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

ftc.gov

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

#61

Post by yamtaddle »

vuln wrote: post #52
paulmd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but the EU can simply outlaw those types of contractual arrangements going forward, and require that prior purchases be either defaulted into the new purchase arrangement or refunded. Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to protecting their citizens. It doesn't have to be the way it is in the US with corporations holding all the cards, that's just regulatory capture in action. That's…

It would be interesting to see the EU try and force a company to host something in perpetuity. Interesting thought exercise.

They could just actually sell things instead. As in, sell for real, not some at-our-discretion lease. Nobody's forcing companies to gate access and add DRM and all that. Such a change probably wouldn't result in perpetual hosting, but in actually selling things. Or, in only providing rentals. Either way, the situation would be clearer to the end user.

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

#62

Post by hinkley »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #6

That's the second time now I read about Epic Games paying a fine for doing something obviously shady and illegal. I slowly get the impression that Epic Games might be a bit more scammy than your average company.

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

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

#63

Post by fra »

asciii wrote: post #11

> the FTC said that Epic deployed a variety of design tricks known as dark patterns aimed at getting consumers of all ages to make unintended in-game purchases. Isn't it funny how they $h!t on Apple/Google gate keeping practices? Is this a part of Project Liberty to bypass stores and scam users?

I agree, they just handed Apple a huge moral victory. You fight publicly and sue for your own payment process, then you turn around and scam your users with dark patterns around payment. This would not have been possible with iAP!

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

#64

Post by jerf »

vuln wrote: post #52
paulmd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but the EU can simply outlaw those types of contractual arrangements going forward, and require that prior purchases be either defaulted into the new purchase arrangement or refunded. Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to protecting their citizens. It doesn't have to be the way it is in the US with corporations holding all the cards, that's just regulatory capture in action. That's…

It would be interesting to see the EU try and force a company to host something in perpetuity. Interesting thought exercise.

It doesn't have to be quite as simplistic. You can give them choices. There could be IP escrow companies you could pay. You can give them the choice of hosting in perpetuity or releasing something on some date. You can tie all these choices to a tax structure, progressive charges, etc. You could make the cheapest thing to simply sell the product outright. In theory you could even tie these additional protections to the a condition of making the release public at some point as a way of incentivizing companies not to use copyright protection on something that is not likely to be that valuable in 95 years, though that's unrealistically utopian of me to suggest.

My main point is that it doesn't have to be that simplistic.

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

#65

Post by paulmd »

vuln wrote: post #52
paulmd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but the EU can simply outlaw those types of contractual arrangements going forward, and require that prior purchases be either defaulted into the new purchase arrangement or refunded. Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to protecting their citizens. It doesn't have to be the way it is in the US with corporations holding all the cards, that's just regulatory capture in action. That's…

It would be interesting to see the EU try and force a company to host something in perpetuity. Interesting thought exercise.

Companies going out of business is a different thing but Amazon, Google, and Epic are not in any risk of going out of business.

If you're worried about shell-company games, well, that can be legislated against too. So far the EU hasn't, as far as I'm aware, let any companies out of any previously-mandated penalties for violating consumer protection with "That was google, this is ABC" bullshit. They are, as I stated, much much less interested in playing games than the US is.

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

#66

Post by csunbird »

vuln wrote: post #52
paulmd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but the EU can simply outlaw those types of contractual arrangements going forward, and require that prior purchases be either defaulted into the new purchase arrangement or refunded. Welcome to governments that are actually responsive to protecting their citizens. It doesn't have to be the way it is in the US with corporations holding all the cards, that's just regulatory capture in action. That's…

It would be interesting to see the EU try and force a company to host something in perpetuity. Interesting thought exercise.

EU isn’t that unfair for companies, it is more likely that they would allow revoking of access rights, but require companies to compensate for thr damages (e.g. issue a refund for the full or partial purchase amount)

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

#67

Post by hinkley »

acomjean wrote: post #37
PurpleRamen wrote: post #6

That's the second time now I read about Epic Games paying a fine for doing something obviously shady and illegal. I slowly get the impression that Epic Games might be a bit more scammy than your average company.

As an adult who’s partner plays Fortnite with her cousins and occasionally gets dragged in, I haven’t seen this. I’ve spent maybe 25, and it seemed pretty obvious what was going on. Maybe I just haven’t found the dark pattern path. It should be clear what’s going on before charging. I don’t love the “v bucks” vs real dollars they charge for things. though I get that the reward for those who grind isn’t actual dollars…

I play Civ VI on my tablet to wind down, and I’m not happy about owning the whole thing on Steam and only half on iOS. They need a license transference process.

If memory serves Klei might have a solution for this but I haven’t bought anything on steam in some time so I may be thinking of some other game.

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

#68

Post by lancesells »

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…

It might be even easier than being paid back full value (which is difficult). How about you still have your account but you can no longer purchase anything else?

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

#69

Post by olliej »

vuln wrote: post #45
paulmd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You purchased _access_ to the media for as long as the company decides to host it. You don't physically own the media. Think of it as renting or a lease.

Having it physically isn't relevant. Plenty of people still buy games as physical media, and those games, including single player, all stop functioning the moment the company turns off the DRM - errr, "advanced feature" -- servers.

Having something physical is meaningless when every piece of software comes with T&Cs that say it's dependent on server support.

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

#70

Post by hinkley »

wantsanagent wrote: post #56

"After receiving five comments, the Commission voted 4-0 to approve the complaint and order against Epic and the responses to the commenters." What? Were these just five people who happened to be in the room? How do you receive only 5 comments?

I worked a contract for a state appeals court way back in the day. I believe anything the judge considers is recorded as part of the case, so “comment” is more official than just raising your hand. Either you’ve filed a document or taken the witness stand. Either way lawyers are involved so that’s a lot of friction.
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