thing is how to correct the behavior of misbehaving companies. This is what you're addressing, and I think your conclusion is largely correct.

These are not mutually exclusive. Both are very important.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#159

Post by vorpalhex »

rootusrootus wrote: post #15
cornstalks wrote: post #3

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. I really wish more companies were required to still allow account access after disputing a credit card charge.

I'd like something that broadly prohibited any company that 1) acts as a gatekeeper for any third party services, or 2) offers digital "purchases" from blocking user access to their account without having to first prove overt nefarious actions that disrupt the service. And not some hand-wavy TOS violation, but it should be impossible to block someone more than temporarily without going through some kind of arbitratio…

Yeah, I would like to see where you at least maintain access to your existing (previous) purchases in the case of a dispute.

I can understand cutting off a bad actor from making more purchases, but reclaiming their already paid for stuff feels pretty evil.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#160

Post by akhosravian »

dnissley wrote: post #138
spacemadness wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see these being difficult logistical problems for companies but that gives them no right to socialize the problem by playing hardball and holding accounts hostage. That problem is in their domain to solve, and sorry that being a profitable business is tough but, again, solving this is not on the customer.

I imagine the solution will simply be to charge higher prices across the board. We will all pay for the ability to charge back and not lose account access, including subsidizing the most flagrant abusers of such a policy. This could be a good trade off, but I think it's important to highlight that there is definitely no free lunch here and that legislating this problem away will have some downstream effects.

What’s the actual cost for chargebacks here? Presumably they are quite capable of revoking licenses to the purchased item. This is slightly hairier for in app purchases laundered through a game currency run by a third party, but still seems doable. Is there a reason the cost isn’t asymptotically close to 0 here?

In the worst case they stop allowing an account to make new purchases while keeping what they’ve bought. Is that an objectionable outcome?

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