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‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

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Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#181

Post by xoa »

cornholio wrote: post #153
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you make a new purchase, you agree to the updated terms of service. This is pretty standard practice. (Steam makes you press a renewed terms of service agreement on every purchase, for example.) When you agree to updated terms, it generally replaces your prior agreement with a company. Had he not agreed to the new terms, his account and the purchases tied to it would still be under the old terms. The whole EULA/…

Laws and contracts cannot be retroactive. A new TOS can force you to cede rights from that point onward. All past purchase are covered by contracts in force at the time they were made.

>Laws and contracts cannot be retroactive

Could you expand upon this a bit? In the US bills of attainder and ex post facto laws were clearly banned for both the Federal and State government from the founding of the country, though I remember reading that despite statements from the founders SCOTUS has been shakier on applying it to civil vs criminal law.

But it's not clear to me how that relates to purely private contracts, unless there is something in California regulating it? Further to your own point:

>A new TOS can force you to cede rights from that point onward.

It seems like that could cover this just fine couldn't it? Ie., two parties could agree that regardless of past or ongoing legal interactions, any future new legal interactions could be governed under different rules. I'm not sure that'd be "retroactive", it doesn't govern anything undertaken under the previous agreement, it modifies it going forward. Are you saying that contracts may never be modified from their original form? That doesn't jive at all with my (admittedly non-lawyer) understanding. It'd be against all sorts of bankruptcy proceedings and private settlements for example, since those often involve modifying previously agreed terms of previously engaged in financial exchanges.

Granted this all puts aside questions of adhesion and whether he even did agree to new TOS at all of course. But assuming during his ongoing play he was presented with a new TOS, agreed to it, and then at a later date filed suit, it doesn't seem novel at least (even if we think certain rights should not be contractable) that their legal interactions after the agreement date would be governed by the new TOS.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#182

Post by learc83 »

newen wrote: post #156
salvar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $2 million game will cost (more or less) the same to develop whether it goes on to sell 1, 100, 10000 or 10 million copies. The cost of producing a handbag depends a whole lot on how many you need to produce. So assuming that shipping more copies is very cheap once the game is developed, what do you do when you get $6 million in funding for a $2 million game?

You profit? That's what every other company that sells software does.

That's not how crowdfunding works though. You aren't selling a product, you're asking for money to cover the production expenses for a product.

That often includes a salary for the creators, but it's hard to justify a multi-million dollar profit (from the crowdfunding itself).

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#183

Post by smogcutter »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #134
gwern wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more disturbed by the parts of the article which say that he never agreed to a forced arbitration clause in the first place because it wasn't in the ToS when he paid, but the judge decided to go with the later ToS anyway: > According to Lord, the terms of service when he made the initial pledge aren’t the same terms of service they are today. The original terms of service, according to RSI’s own records, make no…

Yes. That's what it means. Your contract is meaningless against a corporation when they can change the terms of the agreement and force you outside of a court of law into a monkey court of arbitration. The courts are for the wealthy, not for the plebiscite. This is what this ruling shows.

FWIW, a plebiscite is a yes/no popular vote of the whole population, not the population itself. Also, totally agreed.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#184

Post by cabaalis »

inetknght wrote: post #81
TimTheTinker wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the public service of justice is slow and expensive, we need to fix the public service, not replace it with a free market simulacrum. Completely agreed. Prisons are another example of an essential public service that should never be privatized or outsourced.

Healthcare, too

Transportation. Communication. Food. See? I can do it too. The idea of non-privatizing things has to pass tests other than just "Everyone needs it."

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#185

Post by TimTheTinker »

inetknght wrote: post #81
TimTheTinker wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the public service of justice is slow and expensive, we need to fix the public service, not replace it with a free market simulacrum. Completely agreed. Prisons are another example of an essential public service that should never be privatized or outsourced.

Healthcare, too

Government is and has always been about law -- creating law, executing law, interpreting law, and enforcing law. Healthcare doesn't have a natural, direct relationship to law like prisons and courts do.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#186

Post by dragonwriter »

cornholio wrote: post #153
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you make a new purchase, you agree to the updated terms of service. This is pretty standard practice. (Steam makes you press a renewed terms of service agreement on every purchase, for example.) When you agree to updated terms, it generally replaces your prior agreement with a company. Had he not agreed to the new terms, his account and the purchases tied to it would still be under the old terms. The whole EULA/…

Laws and contracts cannot be retroactive. A new TOS can force you to cede rights from that point onward. All past purchase are covered by contracts in force at the time they were made.

> Laws and contracts cannot be retroactive.

In the US, both laws (other than laws criminalizing conduct or increasing punishment for a crime, where the prohibition on ex post facto laws applies) and contracts can be, and sometimes are, retroactive.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#187

Post by ryandrake »

batmanthehorse wrote: post #129

I love reading about game dev/watching videos and I've watched a few Star Citizen developer updates. Seems like they were wasting a tremendous amount of time refining small details like adjusting the vents and decals and landing gear on ships that could already be considered complete. It struck me as absolutely awful time management.

It sounds like they might simply need a good (and empowered) project manager to crack the whip on schedule and say no to scope creep. I’d love to see what their internal estimates and work breakdown looks like! When they miss a milestone, what corrective action do they take? Do they give themselves any real deadlines? So many games would make such interesting project management case studies.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#188

Post by trocadero »

jellicle wrote: post #101
cornholio wrote: post #66

He lost because of a forced arbitration clause. This massive privatization of justice where any boilerplate service or product now comes with forced arbitration is making my blood boil. The justice system should always be an option when arbitration fails, and arbitration should take no more than a reasonable time to fail (say, two weeks for this $5000 amount). The whole point of a small claims court is to handle such…

> If the public service of justice is slow and expensive Is small claims court slow and expensive? Not to my knowledge.

It is if you have to pay a lawyer to represent you. Between responding and showing up in court it's probably several thousand dollars in billable hours.

Re: ‘Star Citizen’ Court Case Reveals the Messy Reality of Crowdfunding a $200M Game

#189

Post by dragonwriter »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #185
inetknght wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare, too

Government is and has always been about law -- creating law, executing law, interpreting law, and enforcing law. Healthcare doesn't have a natural, direct relationship to law like prisons and courts do.

> Government is and has always been about law

Government has always been about the legitimatized application of force; the use of law as one of the key components of the legitimization of force is very old, but not essential to the concept government (it's essential to modern, and even many older, norms or models of government, though.)

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