Category: Editorials

Crowdfunding Mini-Update: Retro Computers Ltd Shop Is Open, Product Is Nonexistent


The ZX Spectrum Vega is now available for pre-order for those of you who didn’t get in on the original Indiegogo campaign two years ago for the product that is now more than a year and a half past its expected shipping date. For the low cost of £139.99, you too can secure yourself a recreation of the ZX Spectrum in handheld form with 1,000 licensed games, or at least pay for a product that shows no indication that it will ever actually release.

What games? Nobody knows, the website says to check back in on May 4 around 5-6 p.m. but that date has long come and gone and Retro Computers Ltd refuses to release the list because developers are still pulling their titles over allegedly unpaid royalties. They also refuse to update that page with its past due dateline. Due to a dispute over license holding, RCL has apparently had to reach out to the owners of all 1,000 games to make sure that they are still cleared to publish, a cross-check that I will remind you is happening twenty months after the device was originally supposed to ship. Evidently nobody bothered to check in that time whether or not RCL actually held the rights to the games they were hoping to publish.

In fact, the Vega Plus got so close to shipping that RCL was ready to give out a tentative date: May 8 through 12, which they missed and subsequently ignored until the 14, announcing then that the device was held up due at the eleventh hour to the aforementioned licensing dispute. Surely if RCL had the devices presumably ready to ship out within days, they would be available to show a photograph of even one finished, finalized piece of hardware, yes?

They haven’t, and any requests for such have been wholly ignored. No game list, no photos of the device, no photos of the box of the device, a company so incompetent that they are still figuring out licensing rights twenty months after the original shipping date. One thing that RCL haven’t forgotten to comment on are the numerous claims that longtime boogeymen and former directors Paul Andrews and Chris Smith are wreaking havoc on the company, eating their steak and ruining their lives.

If you are considering pre-ordering the Vega Plus on the RCL website in spite of this, I have a bridge that needs investors.

Beta Perspective: H1Z1 On PS4


I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I am enjoying H1Z1 on the Playstation 4. Is it the graphics? No, those are relatively standard for a game of this style and mostly subpar in the greater scheme of the Playstation. Is it the streamlined controls and faster paced action than its PC counterpart? We’re probably getting closer. Is it the fact that I can get through a match, kill seven people, and actually have a fleeting shot of winning? Absolutely.

Competence goes a long way toward enjoyment.

H1Z1 is a battle royale game from Daybreak Game Company, originally released on PC and now ported over to PS4 sans its survival mode counterpart. The PS4 version down to its fundamentals is a port of the PC copy but with a lot of the intricacies stripped out. Gone is crafting, your inventory, weapon attachments, and more. What’s left is a survival mode shooter that will likely make you happy that the game isn’t pulling such complicated systems in a rather fast paced game and handing you a controller to fumble your way through it.

For those of you who have managed to avoid this genre, I’ll go over the details: H1Z1 throws up to 100 players on to an island littered with weapons, armor, and vehicles and has them battle it out to the last remaining survivor. You and 99 players are essentially thrown into an arms race where you try to build up your offensive and defensive power by raiding the numerous towns, houses, and camps that litter the landscape. As the match progresses the playable area gets smaller as a toxic gas slowly encroaches upon players. This ultimately leads to each map starting of slow, watching players get picked off, and ending with just a massacre of the remaining players as they all get grouped up into the last remaining safe spaces.

As a genre, the battle royale game mode is all about your experiences and how you experience the game is directly related to whether or not you enjoy it, and how much. Combat is fleeting so there tends to be more memorable moments of survival or failure, like the time I hunkered down in a gas station and wound up taking out six players before being forced out by the toxic gas, or the time I parachuted into the world only to immediately have my brains blown out by some guy who found a pistol seconds before I did. Victory, while likely more common in group games, always seems to have a memorable story behind it of you and the other last remaining dude or dudette battling it out in the toxic fog.

Controls and handling in H1Z1 is pretty unique compared to other shooters on the platform. Guns are tight and control pretty much how you would expect for a third person shooter, but vehicle handling is all over the place thanks to a rather wonky physics system. You’ll be spending a fair amount of time driving in a vehicle, so getting used to the loose turning is going to be necessary for survival.

