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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

#171

Post by j_maffe »

pwinnski wrote: post #135
munk-a wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest though - there are no good guys here. They're all awful. Google and Apple take insane cuts out of any money moving on their platform and while Epic uses predatory tactics to trap people into subscriptions Apple and Google do the same.

Apple makes it incredibly easy to manage and cancel subscriptions. Would that all companies matched them! One reason I don't begrudge them their 30% is that I could easily lose that much or more trying to get some vendors to cancel subscriptions if I didn't have the easy options Apple provides. Epic is clearly one of them.

You have the (only) only options Apple provides because they maintain a monopoly

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

#172

Post by justinclift »

yatac42 wrote: post #148
hunter2_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> music I've purchased They really ought to stop using "buy"/"purchase" metaphorically to mean something more like "one time fee for an indefinite lease that ends upon account termination." If they simply used a word better suited to the reality of the situation, then it wouldn't be a surprise that the account (which is a privilege, not a right) is a dependency of using what you paid for. Maybe something like "micro-…

> > music I've purchased > They really ought to stop using "buy"/"purchase" metaphorically to mean something more like "one time fee for an indefinite lease that ends upon account termination." That doesn't really apply to buying music though, does it? If Amazon banned my account, that wouldn't prevent me from listening to the MP3s I've bought from them. It would only prevent me from re-downloading them from their se…

> But if I buy a CD from a physical store ...

This is literally the nature of physical vs digital goods.

We can, and should, do better for customers than the current systems from Steam and Amazon (among others) allow.

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

#173

Post by criley2 »

SkyBelow wrote: post #46
criley2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this concept will fly broadly in America, it violates the way the American constitution sets up private vs public. Forcing private businesses to do businesses with the public without discrimination is only allowed in certain cases. Are you open to the public, providing an important service? (Like taxi, hotel, etc?) Then you cannot discriminate. Are you not-essential, with limited rules based membership?…

The problem is that the businesses have made customer's ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon continuing to have a business relationship with the account. If, when closing the account, the business paid back full value for everything they were removing access to, the ruling might be different. But they aren't doing that. If you are a business doing more normal business, selling something with no s…

> The problem is that the businesses have made customer's ability to access their previous purchases dependent upon continuing to have a business relationship with the account

That's not a problem really. Think of country clubs. Your investment is completely lost the second you stop paying.

I understand that folks may dislike the subscription model, but it's not illegal.

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

#174

Post by cwkoss »

paulmd wrote: post #25
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…

Came here to say this too. This just needs to be the rule generally. Steam and Amazon do the same thing - get hacked and get charged for some items, if you dispute the Steam charge you lose your $5000 account, that's not a fair playing field and effectively negates the protection offered by credit card networks. Hopefully steam resolves it, that's always the first line of defense, but if they don't, you still can't c…

Alternately (or additionally), I'd love for regulatory prohibition of implied ownership of these sorts of items.

Ex. if access is revokable, it's illegal to use the word "Buy" alone - have to use "Rent" or "License" or "Buy License" or something that doesn't imply ownership (because ownership is not being offered)

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

#175

Post by hinkley »

lapcat wrote: post #139
hinkley wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s sure a good thing we let them run their own App Store for Apple products then. Definitely a win for the little guy. /s

The crApp Store is full of dark patterns. All Apple ever cared about was getting its 30% cut of those dark patterns, including from Epic.

If we wanted to 'fix' both the price overhead on the App Store and the Freemium problem there then the best way to do that would be for Apple to reduce their cut on initial purchases but keep in-game purchases at 30%.

Right now they're doing nothing to discourage these patterns.

I cut Apple some slack because I worked in mobile when the iPhone was still a product demo. If you think Apple are assholes, you don't remember what carriers were like. Some of them were in the middle of figuring out how to white label phones so they could completely control the wireless space instead of share control with Moto, Nokia, Ericcson, etc. AT&T wanted you to buy an AT&T branded phone, not a Nokia. If memory serves, HTC was one of those white label manufacturers at the time.

The introduction of the Razr and the iPhone kept us from being in the worst timeline. And the App Store broke open an entire industry.

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

#176

Post by Sodman »

ryandrake wrote: post #153
afterburner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The problem is that your accounts with these businesses can accrue innate value over time. If you have spent 4 figures on buying video games on steam, and then want to dispute a fraudulent charge, access to all previously purchased items can be suddenly and permanently revoked. No to mention data like friends lists, game saves, etc.

Even worse, for XL companies who force one account across multiple products, the two things can be completely unrelated. If Google is refusing to RMA my pixel 7 phone which arrived defective, I can't issue a chargeback on that phone purchase because they'll remove my access to the last 10 years of family photos, my email, my domains, and my GCP servers.

Sure you could argue that this is the exact reason you should diversify these things across different companies, but in some cases the tight integration between these products is a compelling feature. The price for that feature shouldn't include removing consumer purchase protections.

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

#177

Post by cwkoss »

sirmarksalot wrote: post #99
hunter2_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> music I've purchased They really ought to stop using "buy"/"purchase" metaphorically to mean something more like "one time fee for an indefinite lease that ends upon account termination." If they simply used a word better suited to the reality of the situation, then it wouldn't be a surprise that the account (which is a privilege, not a right) is a dependency of using what you paid for. Maybe something like "micro-…

The bigger issue is that because of the market power of these digital storefronts, it doesn't matter what your mental model of the transaction is, you don't have a choice in the matter. Yes, online stores with better terms exist, but they don't tend to have the games that you'd want to buy. I always get a warm feeling when a game I'm interested in has an itch.io link, but I'm not gonna delude myself into thinking it'…

I think a lot of platforms would change the terms of their digital products if they could not use the term "Buy" otherwise.

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

#178

Post by cwkoss »

Thaxll wrote: post #123
flangola7 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other reasons to use a chargeback than just fraud.

Which is?

- Deceptive advertising

- Removal of advertised features

- Broken UX / Failure to deliver purchase successfully

(I think that last one is going to be increasingly common as people spin up a bunch of thin-clients over GPT-4 and other AI tools - I've already tried buying an AI art thing and it was just completely broken and had to do a refund through googlepay).

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

#179

Post by gnaritas99 »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #55
afterburner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s fine for a hotel, but it’s not fine for services where you also loose access to your inventory.

[dead]

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

#180

Post by CobrastanJorji »

mahathu wrote: post #167
hunter2_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> music I've purchased They really ought to stop using "buy"/"purchase" metaphorically to mean something more like "one time fee for an indefinite lease that ends upon account termination." If they simply used a word better suited to the reality of the situation, then it wouldn't be a surprise that the account (which is a privilege, not a right) is a dependency of using what you paid for. Maybe something like "micro-…

Didn't they use to let users download mp3s when they bought an album? Did that change?

Ah, you're behind the times. You may be remembering 2008 when Amazon had those big "DRM Free" messages and t-shirts and talked a lot about how music wanted to be free. It was a big part of their sales pitch. That faded away, and then some music started using DRM. However, if you purchase a music song or album, you can still mostly download MP3s, as far as I know.

On the other hand, if you use Amazon Unlimited or Amazon Music Prime, you cannot download music as MP3s. You need to use a player that supports their DRM.

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