Legal Point of View on Purchases

What are the legal aspects of purchasing something on the game and then finding it gets Nerfed three times.

Heres my point, you buy something say that costs u 1000 SC, you pay for a weapon that does descent damage lets say it knocks out 100 damage, then all of a sudden deals 50 damage in 1 month time.. Technically you are NOT getting what you paid for and there SHOULD be some type of compensation for this.

Is there Disclaimer on this, cause at the moment it seems that the purchases i have made some £60+ worth are going to waste..

Cheers for any insight

Grow up and read the fine print you have no legal leg to stand on. Is this your first mmo ever? You know these games are changing constantly right? Never buy something because it is powerful it is always susceptible to a nerf. And oh ya grow up.

Why are all these "get my money back because my FotM purchase got balanced" posts coming from (apparently) UK posters? Is it like a cultural thing, or...?

Armchair lawyers. They have something called the Sale of Goods Act that provides a broad range of protections. Most of them don't understand the finer distinctions of virtual sales and mistakenly assume that purchasing a license for use of an item/effect via a virtual currency = purchasing ownership title for intangible property. They're wrong.

Yea its a cult thing we all sit around in a circle hold hands and shout out a loud hym, MMMMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOLLAAAAAAAA
MMMMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOLLAAAAAAAA
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKKKK

Is why you have to buy Station Cash and then use SC to buy stuff ingame
If you had used Real Money to buy ingame stuff you would have a legal right (in some countries)

Did you buy the 2nd AA Arm on the Max, or do you use AA turrets? Did you purchase the skyguard? If so by your logic you owe SOE more money since they buffed those.....doesnt make sense now does it

None.

Caveat emptor.

In the UK, Eula's have been upheld as being illegal and fundimentally unfair (thus non-binding). So when you buy/purchase software, all those terms you "agree" to are meaningless in the UK.

Also in the UK, citizens advice and civil judges have broad ranges of powers to decide if any particular transaction is unfair or misleading and they almost always rule in the favour of the consumer.

There is an Act call the Sales of Goods act, which has recently been upheld to include virtual items and electronic only currencies which can be used to fend off unfavourable changes in licenses and obtain full refunds.

You can find the various details of the above on the internet or by contacting citizen's advice. We don't have the "let companies **** the consumer" culture in the UK.

Here is one section of UK law which annuls all EULA agreements, for example:

"
Unfair Terms

5.—(1) A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer.

(2) A term shall always be regarded as not having been individually negotiated where it has been drafted in advance and the consumer has therefore not been able to influence the substance of the term.

(3) Notwithstanding that a specific term or certain aspects of it in a contract has been individually negotiated, these Regulations shall apply to the rest of a contract if an overall assessment of it indicates that it is a pre-formulated standard contract.

(4) It shall be for any seller or supplier who claims that a term was individually negotiated to show that it was.

(5) Schedule 2 to these Regulations contains an indicative and non-exhaustive list of the terms which may be regarded as unfair"

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/2083/regulation/5/made
"

I believe in the U.S.A. consumers tend to get the very short end of the stick and additionally, the dreaded EULA actually means something there (which is worrying in itself) and thats why americans tend to not believe it when UK people say they can take these cases civil and win.

In Europe we have much better rights to protect us against getting ripped off than in the states

If pushed, people could take a case against Sony for selling a defective product. This game over a month after launch and still does not work as it was advertised because of the rendering issues.

Your perception of what you're buying does not factor into the substance of the goods. SOE in no way tries to hide the fact that you are buying usage (NOT OWNERSHIP) to an item in a active online game. SOE owns your ps2 account and everything on it. It's not important what you think you're buying when thinking about legal consumer issues, but what you actually bought.

And for everyone citing laws, you need to look at the first part of the law where it explains what it applies to before citing the rest... it's kind of important.

Actually it does. In the UK, anything that a layman could reasonably expect a deal to actually mean can be considered a factor. And the matter of something being misleading or not is for a judge to decide and he will almost certainly tend to favour the consumer in the UK, unless a company has been crystal clear to a customer in direct and personnalised writing. See point 4.

This post gonna get closed/deleted soon. And i hope they'll ban you.

You are free to go and play some official P2W products if you are too afraid your stuff getting nerfed.

The problem is you aren't buying the in game item, you are buying station cash. The way you spend that station cash in game is entirely under SOE's terms.

You know, if you actually take this to court and win, Sony will have little choice but to refund the money of all UK players and permanently ban the entire UK from playing its games. "Sorry, this product is not available in your country." Watch it happen.

If you have legal concerns, please contact the legal department. Closing this down now. Thank you!
Any player who feels the need to take legal action with regard to their experiences with SOE forums or games should contact legaldept@soe.sony.com directly. We do not allow such discussions to take place on the forums.