What makes the gunplay so special in H1Z1 is that the game is very straight forward in how it plays. There is a large enough variety that you’ll inevitably find your favorite close and long range weapons, but basic enough that you’ll figure out what each weapon does within the first few games. Weapons are familiar enough that you’ll know how they work: Pistols can shoot faster but do less damage, or slower and be more powerful. Shotguns are killer at close range while SMGs shoot fast to make up for their lack of punch. The only wacky weapon that H1Z1 really has to offer is the crossbow that shoots explosive arrows, great for area of effect damage or destroying a moving vehicle.

Equipment you pick up is also huge for your survival. You will find basic helmets and makeshift armor everywhere, with higher end military gear available only from caches that dot the landscape. You can also find backpacks that let you carry more weapons and combat boots that let you run faster.

Microtransactions come down to cosmetics which in turn act sort of weird. You can buy gold and then spend said gold on loot crates or earn them through gameplay, and those crates in turn unlock cosmetics for various weapons/equipment that effectively override your current default. How does this work in a game where your items are all found throughout the world? I’m glad you asked. When you equip said item, the look gets overridden to your default. Simple as.

End of the day, I feel like H1Z1 is a game that people will either hate or they will love, until they hit three bad games in a row of dying within three minutes of landing, and log off to stop themselves from angrily throwing their controller through the television, and come online to finish the beta review that they should have done two days ago.

Unless that’s just me.

Impressions: Torn on Android


I live in a detached house somewhere in the city. My clothes consist of a pair of trainers I found in the dump, some leather clothes I bought at the local clothing store, and a crowbar and Glock 17 that I carry around for personal safety. My job as a bag boy at the local grocery store helps pay for my modest accommodations, but I mostly get my income through gambling at the casino and finding various items at the dump and selling them at the pawn shop for cash. I found two personal computers thrown out by some guy, they work so I sold one and kept the other for when I’m smart enough to use it for its intended purpose: Writing viruses and selling them on the open market.

I may have also waited for a dude to get out of the hospital, only to mug him and put him back in the hospital. With my crowbar.

Such is life in Torn, a game that by its own admission is meant to be played for the long term. Torn has been running on PC for a long time, it has thousands of people online and living their lives in the city at any given time, with tens of thousands online over any 24 hour period. It is a completely text based game and it just launched an app for Android devices that I was invited to take a look at. Over a week later, I’m hooked.

Torn is something of a life simulator, not in the sense that you’ll need to click the button to eat your morning bowl of pizza before heading off to work at exactly 7:30am or you’ll be fired and screw you if you think you’re going to have a real life and play this game, but in the meaning that you’ll be doing life things like going to the gym, betting money on League of Legends games, beating up a random stranger and sending him to the hospital, and then losing the money you stole from him playing craps at the casino.

There is always something to do in Torn, some new feature popping up as you level up, some new goal that comes your way, some new activity to take part in. Upon hitting level three, I gained the ability to visit the bookie at the casino where I found out that players who I believe are employed by the casino (in the video game sense) are able to set up betting pools on actual events. I bet $100 that Fnatic would be Flash Wolves in an actual League of Legends match and came out with the winning bet. There are also bets on real life sports games, in fact I threw down a grand on the 6/4 odds that Manchester United will beat Chelsea in an FA Cup match later this week.

Otherwise I like the fact that everything in this game is going toward an overall goal. Having a job doesn’t just provide a daily income, it boosts your various skills and grants points that over time allow you to do things like steal out of the till and get some cash. Education not only unlocks new things but grants boosts to various stats like intelligence which in turn allows you to get promoted at work faster, upping your daily income even further. Running low level crimes like searching for cash or selling bootleg DVDs gives experience that can lead you to bigger crimes, but getting caught will reduce that experience.

I’m looking forward to continuing to play Torn and will continue to document my experiences as they come about. I apologize to anyone for whom the formatting of this page is absolutely borked because of the mobile screenshots.

Jagex Will Shut Down FunOrb In August


It’s been eight years since Jagex ceased development of FunOrb, and the developer this week announced that the service will be coming to an end later this year. The decision, according to the announcement, comes down to changes in hardware and software leading to FunOrb’s library of games becoming increasingly difficult to access.

