FTC Warns Console Manufacturers: Your Warranties Are Illegal, Change Them


The Federal Trade Commission has issued a warning to console manufacturers: Your warranties are illegal and must be altered within 30 days. The letters were sent to all three console manufacturers: Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo along with Hyundai, HTC, and Asus according to a Freedom of Information request sent by Vice.

The FTC warning is in relation to provisions in each company’s terms of service that claims to void your warranty if it is repaired by a third party, as well as those fancy “warranty void if broken” stickers that we have all seen on our consoles at some point. This language is illegal, according to the FTC, who also note in their letter that the 30 day provision does not prevent them from taking legal action on any past or future violations.

“Provisions that tie warranty coverage to the use of particular products or services harm both consumers who pay more for them as well as the small businesses who offer competing products and services,” said Thomas B. Pahl, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

All six companies have 30 days to change their policy or face legal action.

(Source: FTC, Vice)

[Not Massive] Gamestop Hyperkin Controllers Get Stuck In Customs


Hyperkin’s Duke Xbox controller is fat and sassy. How fat is it, you ask? It’s so fat that it tried to slide through customs and got stuck. Tip your waiter, I’ll be here all week.

This week was supposed to mark the launch of the Hyperkin Duke Xbox Controller, a recreation of the original Xbox controller for people with Shaq-sized hands. If you pre-ordered your controller through Microsoft, you’re doing fine. If you got your order through Gamestop, however, you might have been surprised to show up on Monday only for the store to tell you that not only was the controller not in yet, it wasn’t even in transit to the store.

Well it turns out that Gamestop’s shipment got held up by Customs. Hyperkin’s Twitter account set a new date of May 15 for delivery.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

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.

H1Z1 Hits PS4 Open Beta On May 22


H1Z1 is coming to Playstation 4, and you’ll get the opportunity to shoot some guns and fight to the last man standing starting next month. Daybreak Game Company announced this week that H1Z1 is being built from the ground up for the Playstation system with a simplified loot and inventory system to keep the game flowing. In addition to fluidity changes, other alterations are coming to the console version including the removal of crafting as well as changes to the gas system, among others.

“H1Z1 on PS4 is true battle royale mayhem. We have reimagined the game for PlayStation 4 and have designed it to accentuate the essentials of battle royale that make the genre so exciting to watch and play,” said H1Z1 Producer Terrence Yee. “We have added key gameplay differentiators to keep the game frantic and fun — an action shooter’s dream of fast-paced battle royale.”

Daybreak’s plan is to have the game running at 60fps on the Playstation 4 Pro. Open beta for H1Z1 starts May 22.

(Source: Press Release)

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.

Belgium Criminalizes Certain Lootboxes, Sends Threat To Developers


The first answer to any question of “is this legal” is “where?” Belgium has joined the growing list of countries to declare that lootboxes, in some fashion, constitute an illegal form of gambling. The Belgium Gaming Commission determined this week that FIFA 18, Overwatch, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive violate its gambling laws and has demanded that developers remove them with the threat of large fines and remarkably even prison sentences if their demands are not met.

Belgium’s Gaming Commission in its notice specifically directed at the following types of monetization. Please note that the below has been translated into English.

  • Emotional profit forecast: uncertainty loot box is linked to profit forecast;
  • A player may think that the purchase of a loot box gives an advantage, which is not always the case
  • Confusion of fiction and reality: well-known real people promote the most expensive loot boxes;
  • Use your own coin system: for a real amount, players can buy in-game coins;
  • Apparently infinite methods to deposit money on player accounts;
  • Hide from the random generator or at least its opacity.

It does not appear that any explicit timetable has been set for removal of said loot boxes.

(Source: Belgium Gaming Commission)

Daybreak Clarifies Ownership…Three Years Later


Pop quiz: Who owns Daybreak Game Company? If you answered Columbus Nova, you are as wrong as every news outlet that reported on this three years ago, including MMO Fallout. You would be forgiven for this misunderstanding considering that the news was announced from Daybreak’s PR with the headline “Columbus Nova Acquires Sony Online Entertainment,” with the first sentence straight up saying that Columbus Nova had acquired the company.

Columbus Nova, an investment management firm based in New York, announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a recognized worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online (MMO) games and emergent gameplay.

And then there is John Smedley’s note in the announcement that they would be joining Columbus Nova’s roster of companies.

“We are excited to join Columbus Nova’s impressive roster of companies.”

Turns out that SOE was acquired not by Columbus Nova itself but by an executive at Columbus Nova, Jason Epstein, and the company had just never corrected the record.

“It was current executive chairman Jason Epstein, former senior managing partner of Columbus Nova that acquired Daybreak, not Columbus Nova itself. That distinction was never corrected in the past, so we are correcting that now.”

The reason this is relevant today of all days is because Columbus Nova has become embroiled in US sanctions on Russian oligarchs, specifically its owner Viktor Vekselberg. The distancing between the two companies has been raising a lot of eyebrows since both Daybreak and Jason Epstein himself have said on more than one occasion, and very explicitly, that Columbus Nova as an entity has purchased SOE.

(Source: MassivelyOP)

Online Text RPG Torn Coming To Android In May


You just don’t hear about large-scale text based games these days, but Torn has been rather quietly seeing massive success on desktop PCs. Launched 14 years ago, Torn bills itself as the game that Mafia Wars was built on. It lets players build a life in the city as a business owner, mob boss, or somewhere in between. You can take part in robberies, invest in the stock market, race cars, manage properties, the sky is the limit.

Continuing its success on PC, which has seen more than 2 million players worldwide and 20 thousand daily active users, Torn will be coming to Android devices on May 8. Alternately you can play right now by visiting the link down below.

MMO Fallout should be running some preview coverage of the mobile version at some point in the future.

(Source: Torn)

[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.