We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!
by Alphaville Herald on 24/05/04 at 4:04 pm
Well, not the subscribers to TSO — We still love to bend over and take it from EA — but other gamers are fighting back against their game owners. For example according to this article in the JoongAng Daily (Korea) subscribers to Lineage (500 million total subscriptions thus far) have threatened to file a class action lawsuit against the company claiming “the fees to play the game Lineage are too high and that the company has been negligent in attending to various technical and ethical problems involving the game.’ In particular, they say that “the game’s server crashed too often, and that there was significant fraud or hacking of the game, yet the company has not taken action to improve conditions. They said that they would file the suit if the company did not act by May 28.”
Funny how everyone here defends Maxis for terminating accounts for the slightest breach of contract (TOS), but no one ever asks the question as to whether EA/Maxis is living up to *its* contractual responsibilities. Are we being delivered what was promised? Maybe we should take a leaf from the Koreans. See also this discussion on Tera Nova.
oknal
May 24th, 2004
It might be part of that renowned patriotism / governmentalism: it’s not what your country can do for you … blah blah. It seems players really don’t make any difference between the actual and the virtual.
It might also be players are simply afraid they’d be terminated, just like workers are afraid to lose their jobs if they’d go on strike.
Urizenus
May 24th, 2004
Or maybe we’ve become a nation of sheep. Maybe the Canadians and Australians will take the lead for us…
TBT
May 25th, 2004
” Or maybe we’ve become a nation of sheep. Maybe the Canadians and Australians will take the lead for us…”
Yeah and the iceage will return too!
humdog
May 25th, 2004
or maybe the koreans understand what we do not understand. maybe the korean gamers understand that when they make their avatars and environments they are engaged in the process of creating intellectual property either for themselves, or for the corporation that makes the game environment available. maybe the korean gamers understand that since they are making intellectual property(ies), in an environment that the gamers are paying a fee to access, perhaps the korean gamers feel that the corporation has a reciprocal responsibility towards the gamer to maintain an environment where innovation is possible.
it seems to me that web-based applications have a certain arrogance: they seem to assume that the user has the right to pay a fee, but nonetheless has no rights to speak to the
functionality or even the availability of the application. it’s like the business community behind the application thinks that it has a license to print money, and that the end user is
just another sub-routine or something.
RB
May 25th, 2004
Let’s launch a class action suit against EA. lmao. For abuse and neglect. haha.
- RB
humdog
May 25th, 2004
why not?
challenge the TOS.
those booted should sue for the loss of property (since sims goods & money have an offline value)