Over the next 3 months we’ll be slowly winding down FunOrb. After 8th of May 2018 it will no longer be possible to purchase new FunOrb membership, and after 14th of May 2018 it will not be possible to create new FunOrb accounts. However, we’re not turning the lights out just yet. To make sure that everyone has a chance to enjoy these games one last time, we’ll be keeping the servers online until 7th of August 2018.

Membership will cease to renew after May 8, and players with combined memberships with RuneScape will need to choose a new membership option. FunOrb was launched in 2008 as a mini-game portal and remained active for nearly two years until Jagex ceased development of new titles in early 2010. The website has remained in maintenance mode since then.

(Source: FunOrb)

Additional fun fact: I ran one of the two main FunOrb fan websites, solidified in carbon here.

Chaturday: But the Cash Shop Works Fantastically


I read a piece this past week questioning if the bad boy developer image is dead and boy do I sure hope so. For the most part, I believe that attaching names to games is going away, and I think the facts would back me up on that.

Let’s be frank on one thing regarding Radical Heights: This game’s success or failure will ultimately have little to do with the public reception of Cliff Bleszinski. Are there a handful of people who are refusing to play Radical Heights because CliffyB called PC gamers pirates ten years ago? Yes, most likely. Is that number statistically significant? No.

Not nearly as influential as the fact that Boss Key Productions decided to spend a whole five months in development before shoving the game onto the Steam store amidst a sea of other half-baked products. Radical Heights has the misfortune of existing as effectively a lesser Fortnite. Both games are free to play battle royale titles, both utilize graphics to make them accessible on lower end machines, but one of those two games is effectively in alpha and is still using placeholder mesh buildings.

From a gaming perspective, indulging in Radical Heights right now seems pointless when Fortnite exists and has a massive, healthy user base. It’s akin to waiting outside of an Olive Garden while the building is being constructed when the Olive Garden a block away is open and has a full menu.

But Radical Heights isn’t necessarily doomed just because people aren’t playing it right now. The Battle Royale genre may be dropping corpses left and right, but the world looked at Fortnite BR and a lot of people thought that would never catch on either.

It also risks languishing in a PR hell where launching into early access essentially starts your game’s relevance timer with the press. If Radical Heights rushes its way to launch, they’re probably doomed. If they spend too long in developmental hell for the next year or two, they risk missing the exact ship that the launched early to catch. Remember We Happy Few? That game still hasn’t gone gold two years after launching into early access.

I like to look at a developer’s culture and design philosophy when talking about their potential for success or failure. Take Monte Cristo, French developer who in 2009 launched Cities XL. I expressed my concerns on my old website that Cities XL was doomed to failure and that its income scheme showed a deep misunderstanding for the market.

Cities XL not only launched with a mandatory subscription to play online, but arguably crippled its single player mode in order to make the online version look more attractive. What Monte Cristo banked on was that they would have the market cornered by being the only online Sim City style game on the market and that people would pay whatever price they asked for the opportunity to participate. What they didn’t understand is that given the absurd proposition of injecting subscriptions into a genre that had never seen them before, that people would simply say no and move on.

Radical Heights launched into early access in an increasingly saturated market with unfinished textures but a surprisingly well molded cash shop and currency purchasing. Its success or failure will depend partially on the culture at Boss Key and how it convinces gamers to give them a chance and keep playing.

But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Chaturday: Thinking Back To Far Cry 5


(Editor’s Note: Some spoilers for Far Cry 5 abound)

I enjoyed Far Cry 5 in the same way one enjoys a triple cheeseburger from McDonald’s. It was tasty and filling and pretty much exactly what I was looking for at the time that I bought it, but I wasn’t exactly seeking depth of character and thus wasn’t disappointed that I didn’t really get any.

Far Cry 5 never stood a chance of escaping controversy because it exists and that’s enough of a qualifier these days to crucify someone, be it the makers or the audience or both. Video games are normally pretty uncontroversial in their stances; Wolfenstein hates Nazis, Call of Duty hates terrorists, Mass Effect hates genocidal aliens and is also cool with two entities of separate species but the same gender bumping uglies.

Humanizing the enemy is a great idea for developers who wish to partake in a little PR suicide, it is for this reason that while we will see media where Germany wins World War 2 and conquers the United States (Wolfenstein, Turning Point, Man in the High Castle, Philadelphia Experiment 2), I can think of only one game where the player can not just play as the German forces, but actually lead them to victory (Panzer General). It’s the whole notion of acknowledgment of existence being interpreted as support of the position and the very fact that I used world war 2 as my example would no doubt be used as fodder in presuming my true intentions.

