It’s not about end user license agreement. That really has absolutely nothing to do with the issues–false advertising.
Fatshark promised features they haven’t delivered (i.e. The crafting system, classes, maps, and so on).
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Doesn’t need to bring them crashing down. Just needs to get a fire under their asses to fulfill their obligations to consumers.
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How is it possible? Does EULA hold FS accountable for any kind of a feature list? Does it waiver them instead with the “as is” clause? Is false advertising laws applicable to things that are not sold, but rather licensed to customers (which is the case with DT)?
I read that one of the Swedish consumer agency’s primary functions is to hold companies accountable for things like false advertisement. We’ll just let them decide if pursuing this is worth it or not.
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Opps, their online service for reporting Online Games is currently down.
If they didn’t break any laws then they’ll have nothing to worry about. No need to get your panties in a bunch.
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Right now you have to send an email. The link has all the info you need on what to include in the email.
No point really to debate if it’s justified or not as most of us do not now Swedish law. That’s for the Swedish Consumer Agency to decide. Fill in, write your arguments and then Agency will decide, they know the rules and law. If it’s justify they will act, if not they will not. Filling won’t hurt.
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Wait, does that company perform audits for free? I though to might be useful to answer those kinds of questions before paying lawyers for doing their side of the investigation.
Businesses get fined all the time.
Maybe a case of collective short term memory but this just feels like when people were convinced the cash shop was outright illegal and were emailing embassies to try and push the Swedish government into doing something about it. I just feel bad for the poor sods who are going to have to process all of these emails long after they realised no one emailing them bothered to check the legislation.
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Oh I get it it, you’re just really empathetic about the people that work at the Swedish consumer agency having to do their jobs. Good on ya mate.
All we’re doing is filing a complaint. Nothing crazy going on here.
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That’s a good description of it. They provide recommendations (that are usually followed).
Even if it won’t cost Fatshark money it could definitely cost them in form of bad publicity.
It’s a publically sponsored function and not a company. They do provide advice on consumer(related) legislation.
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Did I tell you to stop? By all means mail away, im just pointing out this isnt a new idea, nor is it new for people to bandwagon on things without actually reading up on it. Call me pessimistic but you’d think we’d know what works or not from the last time a Swedish game studio botched a high profile launch, like Dice’s BF2042, a bit of context never hurts.
While most fines are generally just a slap on the wrist, the message this would send is far bigger than the fine.
I’d imagine the story would be spreading like wildfire in the game journalism scene. It’d be way more effective in showing that this sht does not fly than any fine ever could. Hell of a bad look for sales as well.
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EU Consumer protection laws work for any type of two sided transaction.
so not only products, but also services viewings, etc basicly the transaction is what matters not the thing the customer recieves.
consumer protection laws cannot be circumvented with * atached to an contract, everyone has to abide except for a few very important industries.
i think this would fall under false advertisement as stated before, as not only official posts by a company, need to be satisfied, but also any promises made by representatives by said company.
(tho im not sure to what context, im sure there a limits to this, a conversation from an CM to a few select few might not be sufficient in court).
so how it usually works is a consumer protection agency collects complaints and formulates, to bring them before court, and then the court would dictate the necessary course of action of the studio or outright fines them.
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I still cannot fathom why people are defending FatShark
it’s bizarre lol
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That’s not how any of it works.
EULA is written by the company, and they’re not gonna write “we’re not allowed to scam you” in it, but that does not mean they can legally scam you. In fact, they can write “we’re allowed to scam you” and it still does not make it legal.
“As is” protects from unknown issues, and not misrepresentations or obfuscations. Fraud protections still apply even with an “as is” statement.
“Sold” and “licenced”: you’re sold the licence too. Regardless of that, you don’t own your email account, photoshop, any cloud service, but it’s never been implied that they can just hand you whatever and they can just do whatever they want to your stuff.
I have no doubt what they did is mostly technically legal, but this is just a pile of legal word salad misinformation.
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From last month.
Thank you for helping the Swedish Consumer Agency audit companies and alerting us to current consumer problems.
We have registered your complaint in our database with number ANM 2022/27720.
Not all complaints become an errand of our supervision, they need to be of a greater consumer value to become an errand. We will keep your complaints for future references.
The Swedish Consumer Agency does not have the possibility to intervene in individual disputes and such a report will not help you in your own case against the company
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We were promised a live service game and we got a live service game. I cannot fault them for that.
Was that the right decision for the consumer? Hell no. For the Fatshark’s brand? Time will tell, but there are few live service success stories I would care about and multiple well known failures.
Micro-transactions using every trick in the book to take advantage of unwell people to spend money for in-game cosmetics is another matter, but unless the EU moves against this stuff, we won’t stamp out this scourge.
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