In Far Cry 5 you really have to let logic go in the face of alien artifacts and mind control drugs. The idea of Joseph Seed cutting off communication to the outside world and closing off the roads to prevent people from going out for help made sense right up until I started buying helicopters and airplanes. I’d be a bit more comforted if the game also mentioned that Seed had some kind of air defense set up and was shooting down planes. It would be a blatant bandaid and if it did I missed it, but there doesn’t seem to be much reason why I can’t fly off and get the National Guard.

Actually the narrative dies when you find out at the start that the dispatcher who sent you out was a cult member from the start. I have to presume that the game doesn’t take place over a long enough span for the courts to start wondering why nobody showed up after that arrest warrant execution for the murderous cult leader. Characters in the Far Cry series have always been more closely akin to realistic, awkwardly attractive mannequins. The premise of the stories are acceptable but you know from the start how this play is going to work itself out with you building up the meter until the boss comes out, kill the boss, rinse and repeat three times, then kill the big boss.

I have to hand it to Ubisoft for cosmetically altering loot stashes to “prepper stashes” and somehow creating far more controversy than the topic is worth. It goes back to the whole acknowledgement equals support idea, that Ubisoft is trying to paint preppers as mystical visionaries when the reality is that yes, the people who stash supplies will have supplies stashed when the need comes along.

Along the way you are going to kill a hell of a lot of cultists, and this is where Far Cry 5 stood out to me among the prior games. You still have the laundry list of chores required to progress through the story, but you don’t have to finish the list in order to get to your destination. Me, personally, I deliberately went for outposts and prepper stashes to fill my reputation meter, allowing the ensuing kills to fill what the missions did not.

As a result, the game felt more like tucking in to a Hungry Man sized meatloaf dinner rather than a full ten pound slab of beef that I would be sick of eating halfway through. The very ending itself was surprising, but no aspect of the game really creeps up on you because Far Cry telegraphs everything, and it does it loudly.

The moment that really killed my immersion into Far Cry 5’s world came along with my first abduction experience. Each of the three generals for Joseph’s army will abduct you at several points during your trek for a drawn out speech or escape scene. These moments are unavoidable, period, no matter where you are. I just happened to be flying really high in a plane when someone on the ground managed to snag me in the ankle (apparently through the plane floor) with a tranq dart. As I watched the plane nosedive to the ground and the screen go hazy, I imagined the cultists picking up whatever was left of me from the plane wreckage for some good old fashioned interrogation.

The game also doesn’t care what you’re doing at the time it decides you’re cruisin’ for a baptism, and I’m fine with that. I tend to mentally lump games into one of two categories: Video games and experiences, and Far Cry 5 is definitely a video game where you do game things.

Otherwise, I found myself enjoying the gunplay once I got used to the rather slow bullet speed. Helicopters and planes were a massive pain in the rear until I got a way to deal with them, making it all the more enjoyable every time I shoot a plane out of the sky with my armor piercing sniper rifle and anti-vehicle weapon perk. Dogfights in the skies with planes and helicopters is fantastic and I have yet to have an experience that matches rolling down the street in that massive armed semi truck.

Hunting this time around isn’t mandatory since you aren’t collecting crafting materials to upgrade your inventory or ammo limits, and because of that change I found myself actually wanting to hunt animals. You’ll still want to do some hunting since each species has a small challenge to kill 1-4 of them for perk points, but there is a big difference compared to Origins for instance that still makes you farm hundreds of animal pelts to upgrade your character.

Incidentally I would have stopped playing Far Cry 5 after beating it were it not for the live events pushing me towards a 100% completion. Each week Ubisoft posts a new challenge from blowing up vehicles to roasting animals and playing in the arcade. There are personal and community goals that offer basic skins for weapons/vehicles and new outfits. The events themselves take less than an hour, generally, and I’m more willing to spend some time tracking down some more stashes and zones that I haven’t picked up yet.

Far Cry 5 is begging for a New Game + mode and considering its addition to Assassin’s Creed Origins, I’m sure Ubisoft isn’t against the idea. There is already the option to reset outposts and retake them for poops and giggles.

How did you feel about Far Cry 5? Boil down this article into one half sentence and rip it apart in the comments below.

Column: Stripped Down For Belgium, A Post-Lootbox Ruling


Rest in peace, Belgium gaming. That’s hyperbole.

This week Belgium declared that lootboxes in the fashion of Counter Strike: GO and Overwatch constitute illegal gambling, threatening their associated developers with monetary fines and jail sentences if they don’t comply. This week and the following weeks will no doubt consist of executives meeting with lawyers in board rooms and asking questions like who would they jail, does a Belgian company have jurisdiction over our digital game, and what is the cheaper alternative between either altering our systems specifically for the local market, or pulling out of it entirely.

It isn’t so hard to imagine developers handling the Belgium market in the same way that they’ve taken care of Germany in regards to depictions of the swastika, or other European countries in regards to explicit content in games like South Park. The cheapest and most obvious answer is that companies will, at least in the short term, completely disable the purchasing of loot boxes, including the ability to purchase said boxes with fake currency purchased with real currency, in Belgium to comply with the law. I’m sure developers are currently looking at ways to generate new revenue streams in Belgium without getting on the bad side of the law, and others are looking at lobbying efforts to have that part of the law nullified completely.

Then again, I’m not a bean counter at any of these companies and have no up to date information on exactly how much money is coming out of Belgium. The latest information I can find is from 2011 estimating 220 million euros and climbing rather quickly. Belgium may be a country of about 11 million people, but approximately half of them were gaming in 2011. Again, this is something that individual developers are going to have to assess going forward. One outcome that is definitely not going to happen would be the games removing loot boxes entire from every market, not just Belgium. There is far too much profit to give up for no good (translation: legally required) reason.

I find it hard to believe that the AAA developers are going to pull out of Belgium entirely, although you will see this from smaller publishers for whom the cost of molding their titles around Belgian law don’t justify the kind of sales they would get in the country. At this juncture, that would still be the nuclear option and one that in my humble and admittedly not backed by hard data opinion, seems like there should be plenty of better options available. In order for wide-spread changes to be had in the industry, a substantial part of the market is going to have to follow Belgium’s lead and enact/enforce similar gambling laws.

One thing we can be assured of is that business will not be as usual. Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

[Community] Live Events? In My Single Player Games?


How do you feel about live events in single player games? I’m genuinely curious because I’m not quite sure how I feel about it myself.

I’ve been playing a lot of Far Cry 5 and Assassin’s Creed Origins lately, and both games employ a growing trend in Ubisoft titles. I am of course referring to live events in a single player game, of which I have had mostly positive reactions to.

It is my opinion that live events should be something that the developer runs at the start both to bring in new players and to keep your current base playing in the long term. For Far Cry 5 this works to both bases, since Far Cry doesn’t have a traditional RPG system so you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything from the start. The rewards are so far things that the average player wouldn’t miss if they didn’t own the game at the time, and Ubisoft may or may not rotate them back in at a later date.

Assassin’s Creed Origins on the other hand is going to demand that you be around level 40 or above in order to complete its live event quests, making it more of a late to end game activity. Thankfully leveling isn’t going to take a massive amount of time, and the events are confirmed to rotate so you’re never going to miss out on cosmetics because you didn’t buy the game fast enough, nor should you feel that the game is demanding you no-life your way to level 40 as fast as possible.

How do you feel about live events in single player games?

In Plain English: An ArcheAge Lawsuit and the Fraudulent 10% Discount


(Legal Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and as such nothing in this column constitutes legal advice. All opinions expressed are my own and based on research into case precedent and interpretation of relevant laws and statutes, as well as discussion with the MMO Fallout legal team)

It has been four long years since ArcheAge launched in the west and some people are still wondering: How did Trion Worlds avoid getting sued for its rather blatantly false advertising regarding that 10% discount for Patrons that never surfaced, and was the advertising of the game against the law?

If you’ve forgotten or just weren’t around, when Trion Worlds was initially pitching its founders packages to the west, they advertised a perk for Patrons that included 10% discounts on cash shop purchases. The page advertising the promotion had been stealthily edited close to launch to include the wording that the perk wouldn’t be applied immediately, only for Trion to throw their hands up months later and admit that not only would the perk not be coming, but that they had no concrete knowledge that it was ever going to happen. The discount was replaced with a 10% bonus to credits purchased and not applied retroactively to people who picked up their credits during the beta or to credits received from the Founder’s pack. All because Trion Worlds and XL Games no longer felt like programming it in.

I pointed out at the time that if anything in the world of forum users threatening to sue had the most weight, it would probably be this, and I was not wrong. In September 2015 a class action lawsuit was filed in California court by plaintiff Aaron Van Fleet against Trion Worlds in regards to the 10% discount as well as making claims that ArcheAge’s loot boxes constitute an illegal lottery. MMO Fallout missed this story, personally I’m blaming the editorial team who haven’t shown up for work since 2009.

1. $1000 In Cash Shop Purchases and the Digital Lottery

The lawsuit charges that the 10% bonus is an inadequate replacement as it excludes head start credit purchases, founders pack purchases, and those who buy credits through in-game purchases (APEX). Furthermore, the plaintiffs note that Trion Worlds made false statements to the existence of the 10% discount despite knowing that those claims were false, that the discount did not exist at the time, and that it may not exist at all.

This charge is a hard one to deny, and depending on how Trion Worlds makes their defense may come down to how the court views advertising. Trion Worlds mounted an early defense publicly by claiming that the page on the website and Trion’s streams didn’t constitute advertising. Someone might point out that No Man’s Sky was cleared of charges surrounding its misleading advertising, however that ruling was made by a UK court and would not have an effect on how a California court would implement differently worded state laws. This is likely going to come down to whether the court views the replacement as adequate, whether Trion’s justification for not implementing the discount is satisfactory, and how much of their claims leading up to launch can be considered binding advertising.

Now let’s talk about the illegal lottery bit of this lawsuit, which I will start with this snippet from the docket:

Many ArcheAge players have spent more than $1,000 each to purchase supply crates that offered the chance at a Rare Prize Many players have expressed in online forums that they feel they were cheated by Trion’s sale of supply crates. For example, m January 8 2015, a player posted on Trion’s public forum a message board thread titled, “Whelp this is why gambling is illegal online.” Several users complained about the amounts they spent on supply crates and Trion’s entire business model (e g, “spent almost 15k creds and only got 11 about 500G worth of useless Junk”). A true and correct copy of the thread is attached hereto as Exhibit A.

In my humble opinion as a non-lawyer, this is where the lawsuit loses its footing. The docket cites California Penal Code to try and kick the cash shop lootboxes as an illegal lottery, seeking restitution in the form of Trion Worlds being forced to offer refunds. I’m no lawyer, but I have high doubts that this charge will hold up in court given the low likelihood that the judge would qualify digital goods as property in the sense that they would be covered under California’s lottery laws. The kind of impact that this would have on the industry is massive, would effectively criminalize countless companies, and would set major precedent where it doesn’t currently exist. I don’t see the court making this kind of decision, particularly not over this lawsuit.

California defines a lottery as “any scheme for disposal or distribution of property by chance, among persons who have paid or promised to pay any valuable consideration for the chance of obtaining such property,” and I highly doubt that a loot box in a game would be viewed by the court as existing in the same category as sweepstakes and promotional giveaways. Disregarding the idea that this is clearly not a lottery system, Trion Worlds would likely be safe even classified as a lottery, as an illegal lottery would require forced payment to participate (credits can be acquired without paying real money) and a clear win-lose with the prize (loot boxes always distribute prizes). This is why all of those sweepstakes you see from TV to cereal boxes have “no purchase necessary” written on them, it’s so they don’t get caught up in state lottery laws.

Exhibit A is literally about 50 pages of threads from the ArcheAge forums of people complaining about the cash shop, a notion that not only strikes me as a massive waste of the court’s time but also irrelevant to the case at hand, potentially damaging to the plaintiff’s argument, and one likely to be ignored by the court. It paints a picture that the plaintiffs are merely attempting to stretch the definition of California’s penal code to include the loot boxes because they are feeling buyer’s remorse, not out of genuine belief or concern that the loot boxes violate the law.

2. Binding Arbitration and the Supremacy of the Terms of Service

Here is where the lawsuit gets interesting.

We know from Bassett v Electronic Arts that generally arbitration clauses are accepted by the courts as binding (at least in New York they do), but what happens when one agreement contradicts another? Trion Worlds has an End User License Agreement and Terms of Use, two separate documents. It came out during the proceedings that while Trion’s TOU compels arbitration, that their End User License Agreement states that the venue for any claims is the San Mateo district court. Trion in turn attempted to compel arbitration, citing its Terms of Use.

Unfortunately Trion wrote themselves into a corner, as the court ruled that not only does the Terms of Use state that the use of Trion’s game clients is governed by the EULA, but that the specific language used in the EULA makes the venue mandatory under California law. Trion further tried to claim that its EULA agreed to upon creating an account does not apply to its games, which the court rejected as the EULA contains several pages referring to the purchase and use of digital goods. The court did find that Trion’s belief that the Terms of Service applied to the claims was reasonable, albeit incorrect, so nothing malicious was going on here.

Despite this ruling, Trion Worlds attempted to have the case dismissed and taken to arbitration. The two parties held a hearing with the presiding Judge on April 8, 2016 and on June 8 the court rejected the claim for arbitration. As ruled previously, Trion’s End User License Agreement, which stipulated that any claims must be taken to San Mateo County Court, superseded the Terms of Use which called for forced arbitration.

Additionally, the court rejected Trion’s claim that the EULA and TOU are agreed as part of the same transaction, noting that the EULA is agreed upon at account creation and the Terms of Use not until the user downloads the game, meaning the former can be agreed to without the latter. The decision goes on to note that some parts of Trion’s Terms of Use may be illegal as they conflict with state laws regarding liability, which Trion acknowledged.

In August 2016, Trion Worlds appealed the court’s denial of arbitration and now we slide on out of the San Mateo District Court and into our new home in the First District Court of Appeals.

3. The First District Court of Appeals Says No

Trion Worlds’ appeal regarding their motion to compel arbitration took us to the California 1st District Court of Appeals and since then, well, not much has happened. Both parties were given a ten minute oral argument and on the second of April, just over a week ago, the court ruled against Trion Worlds. Apparently the explicit instructions that the EULA supersedes the Terms of Service translates exactly the same no matter what California court you happen to be in.

But don’t take my word for it, read this statement from the court:

“Trion’s Terms of Use does contain an arbitration clause, but it also provides it is “in addition to, and does not replace or supplant” the ArcheAge EULA, and, in the event of a conflict or inconsistency, the ArcheAge EULA “shall supersede” it. Based on this provision in the Terms of Use, we conclude the parties did not agree to arbitrate their dispute, and we affirm the trial court’s order denying the petition to compel arbitration.”

In its appeal, Trion Worlds attempted to claim that the EULA incorporates the TOU, which the court promptly ignored and didn’t answer as it had already ruled that the governing document, the EULA, demanded trial in the San Mateo County court and the burden of proof is on the party demanding arbitration to prove otherwise.

“Thus, when addressing the threshold question of whether the parties agreed to arbitrate their dispute, which relates to purchases associated with the ArcheAge game, the Terms of Use provides we must start with the ArcheAge EULA. It does not provide for arbitration. Based on the clear language of the applicable agreements, the agreement to litigate any state law cause of action relating to the ArcheAge EULA in San Mateo County supersedes the agreement to arbitrate other kinds of disputes. Trion cannot satisfy its burden of proving the existence of a valid agreement to arbitrate this dispute.”

4. Back To County Court We Go

Unfortunately this is where the story ends for now. It looks like we’ll be heading back to San Mateo County Court to continue the lawsuit as both sides prepare their arguments. MMO Fallout will have more details on this case as it appears.

[Not Massive] Radical Heights’ Unique Concept: Persistent Money


Following the commercial failure of its take on the Overwatch-style hero shooter, Boss Key Productions is coming back swinging by taking on the Battle Royale genre with Radical Heights. In production for the past five months, Radical Heights is set to go live on Steam Early Access very soon. Tomorrow even, as in April 10. And why not take a look at the game when it does release? It’s free, after all. Radical deadlines.

Radical Heights is aping on 80’s aesthetic and radical, tubular dialogue to cosmetically set itself apart from the competition, but one aspect that is rather new to the genre is the idea that player-held cash is persistent between matches, allowing players to hoard cash to hopefully make the next match easier.

Can Boss Key pull out a hit? We’ll find out when the game goes live tomorrow.

(Source: Steam)